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TGS 06: Samurai Warriors 2: Empires Hands-On

By Phil Elliott, GameSpot UKPosted Sep 24, 2006 1:48 am PT

We get some time with the Japanese version of Koei's latest action strategy game.

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.

11 Comments

  • Samuraijmjh

    Posted Mar 9, 2007 11:52 am PT

    I've had a couple ideas for these games to make them more interesting. Here's one of the ideas that I had. If you guys want, you can be critics. First off there are the original options for modes, but also adding War Mode. There are two of these games, Dynasty Wars and Samm-
    urai Wars. Do not worry, don't just decide oh another Warriors Game,
    how old, or how stupid. This is unlike any other. Remember all them other Warriors games how all you did is beat and slash, well this is a whole new experience of life. There's also those Fable games, this is kind of like that. You make character (P.S. I'm talking about War Mode), and this has more options up to all equipment, skills, bodyguards, looks, family tree (P.S. You can make Tadakatsu your father), name, type of Class which can go to any class at all what-so-ever such as ninja, spearman, even classes that other legends have, and much more! Yes it will take a while but we are talking about making a whole new legend! Every thing you interfere, inter-go, or anything will put your history under your name will go right into the encyclopedia! For goodness sakes you can kill Nagamasa and marry Oichi (P.S. You really can) and it will go in! In this though there is no boundaries, you can go on top of Mt. Fuji! You can run right into the middle of a battle and just leave right then without it making it pitch dark and loading. There will be none of that the entire game. This game has no end. You go on forever until you die and you start from a kid. You can litterally do almost anything in this game. There's still more too cover, but im just gonna stop. So what do ya think?!

  • Enthasius

    Posted Feb 9, 2007 6:38 am PT

    Bah, this preview just shows how many critics don't even bother to look at what they're playing, they just see the "Warriors" name in the title, slap a 5/10 rating on it and probably play no more than 1 mission.

    Proof? The fact the previewer said all the fighting is based on one button. Oh, yes, let's ignore the others. There's the combo button, charge attack button, which have follow up moves depending on the character, musou button, which can be held or you can create your own musou attack (which is faster, stuns all regular troops around you and speeds your attacks up somewhat, also features a three tier gauge which have various effects depending on how many bars are filled when fired off), there's jump regular attacks and charge attack, and there's the special button, which enables each character to utilise a variety of effects ranging from improving ones damage or defense, enabling extra moves, to simply firing arrows from a bow, and each character has two of these specials.

    Yeah....TOTALLY one button to do the attacks.

    And that crap about no compuslion to complete secondary objectives? Clearly he didn't play the game on a higher difficulty. A few missions aren't wholly important, but some are downright vital. I mean, there are stages that once most of the army, including yourself, advance to a certain point, usually a choke point, the route back may become blocked by gate or rockfall and a large ambush will appear around your main camp, which if overrun will mean you've lost the mission, so you have to get back there and help. With Samurai Warriors 2: Empires no doubt adopting the orders system of DW5:E, at this point, you could actually send other generals back, or perhaps leave extra generals back there to simply make sure that the main camp remains safe.

    I still find it sickening how it's blatantly obvious 99% of reviewers don't pay any attention to the Warriors series' nowdays.

  • Flyingslothmen

    Posted Jan 11, 2007 11:06 am PT

    Sounds uninteresting because of the writer writing about it. Clearly, he is not a fan of the Warriors games. For some people, these kind of games never get old.

  • itchykobu

    Posted Jan 9, 2007 7:45 pm PT

    Koei should license something akin to the Prince of Persia: WW or Ninja Gaiden fighting systems. Those were tight, and supported combat against multiple foes.

  • DevilD2005

    Posted Oct 4, 2006 12:57 pm PT

    Koie needs to remake the warrior games but add something new other then hack and slash. What I hhate about samurai warriors is that you can charge head on and win the battle. In other games, if you charge in, you die quickly.

  • _Sam_

    Posted Sep 27, 2006 6:13 pm PT

    I hope they don't ruin it, I loved the first

  • Dinghy_Dog

    Posted Sep 26, 2006 10:49 am PT

    another stupid game. there's been a 80% increase in crap games this year. do people actually waste their money on this?

  • doggymon

    Posted Sep 25, 2006 12:07 pm PT

    ... when will they stop making the same games over and over and over again????

  • jakeboudville

    Posted Sep 24, 2006 10:06 pm PT

    looks cool

  • comthitnuong

    Posted Sep 24, 2006 7:21 am PT

    sounds unintereseting

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