Samurai Warriors 2

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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I recently relocated my Samurai Warriors 2 disc (it was in the Samurai Warriors 1 case… in the basement) and have been indulging in glorious fantasy melee combat for the past two days. For those who don’t know: Samurai Warriors is part of a series of games by Koei in which you take on the roles of various generals and leaders very very very very loosely based on historical figures and rip through entire armies with your superior martial arts, ki, and elemental powers. Fuck yeah. Where the English names for the games are kind of goofy (Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors) I assure you these games are both fun and challenging.

Where I’m going to talk mostly about Samurai Warriors 2 (without doing an article on Samurai Warriors 1 first… it’s my site, I do what I want!) I can’t help but go into how much I just love the series/concept as a whole. I admit I was never into the games in the old school "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and Kessen days, and came into the series with Dynasty Warriors 3, but I’ve been a fan ever since.

When I originally heard Samurai Warriors 2 was being made I was giddy with glee. Some of you who have watched me on deviantART may recall that Samurai Warriors 1 is the game I played, as I put it, until my eyes bled (I later discovered there’s a "game mode" on my TV for a reason.) I was worried the sequel wouldn’t be released in America, mainly because I have absolutely no idea how popular these games are and just assume they’re underappreciated because I never hear anyone talk about them. But lo and behold it was, and there was much rejoicing.

My first dissapointment, however, was that like Dynasty Warriors 4 and 5 it isn’t dual-language (the older games let you pick between English or Japanese dialouge.) Luckily, the English voice acting in Samurai Warriors 2 is far superior to Dynasty Warriors anything (which is just horrifically painful), yet even so not all of the voices are winners (Keiji Maeda sounding like Michaelangelo from Ninja Turtles is just a tad off-putting.)

Okuni, the whorish flirty miko.

My second dissapointment is the characters Ranmaru Mori and Okuni don’t have Story Modes. Okuni I can see, as her Story Mode in the last game was kind of tedious and boring and the ending depended on which of your favorite characters you wanted her to cocktease. However Koei managed to keep up her tradition of being tedious and boring by making you have to play a round of Sugoroku to obtain her. What is Sugoroku? A mini game that’s like Samurai Warriors if it were a board game. The object is to get more land than everyone else, and whoever reaches a set amount of land value first wins, I still don’t know what the hell the rules are but I managed to win (and I have to admit I was kind of getting into it toward the end.)

Ranmaru Mori, yes this is a boy

But Ranmaru! My favorite little shonen ai jailbait pretty boy! In the last game he and Mitsuhide Akechi had a rather… complicated relationship (although I managed to find one scenario in Mitsuhide’s Story Mode that didn’t end in either him killing Ranmaru or Ranmaru killing him.) But it’s not like he doesn’t fit into the story in this game, I’ve already had to get cleaved in the face by that giant sword of his plenty of times in other peoples’ Story Modes (and that one amusing scene in which Magoichi Saito mistakes him for a "pretty girl".) But no, he’s only available in Free and Survival Mode. And no, I don’t just like him because he’s purple… although that might be part of it.

Now you may wonder why them not having a Story Mode is so upsetting. You see, Samurai Warriors is extremely character driven, which is probably what makes me enjoy it more than Dynasty Warriors. Dynasty Warriors used to be rather character driven, but never on the same level as its cousin Samurai Warriors. I find with Samurai Warriors I actually remember all of the characters’ names, motivations, and philosophies. Furthermore, the looks, weapons and fighting styles of each character in this game are more markedly diffrent than in Dynasty Warriors. Although in Samurai Warriors 2 some characters have been taken out, and many more added in.

For example: they nixed the annoying perky ninja girl Kunoichi and replaced her with… well an equally annoying perky ninja girl named Nene, who I have yet to play as to compare. Speaking of ninja, they also added in a giant, dreadlocked Fuma ninja named Kotaro whose only purpose in the game seems to be to out-badass Hanzo Hattori (even so, I played as him first.)  The characters Oichi and Masamune Date have matured quite a bit, which has caused me to miss Date’s extreme shortness (and beating up people with double bokken, they gave him a sword and two pistols now. But ..eh.. there were guns in the late 1500’s. Sorta.) Like in Dynasty Warriors, a couple of past NPCs have been suped up and fully designed to be new playable characters: Ieyasu Tokugawa and Nagamasa Azai. And if you can still follow what I’m saying, read on!

This is sugoroku. Kill me now

Despite those minor complaints: I’m still completely in love with this game. Gameplay has changed somewhat, but I’m glad to see it not stray toward a more Dynasty Warriors dynamic (as much as I like those games as well.) You still have missions to complete within battles, and it’s a good idea not to ignore them because they not only earn you money, but they make your life a whole lot easier. In the last game, what missions you completed depended on which direction that character’s story went in (and whether you got an ending acted out by in-game graphics or sleek fully rendered 3D animation), most branching off only two ways but some characters getting 3 or even 4 alternatives. The stories, sadly, don’t branch off like this, but its understandable with the influx of new characters and the wealth of slick cinema scenes. However, completing missions can still make or break your battle, and failing to do certain things almost assures a loss. This can make the game quite challenging. As always you’re constantly getting messages and being shown things on the map about so-and-so’s morale lowering or rising, gates and reserves being captured, missions you need to complete, it’s all very extensive. And believe it or not it’s all important to your stradegy and your success in battle.

Of course, those of you familiar with this franchise may ask yourselves: you win gold from missions? What the hell good is that? Well in Samurai Warriors 2 they’ve completely eliminated equipable items and introduced a shop. Now you not only learn skills as you fight, you can also buy new ones. You can also upgrade your weapons there (filling in blank slots with more skill-boosting stats). And the best part: you can buy horses. Yes, no more triggering random series of events to gain faster, better horses, now you just have to save up money and buy them as they appear in the shop. I recently acquired the fastest horse in the game for the damage of 7,000 gold and life is sweet! You can earn money from the missions, and just normal gameplay, or if you’re impatient like me you can do what I do: Run around a castle in Survival Mode as Ranmaru completing free missions with big rewards. At any rate, any character can use the horse after it’s bought, and since there’s no equipable items you don’t have to fret over sacrificing a slot for a saddle item anymore. Only problem is the shop lady has a really annoying voice that makes me want to stab her in the mouth.

There’s no "Create a Warrior" mode in this one, but I don’t really care, because "training" your custom warrior last time was a pain in the ass. Apparently this is available in the Empires expansion pack, however. But at the shop you can buy unique bodygaurds of different battle types and do a double Musou attack with them just like in Dynasty Warriors 5 (only you didn’t buy them in DW5 they just showed up.)

I’m probably weak against this franchise due to my interest in ancient and medieval history in general, Chinese and Japanese ancient and medieval history, and melee combat and weapons. But the gameplay is just fun, the games are actually difficult (if you’re not a pussy and play them on Easy, that is), and the replay value is extremely high (although after powering up every single character in a game it’s rather painful if you decide to go back and start all over again.) I highly reccomend them… and now… off to conquer Japan!