Friday, 16 June 2017

Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada Review

A slice of history
(This review contains spoilers!)

          Warriors games are some of my ultimate guilty pleasures. Yes, they’re extremely simplistic and even a little stupid, but I can’t help but enjoy them. It’s just fun to mow down enemies like you were cutting grass. Spirit of Sanada is no different, being a very enjoyable experience for fans of the franchise, but one I wish took a few more chances.

          Set during ancient Japan, Spirit of Sanada has you playing as Masayuki Sanada, the head of his family clan and actually a real person from Japanese history. Despite this, the developers took some liberties with his appearance. Here he is in the game:

          And here’s the real deal:

          Yeah, it’s a little different.

          The story overall is the weakest part of the game. I don’t know if it’s based on actual stuff that happened in ancient Japan, but a lot of it is “go here, take over this kingdom, rinse and repeat”. The writing doesn’t make it much better. The characters all constantly state the obvious out loud, often to the point where the dialogue is just laughable. Maybe it sounds better in the game’s native language of Japanese, but I have no way of telling.

          The frustrating thing is that a good 30% of your time in this game is spent watching cutscenes. Most of them are thankfully skippable, allowing you to the next bit of action quickly, which I began doing once I realized this plot was going nowhere fast.

          Much better is the actual gameplay itself. Spirit of Sanada is your typical Warriors fare: you’re dropped into a map surrounded by enemies with very little health, and are given a bunch of fun special abilities to use. Go nuts. There’s obviously objectives and stuff to do, but easily the most fun part is charging into a group of enemies and just watching them fly as you one-man army your way around the map.

          As for the rest of the game, the graphics are pretty good considering this game was also released on the PS3 in Japan. It’s definitely one of the better looking “anime-style” games I’ve played recently. The music is also passable, but it has a weird problem of playing the wrong tracks at the wrong time. There’s a scene where Sanada is talking to a friend about the tragedies of war with epic fight music playing in the background. It doesn’t exactly fit.

          There’s really not much else to say about Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada. I think just by watching a video of it you will immediately be able to tell whether you’ll enjoy it or not. As someone who likes Warriors games I found it to be a very enjoyable experience, albeit one I won’t exactly be lining up to play again any time soon.

FINAL SCORE
7/10

Good

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