Samurai Warriors Preview

To the victor goes the spoils … also the notoriety, and the experience points, and the skill points …

The folks at KOEI have built a reputation for games that are long on third-person battles, with entertaining and some historical elements thrown into the mix. Samurai Warriors, a pending release (slated for August) for the Xbox, is a wonderful combination of the hack-and-slash style of game with some cerebral elements thrown in.

Because everything is timed in the game, from the training of a new warrior to the story mode, you must make each action worthy of the effort. Moving in the right direction, taking down 400 or more of the enemy within a scenario is sometimes not enough. Even that will only rate you a C grade in the analysis of a battle.

Samurai Warriors is great fun, a real challenge and visually compelling. What this game manages to do is provide a stellar fight model based in the wars of the 16^th-century Japanese landscape.

Work your way through some of the biggest battles in the landscape, aiding your clan as you level your character and apply skill points to increase your abilities.

There are several ways to play this game – Story mode, Free mode, New Officer (in which you create a character), Survival, Versus and Challenge. The Versus pits two players against each other, while survival is on an indoor setting. Challenge gives players specific tasks to accomplish.

Gamers can choose one of five characters – Yukimura Sanada (known as the Red Warrior), Hanzo Hattori (an Iga ninja), the tomboy princess Oichi, the general Kenshin Uesugi, or the nobleman Mitsuhide Akechi. Or you can create your own avatar to take part in the battles. The creation of your warrior is very simple. But the fun doesn’t stop with merely creating a warrior. No warrior is born a samurai; the title and honor must be earned. When you create a character, you will have to undergo a training process, which will help you level up skills and attributes.

Some of the skills are a simple matter of taking on a vast onrush of enemy and powering up the musou attack (consider it a power attack), defeat as many as possible. Your efforts are graded. So how many is enough. Well, in a one-minute time frame, taking down 145 opponents is only fair. Taking out 269 produces only a rating of ‘good.”

Some of the training elements are a bit confusing. For example, during archery, you are instructed to repel enemies trying to cross a bridge, but unfortunately you are standing there equipped with a sword. Using the Right trigger brings up a targeting reticule for the ranged attacks, but this information is only available in the manual. Do not expect onscreen prompts to tell you.

The game controls are solid, though the one drawback to this title would be the fixed camera. You can be hit by ranged attacks from outside the range of the camera – like to the sides – and in a chaos of battle, with the enemy swarming about you, it may be hard to determine where the attacks are coming from. You are given bodyguards, which you can give orders to as you move through the game. You can set them for an aggressive stance, or pull them back into a defend mode.

You can elevate your character stats at the end of each battle, if you earned enough points to buy new attributes and skills.

The sound is well done and the graphics are stunning. You will get power-ups along the way, which gives this game an arcade feel, although the role-playing challenges of creating a new character makes this a bit more immersive an experience.

This game does not release until August, and while this was a preview version, what was presented in this format was a terrifically fun hack ‘n slash outing. Ok, this game has an historical setting, and you are given reason for the vicarious romp through the lands, collecting items, destroying enemies, using musou attacks to decimate large parties, but in the greater scope of things, whether against the historical tableau or just as a reason to whirl through the world destroying the enemy, this is a title that is enjoyable.

The fixed camera does create a few problems, but Samurai Warriors is eye-candy reflexive gaming with a few cerebral challenges thrown into the mix. It is, in a word, fun.