Samurai Warriors: Xtreme Legends
Xtremely familiar, but that's not exactly a bad thing.
Published: November 20, 2004
I don't get it. There seriously has to be something wrong with me. I've been playing the same damned ___ Warriors game since the PS2 was released and I can't seem to get tired of it. Of course, it helps that with Xtreme Legends (and you have no idea how much it pains me to type that first word like that), the overall vibe of the game gets a little bit of a face left, essentially dropping the Chinese motif and replacing it with Japanese culture, but it's really the same game.
That game, of course, is pure hack and slash on a grand scale. The series' hallmark -- hundreds of soldiers charging around a battlefield, providing a nigh-endless supply of fodder for your weapon -- arrives here completely intact, as does the library of historical information. After all, what good is learning about feudal Japanese history if you can't cut down hundreds of bad guys in the process?
I mean it here, though, this is the exact same game you've come to know and love, and may even be stripped down a bit to the basics if you recently picked up DW4: Empires. In fact, this is probably more of an expansion than anything else (though you'd never know if you weren't into the series), and as such feels a little on the skimpy side aside from the admittedly fun two-player options.
I'm not saying series' developer Omega Force hasn't been hard at work here. Quite the contrary; this is probably the most refined version of the familiar system, but it's going to be smaller things that only the hardcore players note. And really, if you're just getting into this, you should at least have picked up the aforementioned DW4 or the Empires expansion first, or at the very minimum, grabbed a copy of the full-fledged Samurai Warriors game, since you'll likely tap into the disc swapping goodness XL offers.
Anywho, about those upgrades. For starters, the stat cap has been lifted, allowing you to basically bulk up players to God-like status if you're obsessive enough. Characters can now go well beyond level 20, and wield even more powerful weapons, which means plenty of goodness for players looking for a fix for that obsessive, RPG-like desire to supe up characters to no end, even the four new ones that the series offers (complete with bits o' story, but it's nothing massive) for those looking for some single-player meat.
The multi-player tip is actually where I started feeding my need for something different. Vs. mode is more or less exactly as you'd expect at first with Duel Mode (take two characters, duke it out), but Sumo Mode (where you grab a beefy character and, well, try to push them out of the ring, and obviously the more portly fellas are going to be key here) and more importantly Gatekeeper Mode (where you take turns trying to repel swarms of enemies from streaming through a gate) are a blast. They don't last long in all but a booze-filled party betting situation (I'm assuming here; I've certainly never used reviews as an excuse to get lit. Noope, not me), but they're fun in a pinch.
Graphically, this is more or less what you've seen in any other game. For whatever reason (and it may just be my eyes), I seem to take in the sights of feudal Japan with softer eyes than I do China. There seems to be less flickering and shimmer, and the textures just seem, well, better. There's still the ghastly issue of the ground textures looking like stretched puke, and the fading in soldiers are annoying, but as I said in the DW4: Empires review, this is more or less what you're going to have to tolerate to dig the games.
The audio is also slightly changed. Solider cries are more or less the same, but the impacts from weapons have that familiar thwip-thwip effect that you get in Japanese movies. It's subtle, but I do prefer it. The music is more of a driving 4/4 beat on top of lilting whistly melodies; enough to differentiate it from the Dynasty games, but nothing drastically different.
For the hardcore fan that craves every possible expansion (and there have been plenty), here's the bottom line: you'd think after almost a half-dozen games, the Warriors franchise would get a little old, but the injection of Japanese flavor and history into an already familiar stew just makes it all the more irresistible. This is the very definition of the perfect pick-up-and-play game that only gets more fun the longer you play it, something the series has been able to do from the start. Do yourself a favor and pick it up pronto.
That game, of course, is pure hack and slash on a grand scale. The series' hallmark -- hundreds of soldiers charging around a battlefield, providing a nigh-endless supply of fodder for your weapon -- arrives here completely intact, as does the library of historical information. After all, what good is learning about feudal Japanese history if you can't cut down hundreds of bad guys in the process?
I mean it here, though, this is the exact same game you've come to know and love, and may even be stripped down a bit to the basics if you recently picked up DW4: Empires. In fact, this is probably more of an expansion than anything else (though you'd never know if you weren't into the series), and as such feels a little on the skimpy side aside from the admittedly fun two-player options.
I'm not saying series' developer Omega Force hasn't been hard at work here. Quite the contrary; this is probably the most refined version of the familiar system, but it's going to be smaller things that only the hardcore players note. And really, if you're just getting into this, you should at least have picked up the aforementioned DW4 or the Empires expansion first, or at the very minimum, grabbed a copy of the full-fledged Samurai Warriors game, since you'll likely tap into the disc swapping goodness XL offers.
Anywho, about those upgrades. For starters, the stat cap has been lifted, allowing you to basically bulk up players to God-like status if you're obsessive enough. Characters can now go well beyond level 20, and wield even more powerful weapons, which means plenty of goodness for players looking for a fix for that obsessive, RPG-like desire to supe up characters to no end, even the four new ones that the series offers (complete with bits o' story, but it's nothing massive) for those looking for some single-player meat.
The multi-player tip is actually where I started feeding my need for something different. Vs. mode is more or less exactly as you'd expect at first with Duel Mode (take two characters, duke it out), but Sumo Mode (where you grab a beefy character and, well, try to push them out of the ring, and obviously the more portly fellas are going to be key here) and more importantly Gatekeeper Mode (where you take turns trying to repel swarms of enemies from streaming through a gate) are a blast. They don't last long in all but a booze-filled party betting situation (I'm assuming here; I've certainly never used reviews as an excuse to get lit. Noope, not me), but they're fun in a pinch.
Graphically, this is more or less what you've seen in any other game. For whatever reason (and it may just be my eyes), I seem to take in the sights of feudal Japan with softer eyes than I do China. There seems to be less flickering and shimmer, and the textures just seem, well, better. There's still the ghastly issue of the ground textures looking like stretched puke, and the fading in soldiers are annoying, but as I said in the DW4: Empires review, this is more or less what you're going to have to tolerate to dig the games.
The audio is also slightly changed. Solider cries are more or less the same, but the impacts from weapons have that familiar thwip-thwip effect that you get in Japanese movies. It's subtle, but I do prefer it. The music is more of a driving 4/4 beat on top of lilting whistly melodies; enough to differentiate it from the Dynasty games, but nothing drastically different.
For the hardcore fan that craves every possible expansion (and there have been plenty), here's the bottom line: you'd think after almost a half-dozen games, the Warriors franchise would get a little old, but the injection of Japanese flavor and history into an already familiar stew just makes it all the more irresistible. This is the very definition of the perfect pick-up-and-play game that only gets more fun the longer you play it, something the series has been able to do from the start. Do yourself a favor and pick it up pronto.