It’s time to unite medieval Japan under your iron fist. Was Samurai Warriors 5 Worth it? Let’s march out!
Table of Contents
Background
Samurai Warriors 5 is the newest numbered mainline game in the Samurai Warrior series. This game follows the more narrative-focused of Spirit of Sanada, as opposed to the more detached viewpoint of other titles in the series.
What’s different in Samurai Warriors 5?
Almost all of the characters have been updated significantly. Gone is the childish clown Yoshimoto Imagawa, replaced with an imposing figure. Many other characters have been redesigned entirely and youthened drastically. This isn’t as big an issue for the plot, as the story ends at Honnoji.
Previous games had glossed over a lot of the backstory in between Nobunaga seizing power and were more of a “greatest hits” selection. The general story beats for Nobunaga had pretty much been distilled down to the following:
- 1560: Battle of Okehazama, Imagawa clan soundly defeated.
- 1570: Battle of Anegawa, Azai-Asakura alliance beaten.
- 1575: Battle of Nagashino, Nobunaga’s riflemen beat the famed Takeda cavalry. This is “the first modern Japanese battle”.
- 1582: Incident at Honnoji, Nobunaga is assassinated by Mitsuhide Akechi, one of his generals.
As you can tell, there’s a lot of time in between each of those events, and this game works to fill in the gaps. It starts before the aforementioned battle in 1560 and does a good job building up to the big parts. The game also establishes some character building and gives some insight into character relationships.
How do I unlock rare weapons in Samurai Warriors 5?
Missing in action
This game is missing a lot of the classic Samurai Warriors characters that we’ve grown to love over the years.
Honestly, this is bullshit.
All the currently released Samurai Warriors characters were available in Spirit of Sanada. Why are they gone in this title? Who knows.
What does Samurai Warriors 5 do well?
This is probably one of kindest depictions of Nobunaga Oda, the Demon King, who is generally depicted as a formidable, intimidating figure. This game makes him not only more sympathetic, but gives a lot more insight into his ambition (yes, that reference is intentional) and personality.
Spirit of Sanada, the most similar character-focused musou game, was also a tale of a tragic hero. Koei-Tecmo has once again done a good job of really honing in on the effects of constant conflict and how it can change and embitter people.
This is historical fiction based on events from almost half a millennium ago, but I’ll be deliberately vague to avoid spoilers. They’ve shifted various events around slightly for dramatic effect. The long and short of it is that as Nobunaga’s power grows, his enemies’ aggression and machinations also increase. This results in an emotional crescendo where you realize that some of his family and allies have turned on him, and he experiences a huge amount of loss. Betrayal is a consistent theme in Nobunaga’s life.
What could Samurai Warriors 5 do better?
This just doesn’t feel like a complete game. Previous titles have worked their way up to the big bombastic battle at Sekigahara. Stopping at Honnoji is a sudden brake check, and as a longtime fan of the series, I feel robbed.
There are some issues with movesets, namely that clone movesets are back. To be fair, there’s one instance in where this is done well – Nobunaga changes movesets after killing someone and taking their weapon. The movesets that did make it in are fun, though.
Taking in all the history of the Sengoku era, even if it’s abbreviated, is a lot. If you’ve followed the series up to this point, you probably have a good idea of who most of the big names are. However, this game adds in a lot more characters that frankly, we haven’t seen before. There have been at least ten titles in the Samurai Warrior series at this point. Unfortunately, I don’t really care nor am I impressed by a new playable character that I only see for a couple battles.
Is Samurai Warriors 5 fun?
It’s fun, and some of the movesets are great, but it feels like a beta version.
Is Samurai Warriors 5 good value?
Wait for the inevitable Samurai Warriors 5 XL or Samurai Warriors Empires This game is serviceable but it’s not great. I also advise against buying the season pass.
This game is just a story mode and a very weak alternate mode with some randomized battles. If this was the standard, then that’d be fine. However, they’ve consistently shown that they can squeeze boats of content into these games. Look at Dynasty Warriors 8 XLCE or Hyrule Warriors. Hell, Persona 5 Strikers was a 40 hour RPG.
Was Samurai Warriors 5 worth it?
There are a lot of great entries in the Warriors canon, and the bar keeps getting higher. I like Samurai Warriors 5, but I like most, if not all, musou games. There are some Warriors games that are fun enough to come back to, like Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, or Hyrule Warriors.
Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be an enduring title like say, Samurai Warriors 2 Xtreme Legends or Dynasty Warriors 5 XL. Samurai Warriors 5 is going to go into the bin with the rest of the forgettable Warriors games like Age of Calamity, One Piece Pirate Warriors 4, or both variants of Warriors Orochi 4.
TL;DR It’s not a bad game, but it’s not necessarily worth your time or money, and it sure as hell doesn’t feel like $60 worth of content.
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