Samurai Warriors 4-II is an expanded version of the original Samurai Warriors 4 to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the Samurai Warriors franchise. If you have played other games in the series, you will know this is an action hack and slash game with RPG elements.

In the last game, there was a strong focus on Nobunaga Oda’s story, but this time around there are some chapters that charter a specific character’s career. On top of this, there’s a new character included: Naomasa Li, who is not only a new playable character but who also gets a full story chapter focused on her.

As with the previous games you will be given a set of objectives that you have to clear and in return you are rewarded with gold and tomes that you can learn skills from, and sometimes you will also obtain new weapons. It is basically a new take on Samurai Warriors 4 with a reworked campaign that focuses more on all the characters available while remaining true to the history and the setting for the Sengoku era of Feudal Japan.

 

Samurai Warriors 4-II has some humor, drama and romance thrown in for added fun, and the camera controls have been reworked – it feels so much better when riding horses! Other obvious changes are the weapon upgrading system. Before you could only upgrade weapons with certain gems but now you can upgrade any weapon by fusing them with other weapons of the same type. You can also do the same thing with your mounts to level them up.

The control scheme and mechanics have not changed, and there is offline and online co-op for all game modes, as well as some new songs that have been added, as is the case for Naomasa’s theme song.

Another change is that the Challenges Mode is gone after being replaced with Endless Castle mode. This presents you with a castle that is 100 floors high and, as you can imagine, the further you go the harder things get… but in return for defeating the onslaught of enemies you will earn some great loot because the rarest loot is available in Endless Castle Mode, which makes your time spent there a very rewarding experience.

I had a lot of fun with Samurai Warriors 4-II. Playing the individual character stories gave me extra insight into their lives during the era, and between this game and Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence, I certainly have learned a great deal about Feudal Japan and the Samurai hierarchies since the dissolution of the last Japanese Empire! This is weird because I have learned more about history in games than i have in school. It goes to show that games can be quite educational too!

[review
pros=”New individual character-focused stories.
Better camera controls.
The upgrade system is better.
New endless mode, which is fantastic fun.” cons=”No improvement on graphics.” score=85]

Disclaimer

This review is based on a PS3 copy of Samurai Warriors 4-II provided by Koei Tecmo America