Review: Koei Tecmo’s Samurai Warriors 5 is, well, some more Musou

I’ve been a fan and participant of Musou video games (or “Warriors video games,” in case you’re a dubs as a substitute of subs particular person) since they had been brand-spanking new — 20 years at this level. I’ve been with them from 2000’s Dynasty Warriors 2, the very first, proper to this point. After per week and a half with Samurai Warriors 5, I’ve a confession to make:

I don’t know methods to discuss to individuals about Musou video games anymore.

When Polygon approached me about scripting this piece, the unique concept was that I might be writing a evaluate of Samurai Warriors 5, from a Musou lifer’s perspective. So, as I performed it, that’s the mindset I used to be in: gameplay, graphics, presentation components, the way it “felt.” I might undoubtedly write that story if I needed to. The sport seems nice; the cel-shaded, woodblock print-style artwork is colourful and pops. The fluid fight will probably be acquainted to gamers of Samurai Warriors 4, which it builds on and refines. The story’s give attention to the Nobunaga/Mitsuhide dyad has robust, trope-y Naruto/Sasuke vibes, however the result’s a wonderfully serviceable shounen manga-ish narrative.

There you go! Overview over. Thanks for coming to my TED discuss.

Picture: Koei Tecmo

None of that tells you something significant concerning the expertise of enjoying the sport, although. How can I correctly convey to those that, regardless of listening to myself go full-on Mermista_uuuugh.wav in frustration quite a few instances in my many, many hours with SW5, that I nonetheless totally loved it?

I’m keen responsible the style on this one. A Musou recreation subseries (comparable to Samurai Warriors, Dynasty Warriors, Warriors Orochi, and so forth) has lots in frequent with the Remaining Fantasy mainline video games; they’re gameplay iterations wrapped round a standard narrative core. Not like Remaining Fantasy, although, most Musou sequels are fairly much like those earlier than them. Particular subsystems could differ, however the core factor you do is just about the identical each time: you beat the hell out of a bunch of faceless mooks, with the occasional sprint of “duel a well-known officer” or “run throughout the rattling map like an individual on hearth to achieve an goal, which might be extra mook homicide.”

Thus, as you’d anticipate, there’s little or no that’s completely new in SW5. Its fight is basically constructed on the core of its speedy predecessor, with new components like Final Abilities being acquainted to gamers of licensed Musou video games like Dragon Quest Heroes or Persona 5 Strikers. A lot of the adjustments are aesthetic: The brand new artwork and visible type, re-designs of longtime characters, the narrowing of the sport’s focus to the rise and fall of Nobunaga Oda. In a style the place the narrative is basically excessive gloss, hyperkinetic set dressing, this may not be sufficient for gamers anticipating a completely new expertise.

But for me, the archetypal Musou repeat offender, there was one thing fascinating concerning the adjustments the designers determined to make. A couple of of those shifts are excessive; in earlier SW video games, Yoshimoto Imagawa is introduced as a powder-faced, squeaky-voiced weirdo obsessive about an antiquated Japanese soccer analogue, a joke equal to DW’s prissy Yuan Shao. In SW5, he’s a towering brute of a person, a extreme and boastful hegemon who nonetheless is the primary stepping stone on Nobunaga’s path to greatness. Nobunaga’s spouse Nō-hime offers up her sultry, murderous vamp persona in earlier SWs to turn into a laconic spouse pressured right into a loveless marriage who ultimately comes to like her husband. Not all of those adjustments land — Ieyasu Tokugawa’s transformation from hefty older statesman to tiny bishounen twink is baffling — however for longtime collection followers, they and the handful of latest characters create sufficient friction with earlier variations to generate curiosity.

Picture: Koei Tecmo by way of Polygon

A dutiful consumer-journalist would level out among the recreation’s extra obvious flaws: a vertigo-inducing lock-on digital camera that has forgotten what “collision” is, for instance. The shortage of an English voice monitor in a recreation that defines “visible litter” however expects you to learn prolonged on-screen narrative textual content on a routine foundation. The discount of the earlier recreation’s 45-plus particular person movesets into 15 shared weapons, a chestnut that already has some longtime Musou of us up in arms.

However then I take into consideration the uncooked textual content file open on my desktop as I write this, crammed with notes on the intricacies of the totally different weapons and the way they work. It reads like a conspiracy cork board in quite a lot of methods. An instance: “talisman c3 shikigami — little one? priest? what sort of origami seems vaguely person-ish however would shoot fireballs?” The morning I wrote this, I spent half an hour puzzling out how the altering of ammunition works for the Cannon, and felt the heady pleasure of understanding after I discovered the distinction between buckshot, bullet mines, and explosive shells, a distinction the sport barely explains.

So I’m left right here with a story of a recreation that could possibly be deeply irritating and is sort of actually a future repetitive movement damage ready to occur, but additionally one which, regardless of all that, captured my consideration and pulled me into approach, approach, approach extra hours of gameplay than the quantity required to put in writing this text (49 hours, as of this writing).

As I sat down to put in writing, I stored asking myself: how can I correctly reply the hypothetical reader who asks the dreaded query: “Will I take pleasure in this?” If I come at it solely as a client evaluate, what you get is a really staid and lifeless consequence that claims nothing concerning the precise expertise of what enjoying SW5 was like for me. “The graphics on stage 3 appear appropriately tightened, 5 out of 5” does nothing to drive residence the significance of that hour of experimenting with a weapon’s vaguely defined properties, not as a result of I wanted that mechanical data to win, however as a result of understanding it felt cool.

Picture: Koei Tecmo by way of Polygon

But on the similar time, a few of that nuts and bolts stuff I discussed earlier is absolutely mandatory so that you can know. That moveset factor, the dearth of English appearing … these will probably be make-or-break info for long-time Musou gamers. And all of that is earlier than any form of pushback I’d be making concerning the style’s infamous (and never completely undeserved) popularity for senseless button-mashing. Yeah, the sport was compelling to me, however I’ve additionally sunk twenty years of my life into Musou video games. Would somebody with out that context get any helpful info out of me describing my gleeful cackling when Mitsuki high-fives a shadow clone of herself on the finish of considered one of her assaults? In all probability not.

Thus … I don’t know methods to discuss to individuals about Musou video games anymore. So right here, you get a bit little bit of each: a contact of the dry system overview and a touch of stuff that made me go “… dude!” aloud whereas enjoying.

Ultimately, probably the most I can say is that this: Yeah, over per week and alter, I spent a variety of time in Warring States-era Japan making a collection of emphatic Mermista “UUUUUUGH”s, however perhaps that occurred as a result of when one thing exhibits occasional touches of craft and brilliance, your need to sand off the final of its tough edges is all of the stronger.

Samurai Warriors 5 will probably be launched July 27 on Nintendo Swap, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Home windows PC. The sport was reviewed on PlayStation 4 utilizing a pre-release obtain code supplied by Koei Tecmo. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. Yow will discover further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.