Today I bear the burden of being the first person reviewing Samurai Warriors 2: Empires, a part of one of the more critically bashed genres of games in our time. KOEI's "Warriors" style games are massive 3rd person battle games focused on filleting thousands of enemies with a single overpowered character. These characters use a wide array of beautifully powerful attacks, but the games have been highly criticized as redundant and weak compared to some other titles these days. I will say I am a fan of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, growing up playing the older titles on the PS1/PS2, and I delved into the Samurai Warriors scene as unbiased as possible. You'll notice that in my review...
GRAPHICS/VISUALS: 5.5/10
I'm trying to cut this game as much slack as I possibly can, given that it was released almost 5 years ago. Granted, that excuse holds little weight considering graphical marvels such as Oblivion and Halo 3 were released around the same timeframe. The graphics engine in most KOEI titles is lacking, and until Dynasty Warriors 7 was released in 2011, there was little or no change in visual strength from game to game. Many players might shy away from SW2E based on poor graphics alone, a shame to say the least.
Let's start with the character designs. This game may tend to bore the average gamer with its lack of variety in enemy detail. Sure, you have the standard foot soldiers, archers and heavily armored warriors, but all suffer from blank face-itis. I never found myself saying, "Oh hey look, its a
new enemy!" Even the fellow officers that fight along your side are unimaginative. I often found myself confused at which officer I was assigning to what fief, as there are only about 5 different generic character faces recycled over and over between your generals and lieutenants. The series in general could benefit greatly from a fresh set of faces for your allies to take.
2nd is the game environments themselves. Each battle transports the player to an area with indistinctly different wooden bases and fields of war which do anything but wow you with visual stimulation. The graphics of the battlefields are poor at best, and without a map, could render navigating the playing field effectively useless based on how similar everything looks. One positive note is that the environments are not all the same. The game takes note of what region in Japan you're battling in, and changes up the scenery accordingly. Just don't expect any oohs or aahs when you get introduced to these areas.
Lastly, I wanted to separate the story characters and Lords from the rest of the character models. There are a handful of generals in the game that differ in appearance, and some of the details in their designs are noticeably vivid. Their attacks are colorful and interesting, and their faces on the in-game text screens are cool. It's the one thing that prevents this title from being totally boring graphically. The pre-rendered cutscenes are a potentially nice addition to the game, but are also overshadowed by poor graphics and animation, with character expressions seeming cheesy and movements unrealistic.
STORY: 3.0/10
The story, if there is any, is hanging on the crutch that the gamer already understands what's going on. When a scenario is begun, there is a brief cutscene showing your fief's lord saying something like, "We must defeat the enemy at hand!" and off you go. There's really not much more to it than that. It may not even be fair to judge the game's story because it's almost non-existent, but the title could really have thrived from a believable and engaging storyline. I often found myself thinking, "
Why the hell are they fighting? I don't understand the conflict here... And keep in mind that this is coming from a KOEI fan...
GAMEPLAY: 7.75/10
If there's one thing that keeps these games afloat and profitable, it's the gameplay. "Warriors" titles suffer from the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, which many gamers overlook and label redundant. As I briefly described previously, SW2E features massive battles centered around one extremely strong General, which is controlled by the player. The Empires games differ slightly by adding an element of strategy to the mix. Gamers will be tasked with finding the best ways to conquer Japan and restore peace to the land around.
You will essentially begin every scenario the same, by taking control of a Lord and battling various neighboring regions to gain a larger area to rule. The game incorporates a "strategy" phase and "battle" phase. In the "strategy" phase, one can perform an immense amount of tasks, all governed by how many order points you have. The more land you control, the more tasks you can accomplish on each turn. The variety of tasks include mining for gold, shopping for items/horses, building up the skills of your officers/citizens, increasing your likeability from the general populous, restoring your officer's troops, mining/harvesting your land and much more. Once you have unlocked every possible strategy element, the sheer amount of things you can do per turn is almost overwhelming but enjoyable. If you're feeling lazy, you can even consult a general in one of your fiefs to perform certain tasks, or delegate all orders in that turn to an officer whom you trust to make good decisions...
The in-game battles are traditional Dynasty Warriors style, calling on the player to conquer the enemy's main base by defeating their commanding officer. The several varying difficulties can make or break the experience for you. Playing on Novice is more or less a stress reliever, allowing you to be able to decimate your foes with little easy, adding little or no challenge, whereas a playthrough on Chaos will have you struggling to defeat even the weakest of enemies. My recommendation is to play on an easier difficulty at first, but leave the officer level transfer on, and play again on a higher, more challenging difficulty in later scenarios. The battling itself can be redundant if you let it, but varying up your button mashing and musou (special attack 'B') abilities, you can change up the game's pace a lot. Riding on your horse and trampling a sea of weak foes sure is fun too!
One recurring weakness I find in the "Warriors" franchise is the over-reliance of the AI on your skills. On the higher difficulties, if you're not twenty feet from your base when it is in trouble, you're more than likely screwed, and a loss is imminent. My best advice is to play more defensively the higher in difficulty you reach, making this easy by using troop formation cards and issuing orders on the D-Pad. Unfortunately, SW2E only offers two game modes, Empire and Free, basically changing things up only slightly. I did appreciate the more variety that later titles such as DW6: Empires incorporated into their options.
AUDIO: 6.5/10
As generic as it can be in some cases, I am quite fond of the sound in SW2E. The strongest point is without a doubt, the soundtrack. Countless metal riffs and ear blasting electronic tracks are laid out gloriously and have become a staple of KOEI games. Some people may find the music annoying, but I consider it charming and unique. Although some of the more recent games have superior soundtracks, SW2E is not bad at all. The sound effects are all pretty neat too, and gamers will find themselves hearing the constant echo of slain enemies and clanging metal from their weapons, as they travel across the battlefield.
One thing that
does drop the audio score so low is the voice acting. Unlike the cheesy charm that games like Earth Defense Force carry, I found the voices in SW2E to be downright awful at times, feeling embarrassed that someone would even put them into a game. Sometimes I found myself playing the game on mute, getting tired of hearing the same boyish officer voice say, "I will retreat," or something like that. It just sounded so
bad. On an upnote, the lame voice acting is not prevalent in every 'Warriors" game, as titles like DW7 are damn good and believable.
REPLAYABILITY/ACHIEVEMENTS: 4.0/10
You can go into approaching the achievements of SW2E in two ways:
1) There are only 17 of them, all worth 50 or 100 gamerscore apiece, and are all easily obtainable, OR
2) All of the achievements are lame, and even the little grinding required to unlock them is not worth the effort you'd have to put it.
I found myself in the latter of categories. Albeit that the achievements are all relatively easy, the game was so subpar that I didn't even want to put it the extra time necessary to get the 1000. All in all, the 17 cheevos can all be obtained in about 12-15 hours.
As far as replayability goes, if you like the Dynasty Warriors style gameplay, this is the game for you, and you'll probably sink 20 additional hours in. If there was multiplayer capability, I probably would've had more fun too, as some of my friends and I had good memories playing these games growing up. For the average gamer, I wouldn't expect anything more than the time required to complete all the achievements, as there aren't a lot of extras to keep most people interested for
OVERALL: 5.4/10
Samurai Warriors 2: Empires is not a great game, but it is fun in moderation. Unfortunately, it doesn't break the cycle of redundant combat most KOEI games experience, and the poor graphics and horrendous voice acting don't give it the boost it needs either. More than likely, most gamers who have played this game did it for the achievements. There are far more superior "Warriors" games out there to try if you're attempting to get into them. DW7 or SW3 to name a couple.
Time To Complete: 15 Hours
Favorite Achievement: "
Most Valuable Warrior"
Hardest Achievement: "
Stage: Osaka Campaign"
2.5