Samurai Warriors 4 DX review

Much like Kunoichi, Samurai Warriors 4 has aged like wine. 10 years after the original release, the DX edition got shadow dropped on Steam. Musou maniacs shouldn’t miss it.

Up until 2014, Omega Force’s musou games had a contentious reputation. Critics and consumers often found fault in the repetition of combat and an unyielding adherence to formula. But Samurai Warriors 4 helped to change that.

Fundamentally, the inclusion of a Hyper Attack changed the pace and play of the franchise. Now a succession of button taps transformed the protagonist into a whirling dervish of destruction.

No longer did players have to leisurely hack through legions of peons, with the offensive maneuver bowling over lesser foes, while traversing across each map with unprecedented speed. To keep Samurai Warriors 4 from being a single-button trail to triumph, the move was judiciously tempered, with elevated enemies like officers and even mid-ranked soldiers immune to the tactic. In hindsight, it eliminated many of those long sprints across lonely battlefields.

Essentially it is Samurai Warriors 4-I Redux

Wisely, Hyper Attacks remained at the forefront for the release of Samurai Warriors 4-II, a game that revised its predecessor’s expositional methods, while retaining the engaging play mechanics that elevated Warriors 4 to musou merit. As the moniker implied, it wasn’t an incremental advancement over the previous year’s title, but Samurai Warriors 4-II refined some of its antecedent’s imperfections.

Sure, Warriors loyalists were disheartened by the removal of Chronicle Mode, which had provided a robust RPG-like component where players could forge their own fate through the Warring States period. For the release of Samurai Warriors 4 DX, the mode has been mercifully returned, alongside about 150 pieces of DLC that arrived alongside the PlayStation 4 release. As such, DX is undoubtedly the definitive version of the original game, even with the absence of 4-II’s rather simplistic Survival Mode.

Chronicling Your Legacy

In Chronicle Mode, players begin their rise through the ranks in a robust character creation suite, building their avatar from an impressive collections of body parts, costumes, and weapons. From the initial position as a lowly foot soldier, each subsequent mission helps to build your reputation, offering a multitude of choices as you chase your ambitions. Agreeably, branching dialog trees extend a sense of independence, allowing players to opt out of missions, or help to build their army.

Story mode is split into multiple Legends, each revealing a view of the territorial conflict from the perspective of different daimyo and their respective clans. Collectively, this assembly of thirteen multi-stage scenarios provides an impressive time sink, as players follow the tangled trajectories of families like the Shikoku, Kantō, Sanada. Finish the Oda and Takeda Legends and the game unlocks a lengthy Land United Scenario, which offers a comprehensive campaign that follows the unification efforts of the era.

Unification with Optional Cooperation

On DX’s easiest level, victory is a largely linear trek, with thousands of peons, a few commanders, and an end boss defiantly standing on the path to victory. Increase the difficulty setting and players will have to be a bit more strategic, using the game’s character-switching mechanic to swap between two protagonists, with the unselected character autonomously roaming and ravishing the battlefield. Alternatively, a second online or even local player (there’s splitscreen) can assist players in their pursuits.

The original release of Samurai Warriors 4 was a pivotal moment for the franchise, demonstrating Omega Force intensifying the action and strengthening its storytelling. A decade later, the DX release is an advisable purchase. Its might not have Orochi 4’s massive roster or Spirit of Sanada’s spotlighting, but it’s a damn good vintage musou.

Samurai Warriors 4 DX was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.