Samurai Warriors 2
Same as it ever was... and yet we still love it.
Published: September 21, 2006
Free Mode is still a simple one-off level with objectives, Story Mode delivers that same forked main story that tells things from multiple perspectives, and Survival Mode puts you in a castle with a never-ending series of floors with missions that you can buy into for a small price (and the promise of plenty more cash if you make it to the proper floor). All of these modes share the same items, character progression (meaning you can level up in one and use that beefed up character in the others), and unique weapons, so there's a fair amount of stuff to do. Even still, there is an unmistakable feeling that everything is slapped together. It's not that it's rushed, just that things are fairly barebones, and it sort of ate away at me as I played (not that I could stop).
The one saving grace, and the part of the game that was the biggest breath of fresh air, was the Sugoroku Mode. I talked about it a little in our preview, and there's not a whole lot more to go over. Essentially a board game, some mini-games with basic randomization of boosts or handicaps before each starts, and a teeny bit of strategy that's almost Monopoly-like in how you purchase land, makes for a genuinely interesting break from all the button mashing. I invite you to take a look at the preview to get just a touch more info on the modes, since rehashing it here would just take up needless space.
Space we can use for ripping on the game! Wheee! Okay, I'm kidding, though again, it's not hard -- particularly in the graphics/sound departments. The Warriors games have never been a hardware showcase (at least not beyond the first time they showed how many enemies were on screen, though games since have dwarfed that), and it continues to be a bit of a visual stinker. The ground is still smeared with a mottled, low-res texture, and the environments are painfully sparse. What bits there are to interact with are recycled far too often.
And yet, the game runs smoothly enough. It has a solid framerate, a modest draw distance, and there are attempts to shake things up every once in a while. Plains-based battlefields and almost antiseptically bare castles are the norm, but occasionally you'll find streams or huge thickets and dense forest canopies to explore. They don't pop up often, and they all seem to share the same blah visuals of the other parts of the game, but I won't knock the attempt.
The audio, likewise, hasn't changed much. Things are a little more 4/4 beat-heavy, with thumping basslines and some light techno influences to go with the traditional Japanese instruments played at high tempo, but aside from maybe the odd electric guitar crunches, there's not much to listen to beyond the sound-alike screams of your felled enemies. The voice acting isn't horrid, but the dialogue coupled with the voices gives things a pretty clichéd anime feel; guys growl their lines, girls squeal them and everyone else sounds like a wuss.
See, there I go again. It's so easy to poke fun at the games. The fact that 20 hours into the game I was still experiencing the same stuff I played 20 minutes after I started means it's not terribly deep. But it's fun and I can't deny that. So then where does that leave someone trying to score the game? In the end, it comes down to gut feeling, and I've gotta give the nod to the fact that I lost so much time to something I should have stopped playing hours ago.
If the series can still manage to do that to someone who supposedly hates these games, who's to say it can't hook die-hards or casual gamers too?
