Welcome to our review of Samurai Warriors 5, a new Musou game about the classic feudal wars of Japan.
This story takes place during the Sengoku period, during which an inverted social order started to extend all across Japan. As war rages throughout the Sengoku period, several influential figures appear across Japan seeking to reign supreme over these turbulent times.
Among those figures, the great daimyō, Yoshimoto Imagawa, dispatched his troops to escort the minor daimyo of the neighboring nation – Ieyasu Tokugawa – as a hostage. While everyone was assessing the situation, there was one person watching all of this occur from high above.
That person was Nobunaga Oda. This story begins with Nobunaga, along with his childhood friend Toshiie Maeda, as they make a raid on the Imagawa Army in order to rescue Ieyasu.
Samurai Warriors 5 is the latest Musou game from the masters of the genre themselves and Koei Tecmo sure went all out with this game, with tons of playable characters. The more you play, the more skills and attacks you unlock, all in true modern-day Musou. A genre that I love, but I kind of hated this game for being so good and I ended up with a blister on my right hand’s thumb.
Blisters are my worst enemy when playing games like these, I have had them before when playing Musou games, Hyrule Warriors, the One Piece games, … It was however my first time for this game series and it is actually because at first, you can perform very little variation in your attacks and the game appears more like a button-mashing variant of the game.
Luckily this changes after a few battles and in my personal case, a 2-day hiatus from the game to let my thumb heal up. I spent the time to really look at the title in itself and when I went back in, I really delved into the menus, the options this game offers are very extensive.
While I know the genre is only reserved for very few gamers, I do feel like Samurai Warriors 5 might be pushing the limits to get you into this genre. I would still recommend a more light approach like Hyrule Warriors if you are into that Zelda stuff or One Piece if you have great taste in manga.
The biggest hurdle this game needs to take for new players of the genre is that it really is the oblivious feeling of button mashing at first and it may have lost its potential new audience from the start. For fans of the genre, this game is a treat. It really is, I had a massive 4000+ hits flow in my very first game, that is just such a delight to see.
The entire gameplay is organized so this is possible all throughout the game and this is what makes the game stand out, if you are familiar with the genre, you will be performing unbeatable combos, which are both sadly and luckily present in the game. I admit to abusing them to beat big bosses at the end of levels.
In conclusion, Samurai Warriors 5 is great if you love the genre but might have a massive stepping up feeling when you never played the genre before. The historical feeling sure was nice too, but in all honesty, if you want to try the genre, go for the One piece games, they are lighter and easier to get into!
