Samurai Warriors 5 [Xbox]
Omega Force’s Samurai Warriors 5 is a hack and slash Musou game, rebooting the series with revamped visuals and a new storyline. It’s a spin-off from the mainline Dynasty Warriors series, which Allan in particular, was a huge fan of growing up. Characters are based on real-life historical figures, with Nobunaga Oda and Mitsuhide Akechi being the only two characters with unique plot; and has the bulk of their stories taking up the playtime, which whilst enjoyable, can begin to feel like a bit of a drag, as you desperately try to make it far enough to be able to play as other characters. An online co-op mode is available, but only for levels already completed Solo, which is a tad frustrating.
The story takes us right back to the beginning, focusing on a much smaller period of time than we normally see throughout the series, but making this well-suited to both long-time fans as well as first-time players. Being a reboot of the Samurai series, the character roster has been dialled back somewhat, with a maximum of 37 characters available, and with a much more focused approach to the story, so you’ll not get to play individual tales for each of these characters.
After completing the first section, you’ll unlock an area known as ‘My Castle’ where you can March, continuing on with the story; as well as visit various buildings (menu choices) within. You’ve got The Dojo, where you can equip weapons and train your officers (the characters you’ve unlocked); The Blacksmith, where you can add or remove weapon skills, as well as upgrade them; The Shop, which, as you’d expect is where you can purchase items, skill gems and weapons; and finally The Stables, where you’ll be able to purchase and level up your mounts. New and upgraded buildings can be unlocked as you progress through the story, with Citadel Mode - which plays alongside the main Musou mode - allowing you to step away to grind; to improve relationships between characters (eventually unlocking new cutscenes exclusive to this mode) and to gain supplies that will be needed to upgrade your buildings. Upgrading your buildings is important, as this will ultimately allow you to have your characters grow stronger, and gain better weaponry to help you succeed.
Combat is smooth and satisfying, with you taking on swathes of enemies and easily racking up combos into the thousands in the process. You’ve got standard attacks, Hyper attacks and Musou Attacks, and learning how and when to utilise these for maximum damage will make things far more interesting. Upon filling your Spirit Gauge, you can trigger Rage Mode, a highly powerful mode that deals additional damage and increases your speed; you can also utilise the Musou Frenzy attack, which not only looks badass - it is badass. You can assign four different Ultimate Skills to use in battle too, and these prove to be very helpful. The maps are large and have plenty to see and do across them, from your main Quest objectives to Bonus objectives that can be found around the map. Thankfully, with mounts being available, you’ll be able to summon them by whistling in order to easily travel around the map. As you progress, new objectives will be unlocked leading to new areas and new targets.
Weapons can be gained through defeating enemies, as well as destroying bamboo boxes known as Tsuzura whilst on the battlefield. The weapons you unlock will vary depending on the difficulty played, as well as how many Scenarios you’ve completed thus far. Weapons also have different skills, such as giving you bonuses to refill your Spirit Gauge, or increased damage against Officers. Weapon Mastery increases with every enemy defeated, ranking up when certain levels have been reached; gaining you various bonuses such as enhanced abilities, new Ultimate Skills and weapons/items used for upgrading. All characters can utilise all weapon types, which is good in one sense, but also takes away any uniqueness from the characters, which is a little disappointing.
Visually, it resembles traditional Japanese paintings, which makes everything wonderful to look at. With each attack you’ll have scratchy brush-stroke-like slashes of bright colours and black ink followed by drips, that makes the fast-paced hack-and-slash combat even more satisfying, as you decimate massive crowds of enemies. Characters look gorgeous, and the updated aesthetics of this reboot compared to the previous titles doesn’t detract at all from the series. Cutscenes are stunning, with the story being told in a mix of these paint-like animated segments, as well as still-image graphics. The voice acting is fully in Japanese, so you’ll have a fair bit of reading to do to get the gist of things; thankfully, you can switch the auto-progression of these scenes off, allowing you to catch up if you’re a bit slower to read. Retaining the Japanese themed score, with a rock soundtrack that changes things up from the electronic vibe it had previously, it suits the epic battles well.
There’s also a Vault area that can be accessed from the Main menu, that allows you to view over character Biographies, as well as various stats, such as Total Play Time, Objective Clearance Rate and Total KOs. There’s a lot required in order to 100% Samurai Warriors 5, so while it’s good to jump into for a quick game, there’s also lots of stuff to keep you coming back for more. Priced at £54.99 on the Xbox Store for the Standard Edition, or £79.99 for the Digital Deluxe Edition, which also includes the Season Pass, as well as a bunch of different Scenarios, Horses, Weapons and more. It does feel pretty expensive, especially to unlock all of the additional content but this seems to be fairly consistent with other Musou titles. Unless you’re a big fan of the Warriors series of games, I’d probably recommend picking this one up if/when it’s on sale.
In the end, we decided to give Samurai Warriors 5 the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.
Have you played Samurai Warriors 5 yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Koei Tecmo for the Samurai Warriors 5 Xbox review code!
