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amazon Samurai Warriors 5 reviews
Samurai Warriors 5 – War seems to be an inevitable factor in development history spanning tens of thousands of years of human civilization. Only conflicts around food and energy are needed, or later ideological can lead to war.
Although many big and small wars have happened but are mentioned and used the most in culture and entertainment for some reason, the two themes of the Three Kingdoms and the Warring States (Sengoku) always appear with the most frequency.
So much so that there is a game company that initiates, maintains, develops, and thrives solely on that theme – and that is Koei Tecmo.
The name Dynasty Warriors must be no stranger to action game believers near and far, with the pure gameplay of chopping and slashing “1 vs. 1000” with the theme of Three Kingdoms familiar.
Another version with the theme of the Japanese Warring States (Sengoku), with the name Samural Warriors, is equally popular.
In particular, in addition to the original product line with gameplay quite close to Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors also has a Chronicles side storyline that is more tactical and personnel mobilization.
Just released at the end of July 2021, the latest version called Samurai Warriors 5 has landed on many platforms such as PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch. Reaping a lot of praise thanks to many significant changes coming to The level is almost “rebooting” an entire line of legendary games.
So, compared to the previous “predecessors,” what has Samurai Warriors 5 done to be more groundbreaking and innovative?
Keeping the essence of the “Musou” series of games in general and Samurai Warriors in particular, Samurai Warriors 5 revolves around putting players into the role of famous generals of the Sengoku period (Warring States) in Japan. Right and right conflict between thousands of enemy troops, destroy enemy generals, complete tasks.
The action in the game revolves around two buttons: Regular Attack and Power Attack; players can perform countless combos by “spamming” with normal attacks and endings with a powerful attack – which can be extended or “gained,” depending on the character.
In addition, players can also “combo” and move extremely fast thanks to the Hyper Attack mechanism (appearing from Samurai Warriors 4), as well as “rage” to finish “difficult” enemy generals with powerful enemies. Rage Mode and Musou Attack mechanics.
These are the essences that make up the core values of the Samurai Warriors series so far.
With the goal of “rebooting” an entire series of games in the long run, so of course, Samurai Warriors 5 will need a new element to support that.
This element is called “Ultimate Attack,” which includes many skills ranging from moving “status buffs” to performing extremely powerful moves.
Each character can carry up to 4 Ultimate Attacks, and most of them are related to the weapon they are using.
About weapons, this mechanism has appeared since Dynasty Warriors 8. In addition to their “main” weapons, characters can optionally change to other weapons that the game provides. Of course, when doing so, the skill set, proficiency level, and Ultimate Attack will also change.
That is an interesting feature, but only at the level of expanding the experience, not core or mandatory.
Thanks to the skillful harmony of old combat mechanics, which are already quite good, with new “spices,” the battles in Samurai Warriors 5 are now much more agile and decisive. After doing a combo that ended with a Power Attack in the past. The player had to jump or find a way to connect the combo. Now, when mixing normal combos with Hyper Attack and Ultimate Attack, players can create a series of seemingly endless moves, allowing them to sweep the battlefield seamlessly, smoothly without interruption.
By offering a variety of missions (including hidden missions) in the level, from defeating designated enemy generals, protecting our side’s generals, killing several troops, etc., to using Musou to finish them off, Samurai Warriors 5 players have a lot to care about in the process of depicting conflict, not simply blindly “slashing and killing.”
When the writer mentions the word “reboot” many times, the most heavily invested in the “remake” segment is the graphic background of Samurai Warriors 5.
Having a 3D drawing style similar to other Musou brothers, the Samurai Warriors series has always been “stuck” to the inherent weakness that Dynasty Warriors or Warrior Orochi has: “greed,” increasing the number of characters so much after each version. The idea is to come up with very “bad” (or too “Western” or wacky) shapes, as well as a very erratic skill balance.
Aware of that, Koei Tecmo and Omega Force dared to risk doing something they had tried with Dynasty Warriors 8: completely changed the characters’ design, appearance, and gameplay.
That is a very difficult and challenging job when the characters’ appearance has almost followed most “hard fans” of the Musou series for decades.
However, with Samurai Warriors 5, it seems that they have succeeded, when in addition to “changing the shirt” for the character, Samurai Warriors 5 also changed the graphics platform.
With a game with the theme of the Japanese Warring States, there is nothing like the unique black ink-drawn graphic style, which has achieved great success in other games like Street Fighter V or Samurai Shodown (also just recently “rebooted”).
Accompanying this new drawing style, the characters’ characterization is also thoroughly “Japaneseized,” with various variations of beautiful samurai/shogun armors but still closely related to the culture and history of Japan.
where can you get a Samurai Warriors 5 online
SAMURAI WARRIORS 5 – PlayStation 4: Buy it now
Samurai Warriors 5 (Nintendo Switch): Buy it now
Samurai Warriors 5 Standard – Switch [Digital Code]: Buy it now
We no longer see “Dark Knight” Nobunaga Oda wielding the dark planet or Mitsuhide Akechi’s “bad daughter” named… Gracia with its European gothic look – but now the Warring States styles are real, making the battles more exciting and dramatic.
A special feature is that when performing True Musou moves (using Musou while in Rage Mode), each character will have a “photo pause” with a cool pose shown with 2D drawing style ink splash, strong impression!
The quality of the 3D models is also significantly improved when the characters’ expressions in the cutscenes or dialogue are shown very well, helping players feel the character’s personality and mood in the movie those scenes.
One of the things that makes the writer feel uncomfortable with Samurai Warriors 5 the most is perhaps the game has too few characters to control.
If the number of characters in previous versions was up to 50 – 60, now that number is only… 22, a sad step backward.
I still know that when you have to “reboot” a game series because it’s too much, too diluted – and immediately step on the same path again is completely unwise, but the way Koei Tecmo did it frustrating the player.
First of all, the number of characters is already small, but familiar characters are also mercilessly mutilated. The names that have been associated with the Samurai Warriors series since day one, like Ishida Mitsunari, Sanada Yukimura, or Naoe Kanetsugu, were completely omitted in Samurai Warriors 5 to “make room” for a new cast of less attractive characters like Yasuke or Kazuuji Nakamura.
Not to mention the fact that many characters are “defeat generals” in the main Musou game like Dosan Saito or Nobuyuki Oda with very boring, very unattractive looks, accompanied by a “copy” skill set (due to using the same weapon with other characters).
That is a “collective” action when seeking to thoroughly reuse the resources available in the game instead of spending effort to refresh.
Next is using a “multi-weapon” system that the characters can change at will. It is to create a variation for players to experience the character in many styles – in other words, it is an act of excuse for the laziness of the game development team.
If in the past with 50 characters, players would have 50 weapons with completely different fighting styles – temporarily ignoring that too many are difficult to keep them balanced or unique. Still, at least that is the heart and the effort of the game-making team.
With only 15 weapons, it’s very normal for one character to use another character’s weapon and have a set of “90% similar” moves. Even more ridiculous is that each character only has one Musou attack, which means that when Nobunaga Oda hits Musou with a bow, he will shoot out a series of arrows, then finish off with a sword”.
Usually, when looking at games like Samurai Warriors 5, it is clear that players want to re-experience the atmosphere of the Sengoku period through famous campaigns and have a multi-dimensional view from many different armies and leaders.
Samurai Warriors 5 seems more like “Memories of Nobunaga Oda and the rest,” as most of the main storyline of the Musou game revolves around the life of the 6th Heaven Demon King Nobunaga Oda from the beginning of the uprising to the mysterious disappearance at Honnoji Temple.
Although the parallel story by Mitsuhide Akechi; The friend, close follower, and the one who killed Nobunaga Oda, also has a considerable length. It has too many scenes that overlap with Nobunaga’s line, causing the player to have to replay many scenes, just from a different perspective.
Although this is somewhat coherent and provides an objective, closer look at the key characters’ psychological development, it makes the plot too linear, too sentimental, and makes the story difficult. Most of the other characters appear to be overshadowed when revolving around the main “satellite” Nobunaga Oda.
Next, it’s Samurai Warriors 5 with the addition of a “partner” feature – roughly, an additional character that can change the control role to serve the two-player section and “slightly” increase the game’s tactics a little bit.
However, this is a superficial and weak move – because it is better to control all four characters like the Samurai Warriors Chronicles series, with a simple “select and point” operation on the large map. Besides, the supporting character has a very confusing way of giving orders and the “dumb” AI, making it troublesome to order it to move to serve strategic intrigues, “it’s better to do it yourself.”
Not stopping there, the original Citadel Mode side game proved to be quite interesting when giving players the ability to “earn” money, EXP, and other resources to upgrade the stronghold. But in reality, it’s just a feature that’s intentionally redundant to increase gameplay (creates a system of resource upgrades, then creates a place to “farm” resources – and then turns it into a “game mode”).
Combined with the single-line Musou plot, this work makes the player see the “lazy” level of the developer Samurai Warriors 5.
After all, with the introduction of the Ultimate Attack system, the game interface becomes much more confusing with icons, prompts, and indicator bars.
At the same time, the mission signs and the dialogues have too small fonts with a very thick frequency of occurrence, so that players can almost only focus on reading the task so as not to miss it, but ignore any other notices.