A brawler worth playing if you like brawling...
If this doesn't sound like fun to you then you're looking at the wrong game. This game involve little to no strategy whatsoever. Just slash, destroy, and try to complete missions as they appear onscreen.
The major fun of the game comes from leveling up your character to be the strongest he or she can, and then fighting side by side with a friend to simply decimate your enemies in an all out battle. Usually a reason is given for the battles you are going to enter, but they rarely seem to have any direct effect on the character you're using, and so are usually skipped.
Another small point I liked was that you can choose to bring up to four bodygaurds into battle with you, and they can level up as well. Eventually their power, life, and ferocity will go up to a point that they could easily hand some of the missions on their own. Koei might want to implement some kind of command function in the next game so that you can send your gaurd out on missions, and watch your personal gaurd open up the battlefield.
The truth is I haven't played every mode in the game, but I found story mode to be the most rewarding with a two player game... There is a mode for creating a characters, but the character models looked very weak and unappealing to me, so I spent little time there. Theres also another mode for fighting any battle from any story with any character, but without leveling them up in story mode and collecting weapons, and upgrades I decided to leave it for later.
The bottom line about this game is that if you like Samurai, and fighting masses of enemies you will love putting your time into this game. Just be warned that if you play too much you'll get bored with it really quick and won't enjoy it as much.