Summurai Warriors Review

In terms of Tecmo Koei's "Warrior" games, there are three categories gamers fall into: the group that loves the series (the people who keep buying these games), the group that played it in the past but got bored, and the group that has never played before. For the first two groups: Samurai Warriors Chronicles is a very classic version of these types of button mashing Japanese action games. Whatever opinions you have of it are largely the same. But you third group that never played these, listen up. Samurai Warriors Chronicles lets you murder ten thousand dudes, and still manages to be boring.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles is loosely based on the actual conflicts of the Sengoku period of Japanese lords in the 1500s. I say "loosely" because my Asian History class never mentioned the battle where an effeminate guy with a giant blade clock teamed up with an incestuous, magical, staff-wielding girl to fight a dude with stretchy arms.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles Video

As a custom character you hop around from battle to battle, picking sides as you see fit. For some reason this is conveyed as being insightful or something, instead of the reality that you're a coward that swaps sides constantly. Eventually you choose an army and continue on, fighting with them in their battles. Each conflict is set in a maze-like battlefield of forts, with hundreds of enemies running around. Games like Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors have been on handhelds in the past, but the DS never really captured the scale. Samurai Warriors Chronicles is a full Warriors experience, and it's about time fans got that on a Nintendo handheld.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles is not a pretty game overall. The environments are bland, and every character besides the main ones are generic. That said the main characters are… extravagant. They all have different weapons and fighting styles and many of them are absolutely bizarre.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles is not a particularly friendly handheld game though. The missions are rather long, and without a good way to move the camera the action can get pretty confusing. The biggest crime though is that after just a few minutes, the novelty of slashing through hundreds of soldiers wears off, and you're left with a repetitive, slow paced action game that never quite finds its groove. Upgrades and new features are spaced hours apart, drawing the gameplay on too long before it gets interesting.

The most annoying part was that while playing on Normal difficulty I quickly got to a point where my character was not strong enough. The game informed me I could go back and replay missions to level up. The only thing worse than playing a repetitive button masher is having to replay it.

Closing Comments

For whatever reason some people love the crap out of these kind of games. If you can get your hands on a friend's copy, or a demo and play it, see if it grabs you. But for most people, Samurai Warrior's Chronicles is a boring, repetitive action game that doesn’t lend itself well to the handheld gaming experience due to its overly drawn out gameplay.