Key to the characters' growth in the game is gaining experience, yes, but there's also something new to be found here: skills. Gleaned both by killing off the game's main enemies (or finishing a mission that involves killing them) and buying them in stores, skills range from boosting experience, speed, attack and so on when leveling up, to improving your guards' skills or your horse's health to base stats like healing items being more valuable or combos being more powerful. There's a ton of them, and plenty of slots to fill for each character, allowing a slight RPG element to things that wasn't available previously.

This is of course what you'll be dealing with in Story Mode, but there's more to the game than just that. A two-player split-screen option lets you play co-op or vs. battles, Free Mode lets you basically pick a map and jump into hacking and slashing, and Survival Mode puts you in a castle with endless floors and missions that let you level up characters for use in other modes with gold and experience. Though from what little we played of them, this seems like just a more one-off version of the stuff found in the story modes, it satisfies the more visceral nature of the game. For stat freaks, the always-helpful Vault gives you peeks at horse, guard and character stats, unlocked movies, move lists and weapons.

The real addition to the modes, though is the Sugoroku party game allowing up to four players to jump in and play something resembling a board game. If you're flying solo, the game will sub in three other AI players, and who you pick is actually randomized from the pool of selected characters. From here, everyone heads onto the main board, and the objective is simple: collect a set amount of cash before anyone else. You do this in a sort of variant on Monopoly, buying bits of land in an attempt to charge others rent if they happen to land on the square, which is determined by a roll of a single die. Owning adjacent squares gets you a bonus -- and charges more rent for any players that happen to land on a square.

Ohoo, but wait, there's more. See, just landing on a space means you have to cough up cash, but you can actually buy the space for yourself if you're willing to challenge the owner to a quick random mini-game. These games are actually quite fun, requiring that you run down a hallway slashing through a series of paper doors (that either explode, fall with a single slash or take multiple hits), a KO challenge that tasks you with offing more enemies than the other guy, and so on. Before the match starts, you'll spin for a random boost or handicap like decreased speed or boosted attack.

Once you've chosen a route around the map, you can't go backwards, meaning you'll have to complete the various loops before returning to another branching path. You'll want to scoot around all the various paths, though, because three flags are scattered around any of the different sized maps. Collect them all and return home and you'll level up. Though you're bound to the roll of the die, there are ways to swing things in your favor: you can land on a shrine (which nobody can buy) and gain another die to roll for a chance at a boost. It's random, of course, and you may actually get penalized, but the bonuses can help struggling players catch up quite fast.

Truth be told, it's actually quite addictive, and though it shares characters and overall setting of the main game, it's really a nice departure from just hacking up guys all the time, and certainly had a hand in this preview being a little late. This of course means we'll have to spend more time... "researching" the mode for future "previews." Yeah, that's it.

This of course means that despite what seems like a kajillion Warriors games, we're still interested in the formula. Sure, it's the same thing we've played what seems like a dozen times now, but there are little changes that are being made here. Whether or not they're good enough to warrant dropping cash on things when the game finally hits in a couple months remains to be seen, but one thing's for sure, Samurai Warriors 2 has enough of a hook right now to keep our usual cynicism for the series from boiling over, and it wouldn't be far off to say we're genuinely excited about a sequel to a Samurai Warriors. Yes, we're as shocked as you are.