TGS 06: Samurai Warriors 2: Empires Hands-On

TOKYO--Samurai Warriors 2 Empire is basically the same game as Samurai Warriors 2, but with the addition of a turn-based tactical battle map. The result, based on our time with a demo of the Japanese version on the floor at TGS, could work quite well if you enjoy the kind of endless hacking action that the Warriors series dishes out, as it seems to give the overall game a solid tactical consideration.

Because the game's text was all in Japanese, it wasn't possible to work out just how the battle map works, but what is clear is that there's plenty of territory to fight for. The map of Japan is split into a good number of territories, maybe as many as 30, each governed by a samurai. Throughout the course of the game, it's your objective to take over those territories, and you do that by entering into battle with your hero character in the normal 3D action way.

Fighting in the game is easy to get into, but Warriors veterans will know that this has usually been the case. For people new to the franchise, the fights pit your army against the opposition, and you play as the samurai leading the charge. Generally speaking, you'll be expected to vanquish hundreds of foes pretty much single-handedly, for although your own soldiers do fight, the fate of the battle rests very much on your shoulders. Lucky, then, that for the most part the opposition isn't anywhere near a match for your fighting prowess.

All of the fighting is done by pressing a single button, whilst other moves include jumping, rolling, blocking, and using magical powers. The aim in each battle is to kill the enemy general, and while there are usually a number of other optional objectives on each map, with skill upgrades as rewards, there's no compulsion to try to complete them.

Every so often you'll come up against an officer or mage of some kind who's a good deal more powerful than the rest of the enemy drones--for that's how they behave on the whole--and then you've got a more fulfilling challenge. As long as you don't get caught out by overwhelming numbers, you should be able to take on most of what comes your way with relative ease, in the early stages at least. We're not sure at this point if or how the difficulty level might change through the course of an entire campaign.

The point about Empires is that, while the basic hack-and-slash action of Samurai Warriors 2 was fine, there was a distinct lack of reason to keep playing after a while. With the addition of the strategy element, and your challenge to take over Japan, that may changed. The visuals for this game were identical to those for the previous title as far as we could tell, and hopefully--although the sound on the Japanese version seemed authentic enough--a more professional job than last time can be done on the speech for other localised versions once it's all been translated, We'll keep an eye on Empire's progress and bring you more details as we get them.