Omega Force games (such as Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and Hyrule Warriors) have never clicked with me previously, but I also have rarely had a chance to sit down and indulge in the games for longer than a couple hours. That is long enough to think they are mind-numbing, repetitive hack-and-slash titles that just like to watch numbers get bigger. Thankfully, I can finally say I appreciate and maybe even slightly enjoy the games despite some major flaws that still persist. The weirdly titled Samurai Warriors 4-II is not actually a sequel to Samurai Warriors 4, but instead a re-interpretation of the fourth game. This made jumping in fairly simple as it focuses more on the characters and less on the conflicts, creating the ability to build a relationship with a certain character.
What this offers in terms of actual gameplay differences is very little, but it does offer something exciting for those who want to get under the skin of certain characters of the series. The story mode is set up into campaigns, each with a specific main character that players will initially be forced to play as, though this changes after the campaign has been beaten. These campaigns consist of specific battles that are important to the characters’ arcs. What is exciting about them is that they can sometimes become complicated webs of how lives intersect on the battlefield and how quickly alliances and feuds can end for a common or disparate goal.
Though characters get woven into each others’ stories in rather complicated, satisfying ways, the gameplay rarely has any of the same satisfaction. It is still an Omega Force game bound to its simplistic game design and uniform mechanics. Every battle in a campaign has set objectives with bonus objectives that appear every now and then that remain completely optional. However, objectives very rarely deviate from “Kill ‘X’ Officer,” or “Kill ‘X’ Officer before they get to ‘Y’ point”. The most interesting objective I got was in Hisahide Matsunaga’s campaign, where he had to let a specific officer escape. It worked into the story because Hisahide was attempting to sabotage Nobunaga Oda, one of the main powers in Japan. However, it is one of the few times when the objectives feel story-driven. Oh, and it was a bonus objective, so it didn’t actually matter if I completed it.
Since campaigns consist of several different battles — most of which just seem to play out the same way over and over — it was refreshing to see battles play out involving the terrain actually being changed. Flooding altered the environment, which then forced me to change which paths to follow, especially with gates still closed up that already prevented me from going a certain way. Unfortunately, this only happens a couple times in the game and that’s it. I spent about 15 hours playing the game, and I would say roughly one hour consisted of unique moments in the story.
It got to the point where Samurai Warriors 4-II was offering me very little in terms of unique gameplay and everything became far too mindless. The same attack pattern worked on almost every enemy, with few exceptions where I needed to change my button commands up slightly. If I learned anything, it’s that Samurai Warriors 4-II is all about nuance in its combat. While combos are generally the same in button structure, they are almost never the same in how they manifest on screen. A hyper-attack oriented character may still have slight differences from other hyper-attack characters which requires more attention to the timing and direction of an attack. This mainly stems from the different weapons that are completely unique for pretty much every character.
These weapons can also be upgraded by merging with one another to increase their statistics. Combining similar elementally-charged weapons with others will give a bonus when upgrading, but it is also very limited in how many elemental weapons there are. I found about five unique items for each character, which is a lot, but when you take into account that all five are only different because of an elemental charge, then it is a deceitful portrayal of variety. Mounts also have this upgrade ability, though it makes little sense how it operates. Whereas weapons seem to just merge with one another (makes little sense, but okay, I can roll with it), horses upgrade by doing the same. Combining two similar breeds of a horse equates to a bonus when upgrading that horse. It makes no sense how combining two horses makes a horse, but video games, right?
Playing on the PS4, I found myself more intrigued by the visual detail of every Musou attack – when the game tries to wreak as much havoc on screen as possible in a short amount of time. I was taking screenshots constantly to capture the beautifully chaotic visuals, but was even more impressed with how the game held up under high performance pressure. Occasionally, Omega Force games suffer from low framerate when hit with high performance demands, especially when it comes to multiplayer. Samurai Warriors 4-II handles this exceptionally well, and I rarely noticed any significant drops in framerate. The game still isn’t very incredible in terms of graphics and textures, so being able to handle a steady framerate shouldn’t be an accomplishment, even if it is detrimental to the pacing of the gameplay.
I wish I could say that Samurai Warriors 4-II is more open to those who are not really into Omega Force’s offerings, but it really isn’t. I loved the character-centric campaigns and the way they intersect with one another, but it was never reflected much in the gameplay. The new character of Naomasa Li is fun to use, but he also feels tertiary in the context of the other campaigns, despite being mentioned on the battlefield often. I understand that the game is more focused on its characters, but that doesn’t mean the game needs to rinse and repeat the same objectives over and over. When one character is outed as not very good in combat, why make him the main character of a campaign that you have to battle with? It’s silly and shows how the narrative and the gameplay can often diverge from one another.
Besides campaigns and multiplayer (online and offline), the game also offers a challenge mode that involves four separate challenges players can partake in for gold and loot, or a challenge tower that will give players extremely beneficial rewards. The challenge tower will take a considerable amount of time, but it also offers some of the more rewarding gameplay because each floor is rather short and switches up the objectives more frequently. One of the other issues for me was that the game had no surprises, really. It lays out everything it has to offer right from the beginning and tells you exactly how to unlock what you can’t access yet. Want to play a different campaign? Well, just beat the one campaign it tells you is required.
As I cycled through the same menus over and over, upgrading my character’s abilities through a very detailed skill tree, merging weapons, and upgrading their mount, I found myself getting into a groove that I completely understand the fixation on. Even near the end of the game, I was rinsing and repeating the same steps again and again because I did want to make sure my character had good abilities and could quickly take out more and more enemies. The menu system leaves a lot to be desired still as it breaks apart two menus that could easily be spliced into a singular unit. I don’t understand why I can’t visit the shop after I select my character, but I can equip weapons and mounts no problem.
Samurai Warriors 4-II is a better game than I thought it would be (coming in as an outsider to the series), but it still is held back by very dated mechanics and structure. Everything about it still feels like a PS2 game that is just coasting along on its fanbase for as long as it can. The mechanics don’t seem to have deepened much, and what little changes there are to gameplay seem minute (though they do make a difference). What does feel great is finding the character you feel most comfortable with and memorizing his combos until you can wipe out an entire battlefield in the shortest amount of time. It helps that Samurai Warriors 4-II offers a more in-depth look at its characters and how they relate to others, but I just wish it made further steps to becoming something memorable – as opposed to the equivalent of comfort food.