	Samurai Warriors 2
	Developer: Omega Force Publisher: Koei Release Date: Out Now Players: 1-2	Words By:
I think there's probably only one scenario under which an informed person would buy Samurai Warriors 2. It's one where they like action games that require no skill, but have already played any of the Dynasty Warriors games to death and still want more. If you don't fit that profile then there's no need to read on, just go find something (ANYTHING) else to play instead. Bye. If you're still reading this then you're either not really paying attention, you're stalking me, or you're one of the dozen people in the world that really need to play more Dynasty Warriors/Ninety Nine Nights/Samurai Warriors type games. I'm not sure what to say to you, but I'm still typing to stop my brain seizing up from the mind numbing boredom that Samurai Warriors 2 has induced. Like the Dynasty Warriors games, Samurai Warriors 2 lets you fight in large scale battles as a single, legendary warrior. During a single battle you will be able to kill upwards of 500 men, with the aim being to take your enemy's base or kill their commander without the same befalling your side. What's the difference between this and Dynasty Warriors? Dynasty Warriors is set in China, Samurai Warriors is set in Japan, and that's about it. In combat there are only really two moves – a normal strike and a charged strike. You can chain strikes together, with the ability to make longer combos coming as your character gains experience. As they improve they will also gain new weapons from their battles, as well as improved abilities in general. The main bulk of the game is in the story mode, where each character has their own story, spread across several battles, shown with a bit of CGI movie, and some text between battles. Initially only a few characters are available, but you earn more by completing other characters’ stories. First of all, the good stuff: The CGI movies. They're very nicely done, although the dramatisation is all a bit cheesy and nothing you're really going to get worked up about. Still, the CGI is good. And the music's alright. Which leaves everything else as the bad stuff. The combat is repetitive and exceedingly dull – pretty much all you can do is continually tap the normal strike button, occasionally throwing in a charged strike. You might want to block occasionally too, but that's only needed for the battles against enemy commanders which transcend the dullness by being exceeding frustrating instead. Worse still are the graphics – Xbox 1.0 at best. The scenery is... well there's not a lot of scenery at all, but where it exists it's flat and dull. The character models are slightly better, but they don't have a huge range of detail or movement, and make the fighting look quite crappy. That's of course, when you can see the fighting, as your character is positioned very close to the screen and doesn't follow your character's direction, and so when you have to try and fight someone behind you, you have no idea where the person is that you're trying to fight. Online play is an afterthought – the only play style is a versus mode where each player is on a separate battlefield and simply has to complete their objectives first – there's no interaction whatsoever between players. Frankly, while I've forgiven problems such as the simple combat and the camera issues in the past, they've been there since Dynasty Warriors 2 five years ago, and after a number of game releases well into double digits, I'd expect them to be sorted by now. If you really want to go and kill hundreds of people in a battle then the recent Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires is a little better, but really you'd be better off swapping Chinese/Japanese warriors for zombies and getting Dead Rising instead.

Best Bits
- CGI is nice

Worst Bits
- Graphics are very plain
- Combat is very, very simple, or very frustrating
- The camera is poor


by: Jocky