If you have ever listened to our podcast, you know that I have been a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series, so when I saw that Samurai Warriors 2 was about to drop and spread the DW love, I thought I was set.
As it turns out, I was wrong.
A better way to put it would be to say I was robbed. Robbed of a fun experience, robbed of a better version of the game, robbed of any joy that could be had exploring a solid hack n' slash type game.
I guess I should explain a bit about why I loved the series in the first place. I liked the RPG elements of Dynasty Warriors games. I can level up my character as I go on fighting, but don't have to take time out from handing down an ass whoopin' to do so. Games like that will always get my money. But the game also presented me with an awesome roster of playable characters, each with their own spin on the central plot of the game. [Which is a Romance of the Three Kingdoms dealie] And while they carry this over into the Samurai Warriors 2 game, it's pretty obvious that they didn't put much effort [if any at all] into this port. For instance, all of the characters have these one-liners they spout off every time they kill an enemy officer. On the surface this doesn't sound bad, but the officers only have the single one-liner, and there are some missions that your only goal is to take out ever enemy officer which means hearing the same one-liner up to ten times in a twenty minute period. It gets old, then it gets annoying, then I turn the voice sound down to zero in hopes of making the game better. Gone is the option to have Japanese as the spoken language with English subtitles, it's all English now kids... and bad English at that. Listening to this audio hurts my soul.
One would think that innovation was on the minds of the developers [Omega Force] when deciding to expand on the DW brand. And from the looks of the game, all they were able to come up with was a new "Monopoly" type game mode called Suguroku. How like "Monopoly" is it? Well you have to go around the board buying up the pieces of land that you land on. When other players land on your property, they have to pay you money, or they can wager the amount of the property to try and duel you for it. Make a lap around the board and back to your "home" square with the predetermined amount of money, and you win! YAY! Well, not really. Suguroku> is slow. Because it's slow it's also a tad bit boring. Add to this already "awesome" mix the aforementioned one-liners, and the fact that no matter how you've leveled up your character in story mode in Suguroku all players are level 1, and you've got the recipe for a mode of the game you should steer away from. [You can thank me for this advice later.] No versus mode folks. So you can't do a player 1 vs. player 2 dueling, though the two player co-op from previous DW titles is back as is the survival mode, but they don't add much. As for the online "capabilities" they too, suck out loud. You don't get to take your suped up character and play the suped up character of someone else online, no, you get to have some split screen "who can kill the most enemies" type action. Why be able to build a bad ass samurai if you can't really test him against the warrior of another. Slashing down mindless drones online just ain't fun Omega Force, you should know that.
You may be wondering if Samurai Warriors 2 has any redeeming qualities, and they answer, surprisingly is yes. All money that you find or earn in the game to buy various ability, battle, mount, or weapon upgrades carry over from character to character. Think of it all going into a community account, anyone can draft from it, so if you particularly suck with one character, grab one of your better ones and go traipsing through the free mode to bank some dough. Then come back and supe up your sucky character and give story mode a go again. I only say this is a good thing if you are playing the game on the XB360. You get 50pts for your gamer score per character you unlock, so you have the potential to add 2000 points overall to your gamerscore, which doesn't suck. [Especially if you are like me and don't have a whole lot of time to play games these days.] There isn't one level yet that I've played that takes more than twenty minutes to get through, and that's just because I forced myself to secure all reserve gates. If you make a bee line for the boss enemy you can probably knock out most levels in 10 minutes, so it can be a short-ish investment in your gamerscore. In the time that I've had to actually play I brought my score up to 520... I told you haven't gotten to play much.
All things being equal, I give this game 1 and 1/2 candies. One blue one because it's sad. Not a sad story, but sad that this game wound up being the lame thing it is now and half a green one because you can get your gamerscore up pretty easily with this game, you greedy bastid. :)
Do yourself a favor, and only rent this game if your XB gamerscore needs a boost, otherwise you'll hate yourself in the morning.
As it turns out, I was wrong.
A better way to put it would be to say I was robbed. Robbed of a fun experience, robbed of a better version of the game, robbed of any joy that could be had exploring a solid hack n' slash type game.I guess I should explain a bit about why I loved the series in the first place. I liked the RPG elements of Dynasty Warriors games. I can level up my character as I go on fighting, but don't have to take time out from handing down an ass whoopin' to do so. Games like that will always get my money. But the game also presented me with an awesome roster of playable characters, each with their own spin on the central plot of the game. [Which is a Romance of the Three Kingdoms dealie] And while they carry this over into the Samurai Warriors 2 game, it's pretty obvious that they didn't put much effort [if any at all] into this port. For instance, all of the characters have these one-liners they spout off every time they kill an enemy officer. On the surface this doesn't sound bad, but the officers only have the single one-liner, and there are some missions that your only goal is to take out ever enemy officer which means hearing the same one-liner up to ten times in a twenty minute period. It gets old, then it gets annoying, then I turn the voice sound down to zero in hopes of making the game better. Gone is the option to have Japanese as the spoken language with English subtitles, it's all English now kids... and bad English at that. Listening to this audio hurts my soul.One would think that innovation was on the minds of the developers [Omega Force] when deciding to expand on the DW brand. And from the looks of the game, all they were able to come up with was a new "Monopoly" type game mode called Suguroku. How like "Monopoly" is it? Well you have to go around the board buying up the pieces of land that you land on. When other players land on your property, they have to pay you money, or they can wager the amount of the property to try and duel you for it. Make a lap around the board and back to your "home" square with the predetermined amount of money, and you win! YAY! Well, not really. Suguroku> is slow. Because it's slow it's also a tad bit boring. Add to this already "awesome" mix the aforementioned one-liners, and the fact that no matter how you've leveled up your character in story mode in Suguroku all players are level 1, and you've got the recipe for a mode of the game you should steer away from. [You can thank me for this advice later.] No versus mode folks. So you can't do a player 1 vs. player 2 dueling, though the two player co-op from previous DW titles is back as is the survival mode, but they don't add much. As for the online "capabilities" they too, suck out loud. You don't get to take your suped up character and play the suped up character of someone else online, no, you get to have some split screen "who can kill the most enemies" type action. Why be able to build a bad ass samurai if you can't really test him against the warrior of another. Slashing down mindless drones online just ain't fun Omega Force, you should know that.
You may be wondering if Samurai Warriors 2 has any redeeming qualities, and they answer, surprisingly is yes. All money that you find or earn in the game to buy various ability, battle, mount, or weapon upgrades carry over from character to character. Think of it all going into a community account, anyone can draft from it, so if you particularly suck with one character, grab one of your better ones and go traipsing through the free mode to bank some dough. Then come back and supe up your sucky character and give story mode a go again. I only say this is a good thing if you are playing the game on the XB360. You get 50pts for your gamer score per character you unlock, so you have the potential to add 2000 points overall to your gamerscore, which doesn't suck. [Especially if you are like me and don't have a whole lot of time to play games these days.] There isn't one level yet that I've played that takes more than twenty minutes to get through, and that's just because I forced myself to secure all reserve gates. If you make a bee line for the boss enemy you can probably knock out most levels in 10 minutes, so it can be a short-ish investment in your gamerscore. In the time that I've had to actually play I brought my score up to 520... I told you haven't gotten to play much.
Do yourself a favor, and only rent this game if your XB gamerscore needs a boost, otherwise you'll hate yourself in the morning.
Labels: Games, Ninjasistah, Podcast, Upgrade
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