Samurai Warriors 5 review: Hacking and slashing through Feudal Japan
I have to confess: I’ve never played any of the previous entries of Samurai Warriors, nor the Dynasty Warriors franchise it spun off from. As luck would have it, though, Samurai Warriors 5 is a complete overhaul of the franchise from the ground up. If ever there was a franchise that’s safe to jump into the 5th installment without previous experience, it’s Samurai Warriors.
Samurai Warriors 5 follows the reign of the Oda Clan’s ambitious but reckless warrior, Nobunaga Oda. Nobunaga has the lofty goal of uniting feudal Japan’s various daimyos so that the troubled country can finally see peace under his rule. In addition to Nobunaga’s path, you can also play as Mitsuhide Akechi and other supporting characters for certain battles.
There’s a new coat of paint on the entire game, with fairly similar art to Borderlands’ cel-shading comic book style. Characters look, move, and feel three-dimensional. However, they appear as if they were plucked straight out of a manga with thick, inky outlines and a digital watercolor painting aesthetic that could pass as a modern take on 16th-century Japanese art.
Samurai Warriors 5
The Good
- Overhauled art style is visually appealing
- Hack and slash gameplay is fluid and cathartic
- Reworked skills and weapons systems
- No previous games required
- Some battles can be replayed from different perspectives
The Bad
- Large groups of enemies ‘pop’ into existence
- Stuttering during large battles
- Upgrading and equipment management is tedious
- Easy to miss important exposition
Samurai Warriors 5: What’s good
Source: Windows Central
Category | Samurai Warriors 5 |
---|---|
Title | Samurai Warriors 5 |
Developer | Koei Tecmo Games |
Publisher | Koei Tecmo America |
Genre | Action |
Xbox Version | Xbox Series X |
Game Size | 14.09GB |
Play Time | 30+ hours |
Players | Singleplayer, online co-op (2-player), local co-op (2-player) |
Xbox GamePass | No |
Launch Price | $60 |
When initially loading the game up, players are given different menu options, including basic settings like whether or not to invert the controls and language for the subtitles. The game also allows players to choose their difficulty. Easy and normal offer fairly similar reward payouts for completed missions, while the harder difficulties reward players slightly better.
Source: Windows Central
Samurai Warriors 5 offers two primary gameplay modes. Classic Musou mode serves as the game’s story, and each chapter is broken into its individual battles or main story beats.
The primary path follows Nobunaga Oda, though there is an additional path that follows Mitsuhide Akeshi. Plus, a couple of side stories show how certain battles played out from the perspectives of other supporting characters. These sub-stories help to give additional insight into the behavior and motivations that really flesh the narrative out.
Source: Windows Central
Along with the stories in Mosou mode, there is also Citadel mode. Citadel mode features tower defense-like gameplay, where players choose a main character and an AI partner. It is worth noting that local and online are both options for cooperative play to protect the Oda clan’s castles from various onslaughts.
Fluid gameplay, weapon classes, and leveling
Source: Windows Central
One of the changes from previous iterations of Samurai Warriors is that characters in Samurai Warriors 5 can now use weapons from all classes. However, characters will have specific preferred classes; when using a weapon from their preferred class, characters have special move sets that complement their playstyle.
Source: Windows Central
It is important to keep the stats of the additional characters at least somewhat on par as your preferred mains. The AI used for missions is plenty competent at surviving the hordes of enemies during the intense fight sequences, provided they’re properly equipped with suitable weapons and skills.
Samurai Warriors 5: What’s not good
Source: Windows Central
The process of getting to experience the entire story is also one of Samurai Warrior 5’s weaker points. Despite a linear narrative broken down into battles and chapters for Mosou mode, Citadel mode is a series of seemingly disjointed tower defense experiences. To be powerful enough to succeed in Musou mode’s battles, players will need to step out of the narrative and grind necessary upgrade materials from Citadel mode to progress.
Source: Windows Central
Samurai Warriors 5’s revamped weapons system means players have more freedom to pick and choose which weapons they want to use with which characters. That’s a nice touch, but the overall system for upgrades, training, weapons, and skill management is a bit convoluted. The game could certainly benefit from a more streamlined system.
Source: Windows Central
There are options to just dump as much XP into a character of your choosing as you possibly can. However, it would be nice if there was a similar option to auto equip them with their preferred weapon without taking a 30-minute break between each mission to sort through all of it.
Performace issues, hectic subtitles, and disconnect
Source: Windows Central
Samurai Warriors 5 is fully voice-acted in Japanese and depending on how much understanding you have of the language, you may be wondering why I’m bringing that up in the “What’s not good” section of this review. The Japanese voice acting is fantastic; do not get me wrong. However, the lack of voice acting dubbed over in other languages means players must rely on subtitles to get exposition and other important battle information.
Source: Windows Central
Samurai Warriors 5: Should you play it?
Source: Windows Central
I found myself legitimately invested in the stories being told, picking characters that I was more attached to than others, and wanting to see how this wild effort to reunite Japan under one clan was going to play out. Theoretically, the performance issues could be patched in the future, although it’s safe to say that the convoluted upgrade system is probably here to stay.
Samurai Warriors 5
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