The art direction can be incredible at times, and even when it’s at its worst, through these first two chapters, it never sinks down to the dull and blurry battlefields we’ve seen in games past. Nearly everyone in Samurai Warriors 5 received a makeover for this installment, and while some character designs clearly got more attention than others, this is a great-looking cast of characters fighting their way through a great-looking world. Throughout their adventure, they’ll meet and fight dozens of other historical figures, avoid assassination attempts, send family members to their death, and more.įor this hands-on, I played through the first two chapters of the game’s story mode, which follows Nobunaga Oda during what can only be described as his Tiger Beat teen idol days. Set in Japan’s Sengoku period, the game’s story follows Nobunaga Oda and Mutsuhide Akechi through the trials and tribulations of the era.
Samurai Warriors 5 positions itself as a great introduction to the series and the Musou genre at large. Clearly, if there was any time for the Samurai Warriors series to usurp the throne, it’s right now with Samurai Warriors 5. The last outing, 2018’s Dynasty Warriors 9, was a massive misfire for the franchise, so much so that Omega Force didn’t even bother making an Xtreme Legends expansion of the title as it did with prior entries. However, it’s clear Dynasty Warriors is no longer sitting pretty at the top of the heap. Without its success, we wouldn’t have its Japan-set counterpart or the myriad of offshoots that have sprung up over the last two decades from developer Omega Force. To its credit, the latter more or less invented the 3D hack-and-slash genre as we know it today. Despite their abundant similarities, Samurai Warriors has always played second fiddle to its sister series, Dynasty Warriors.