Samurai Warriors

You must add a |reason= parameter to this Cleanup template – replace it with {{Cleanup|December 2006|reason=<Fill reason here>}}, or remove the Cleanup template.

File:Samurai Warriors.PNG

Samurai Warriors (Sengoku Musou) American game cover.

Samurai Warriors ( 戦国無双:Sengoku Musou in Japan ) is a series of video games created by Koei's Omega Force team based loosely around the Sengoku ("Warring States") period of Japanese history and is a spinoff of the Dynasty Warriors series. A port of this game called Samurai Warriors: State of War has been released for the PlayStation Portable, which includes additional multiplayer features.

Gameplay

Fighting

The basic gameplay of Samurai Warriors is similar to the hack and slash style of Dynasty Warriors in which the player takes the role of a single officer in battle and must fend off hordes of enemy soldiers and defeat the enemy commander. The player has at their disposal a range of combo attacks and crowd-clearing special moves known as Musou attacks. The variety of attacks available increase as the character increases in level and gains new weapons.

Musou attacks can only be performed when the characters musou gauge has filled up, which does so gradually when the player inflicts or receives damage. Additionally, if the player is low on health they can use their special True Musou attack which causes elemental damage in addition to normal damage.

One difference between Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors is the ability to perform free-style combo attacks during Musou attack mode, during which the game enters bullet-time; common soldiers move very slowly, however generals are unaffected.

Other abilities that Samurai characters have over the Dynasty series include the ability to perform a combat roll to dodge attacks and to deflect incoming arrows with their weapon.

Stages and Missions

Similar to Dynasty Warriors 3 and 5 each character in Samurai Warriors has their own unique Story mode, five stages long. There is, however, a point in each character's story where, depending on the actions of the player, the path of the story splits and different stages become available. This means that each character in fact has between five and eight different stages.

In Samurai Warriors there are three types of stages: The first two are Field and Castle. Field battles take place outside, pitting one army against another (or in a few rare cases, two other armies), and the player must lead their forces to victory through the completion of missions and defeating the enemy commander. Castle battles place the player alone inside an enemy castle without any bodyguards or other allies. They must fight through the enemy troops until they get to the top or bottom of the castle and defeat the enemy commander in a duel. The third type, Siege, is a combination of the other two types of stages. A Field type battle takes place, with some characters(depending on where in your character's storyline you are), being defeated in battle instead of being killed. Once the character has finished the Field part of the Siege, the game asks if you would like to save your progress. Also after finishing the Field part, if your character gets killed inside the castle during the Castle part of the Siege, you may still continue when you return to the "Fight" menu screen.

Character Growth

The other significant change is the way in which characters grow stronger. There is a new ranking system after battles which depends on five categories:

The speed in which you clear the battle
The amount of Experience earned from pickups in battles
The missions you successfully completed in battle
The amount of enemies you defeated while using a Musou attack.
The amount of enemies you kill.

Each of these categories is given a letter rank (from lowest to highest: D, C, B, A, S) depending on your performance and then you are given an overall rank. The higher you rank and the harder the difficulty setting of the game, the more your character's attributes will increase after the battle. In addition to the growth of your stats you are also awarded Skill Points, likewise getting more the better your rank. With these Skill Points you can buy skills that enhance the abilities of your characters. Such skills include the ability to increase your health and Musou meters, strengthening your attacks with elemental attributes and increased guarding and evasion techniques.

In Samurai Warriors, there is a limit to the strength your characters can obtain through battle. Once your character has reached level 20 it is impossible to gain any more Skill points and the character attributes are locked; however, there is a way to maximize the growth of the characters via the Character Reset function. With this function you can completely reset the rank, attributes and skills of a character, but keep any weapons you have found with them. By playing the game on the harder difficulties, made easier with better weapons, you can gain higher attributes and more skill points from battle.

One of the two most significant changes over Dynasty Warriors is the introduction of the mission system in battles. Each stage has a number of different missions which become available depending on which character the player is currently controlling and the success or failure of previous missions. Such tasks include eliminating specific enemy officers, launching sneak attacks on enemy bases or thwarting the strategic plans of the enemy. Success in these missions can be crucial to the outcomes of many battles as failure often results in a massive loss of morale to your own forces.

Items and Weapons

Each character can equip up to five items before each battle, which will affect their attributes or give them additional abilities. Like in the Dynasty games, players can find items which affect their attributes through normal battle by defeating enemy officers or breaking open crates to find them. The items which give characters special abilities are harder to come by. Players must fight a specific battle and complete or fail specific missions to cause an enemy supply team to appear. Defeating this supply team will cause the item to appear.

Like items, players can also find weapons in battle. Each character has four different types of weapons they can find randomly like this, with increasing power and attack limit. In addition to these base attributes, weapons will also randomly have other attributes attached to them. The value of these bonuses depends on three things: the difficulty the game is set to, the stage the player is on and the ranks the character has in the Discern skill.

In addition to these random weapon drop there are other special powerful 5th weapons to find. These 5th weapons have randomly determined attributes like the other weapons, but will always have specific (usually very high) bonuses attached to them. Like the rare items, the player has to play a specific stage and complete a specific task to get a supply team to appear. However, unlike the rare items, in order to get the weapon the game must be on either the Hard or Chaos difficulty level. In Samurai Warriors 2, there are up to 4th weapons, while the item system has been replaced with a Skill system; players can have weapons edited, buy skills from a Shop, acquire skills upon leveling up or "steal" them from enemy officers who have them by defeating the officers.

New Officer Training

Samurai Warriors gives players the opportunity to create new characters via the officer training mode. In this mode players must study under a mentor and complete 12 training sessions and a final exam. The first thing the player must do is choose the look of their character, from an initial selection of eight different models. The initial stats of the character are dependent on which model chosen. The certain stats can also be boosted by inputting the names of famous Japanese warriors in folklore and history. The stats evident in the stories featuring the name of the warrior inputted will be increased when the officer is created (For example, entering the name Damascus.) The player must then choose to partake in a test and one of three weapons they will use for the test. The different tests are as follows:

Melee: The player must kill as many enemy troops as possible within the time limit. Extra time is awarded after every 50 kills and for high combos.
Burst: The player must run through a castle environment in as fast a time as possible.
Combo: The player must perform the highest combos they can within a time limit. More time is awarded for high hitting combos.
Deflect: The player must kill as many troops as possible by deflecting arrows fired at them back towards the enemy.
Archery: The player stands motionless on a bridge and must defeat as many enemies as possible using just his bow before the time limit expires. The player automatically loses if an enemy crosses the bridge.
Musou: The player must kill as many troops as possible in the time limit using just their musou attack. The timer stops whenever a musou attack is underway and enemy troop leaders drop items which refill the musou gauge.
Riding: The player must use a horse to ride around a track in the fastest amount of time possible. A number of obstacles such as mines, barriers and troops are placed in their path to slow them down.

Each of the different tests affects different attributes of the character. In order to make a well balanced character the player must partake in a variety of tests. After the completion of the test the player will be ranked out of a score of 100 points, by getting more points the character's attributes will increase by a greater amount. If the character should be defeated during the course of a test, they will automatically fail the test and will have to spend one training session resting.

After 12 test sessions have passed, the character must take a final exam. This exam consists of two training sessions back to back. The player has to score a total of 100 points between these two tests in order to pass the exam. If the player completes the final exam successfully then they will be able to use their new officer in all the other game modes, however if the player should fail then the character will be lost and the new officer mode will have to be started over from scratch.

There are also a number of events that can take part during the course of the new officer training, some good and some bad. These include the original playable characters challenging the player for a special skill, weapons going missing from the training hall (limiting the player's choices in the next session) and various effects on the player's attributes. Some events will also allow the player the chance to earn new officer models for creation and items for use in main gameplay.

Xtreme Legends

File:SamuraiWarriorsXtremeLegends.jpg

Xtreme Legends cover

Samurai Warriors: Xtreme Legends is a PS2 expansion disc for Samurai Warriors . Once this game is loaded, you are prompted to insert the original SW disc in to load that data, and to combine both games for the best experience. While Xtreme Legends can be played alone, you can't utilize any of the features of the original.

Unlike the Dynasty Warriors Xtreme Legends games, this offers four new characters and a brand new mission and map. This also offers new weapons for everyone, a new survival mode, and fixes a few things that greatly annoyed players.

Even after they had reached rank 20 characters could still gain skill points and increase their attributes without having to the reset the character to default. Your character can also reach stat levels higher than normal given you spend the bonus points on it.

Samurai Warriors Xtreme Legends extended this further, by adding even more powerful 6th weapons to earn. These can only be discovered by playing on Chaos mode (or Hard mode, if the correct bonus is purchased).

Exclusive to Samurai Warriors Xtreme Legends, through the completion of special tasks you can earn Bonus Points in order to purchase special features. These features additional costumes for characters, voice sound tests, lowering the difficulty required to unlock the 5th and 6th weapons and the ability to break the default limits for characters stats. Methods of earning bonus points include the following: earning all of a character's endings, unlocking rare items and weapons and successfully creating new characters.

Samurai Warriors 2

File:Sengoku Musou 2 GC.PNG

Samurai Warriors 2 (Sengoku Musou 2) PS2 Japanese game cover.

Samurai Warriors 2 is a sequel to the original Samurai Warriors, it was released in 2006. It contains several new features and 10 new characters, while 3 characters from the first game were removed (Imagawa Yoshimoto, Ishikawa Goemon, and Kunoichi), although Imagawa Yoshimoto has been confirmed to be brought back as playable in SW2: Xtreme Legends. An Empires expansion was released in November 2006 in Japan, and February 2007 in North America. This expansion is very similar to Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires and Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires, which combines both strategy and battle phases, it also returned the New Officer mode that was absent from the original Samurai Warriors 2. Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends was announced to be released in Japan on August 23, 2007.

Sengoku Musou KATANA

Koei has announced that a new game will be added to the Samurai Warriors series, named Sengoku Musou KATANA, which is for the Wii system. This game will make use of the Wii Remote and its nunchuk attachment to imitate actions such as slashing, riding, and shooting/sniping, to let players feel more like he/she is actually the general him/herself on the battlefield. The game is scheduled to be released in Japan on September 20, 2007.

Characters

The characters' backstories were often non-historical (Ranmaru was born two years before Inabayama Castle fell, instead of defending it alongside Mitsuhide), but that many of the relationships are greatly changed in Samurai Warriors 2 (the battle of Okehazama, the siege of Inabayama castle are omitted; Hideyoshi and Magoichi are best of friends; Ranmaru and Mitsuhide are practically indifferent to one another, while Nobunaga and Mitsuhide are particularly close).

The first Samurai Warriors also featured Lu Bu from Dynasty Warriors as a hidden boss in the Deep Abyss Survival Mode. However he cannot be played by any normal means. In Xtreme Legends, Lu Bu was also featured as a super enemy during certain Challenge Modes, but he still remained non-playable. It is possible to use Lu Bu and his moveset using a cheating device known as a Gameshark, however, this is not normally considered a legitimate way of unlocking a character. His moves are almost exactly the same as in Dynasty Warriors, only minimally edited to better suit the Samurai Warriors engine. A video of Lu Bu gameplay in Samurai Warriors can be viewed here: [1]