Samurai Warriors 4-II is a sequel to Samurai Warriors 4, or it’s a remake, or it’s Xtreme legends. Or…. honestly exactly what it is, isn’t clear.
The Warrior series has a long history of doing Xtreme Legends which is their “complete” edition usually allowing someone to play both the original and extra levels in one with more characters. However, there’s only one new character, Naomasa II, who is interesting, but not enough for a whole new game. There’s also no way to play the old game, there are just new stories here. It’s not a remake either, as the stories are vastly different, and the characters are the same. The game claims to focus on the characters more in the stories, but honestly, the stories feel the same style as the original game, though the original Samurai Warrior 4 has better stories (At least characters you care about more), but I found the ones in 4-II to be more interesting on some levels. At least it’s not the same story we’ve heard three times already in this series, it’s a new character that the game wants to focus on, which is a good change.
At the same time and perhaps not surprising anyone, this game takes a lot of liberties with history. It doesn’t have the story of “What if Nobunaga didn’t die?” But it does change how certain characters died… as well as completely ignoring history for characters like Hisahide Matsunaga, who instigates the Honnoji incident in this game. Essentially don’t expect to learn history here (or at least don’t rely on this as a primary source).
There’s a total of 13 stories in 4-II, each story requires you to play as a primary character and gives you the ability to select your own secondary character. Each story has five levels. A level will take you between ten to twenty minutes if you know what you’re doing. Just from that there’s a decent amount of play time to see everything. Of course, that’s in-game time, including menus and everything you’ll probably spend at least 30 hours to play through each mission once.
However to get a gold “cleared” message, you need to beat a mission with every objective, and with every character, and this is going to take you even longer. Some missions have 13 characters and having to take two characters at a time, you’re going to play that level seven times. Then there are a few missions that appear again with a similar number of players. I believe there’s at least one mission I played ten times. That’s almost two hours of the same level.
The thing is the levels aren’t interesting enough to be worthy of replaying it, and while this isn’t required, there’s an achievement for it, and the game clearly offers you the option to replace it multiple times. It’s the intended experience of “completing” the game. Getting all the Objectives is also quite time-consuming as some require special conditions or special actions being taken. Without a guide, it’s near impossible, but even with a guide, it’s still challenging as no one has a step by step guide.
Many of the levels are repeated from Samurai Warrior 4, but not all of them. However, levels like Osaka Campaign were ones I played entirely too much in the previous game so I audibly groaned when I had to replay them here.
But if you want to complete it, or beat it with every character, you’re going to talk about a lot of time invested, and the game is mostly enjoyable, there are only a few missions I really loathed, and probably only a couple at that. Really the only missions that were painful werethe long missions with the most gates. I had over 50 hours invested in the game, and I didn’t even get into some of the deeper pursuits (there’s a decent amount of farming for rare weapons that are required).
Speaking of Rare Weapons that’s one of my big complaints in the game, they are just annoyingly hard to get. You usually have a kill amount you must hit, a speed that you have to beat the game and a HP limit you can’t go below, and they are rather tight. The game isn’t very clear on what you do wrong if you don’t get it, and the guides online are a little light on information. There are videos but honestly rare weapons are annoying to get, and as the only weapons that have a unique name (otherwise you just get 1, 2, 3, 4 star versions of the same name) Even when you get a rare weapon they look similar to other weapons so there’s not much there. They are the most powerful weapons in the game but you already have done almost everything in the game to try to get them.
Another issue I had with the game is the camera would bounce violently when walking or riding up a hill. Not always, and not even often, but when it did happen it was noticeable and pretty nauseating. I’m not a person who gets car sick easily, but this was just violent.
Also, the game is all in Japanese without an English Dub. I know people will claim to prefer that but while in a tense battle the game keeps yammering on and on, which isn’t a problem but without it being in English and without an ability to divert my attention to the bottom of the screen due to what I’m doing, I often missed a large amount of the story. In fact, that’s probably one of the reasons this game’s story is considered to be so weak because it’s hard to follow since you literally have to read it while your focus should be on playing the game.
Another point is that the game is the typical hack and slash, and while there’s some interesting strategy as a part of the game, it’s only really seen at the highest difficulty. I like the idea, but when you can button mash (or at least hit X X Y) there’s not a reason to really get into the strategy of the game.
The biggest problem I have with the game though is the survival mode. I tried to tackle the 100 level variant of it. 3 hours in I fell on level 62. The game then informed me I lost everything I gained. 3 HOURS of gameplay gone in a moment. Not even the tomes that I collected stuck with me. Quite a waste of time.
Maybe I’m a little easy on Warrior games. Actually, I know I am. I play Warrior games to get quantity over quality, and Samurai Warrior 4-II is no exception. Spending at least 30-40 hours just to play all the levels is a lot and personally, I think that’s worth a decent sum of money. It is the same type of Warrior gameplay, run in hit X and Y often and then ride on to the next target, but you don’t go to a buffet table and expect prime rib. Samurai Warrior is the buffet table of hack and slashes and using that standard, I recommend the game. This isn’t the Warrior game that will change anyone’s opinion of the franchise (apparently that’s Dynasty Warriors 9) but this is another enjoyable Warrior game, even if it’s not the best in the series.
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3.0