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''Samurai Warriors'' (''Sengoku Musou'') is a series of video games created by , which includes additional multiplayer features. GAMES IN THE SERIES To date, there are four games in the series:
GAMEPLAY Fighting The basic gameplay of Samurai Warriors is similar to the Hack And Slash style of Dynasty Warriors in which the player takes the role of a single officer in battle and must fend off hordes of enemy soldiers and defeat the enemy commander. The characters have three basic attack types: normal, charge and Musou. When the characters are inexperienced they only have a basic string of four normal attacks but as the characters earn new weapons, their attack strings lengthen to six attacks and eventually eight. The player can enhance their character's attacks by using a charge attack after any of the first three attacks in the normal attack string. Every character's charge moves follow the same basic pattern, as follows:
As the normal attack string lengthens the charge attacks also lengthen, allowing to the player perform even longer combos by tapping the charge button (up to three times; for example, one could press Charge three times, or do so after up to three previous Normal attacks). Finally the characters each have a powerful Musou attack, which can only be unleashed once the player has inflicted or taken enough damage. Additionally, if the player is low on health they can use their special True Musou attack which in addition to the regular damage also burns the enemies the player is attacking. New to Samurai Warriors there is an additional 'free-style' Musou attack mode, where instead of using the default Musou attacks players can make their own combos using normal and charge moves. This Musou works much like Bullet-time ; common soldiers move very slowly, however generals are unaffected. In Samurai Warriors 2, this is modified in three ways. First, the R1 button is no longer used for the basic ranged attack, but is held in conjunction with Normal or Charge attack to perform one of the character's two special abilities, varying by character (some are unique, some shared). Also, characters have one of three movesets (the aforementioned "Charge" moveset, a "Combo" moveset that extends the attack possibilities to a twelve hit attack string with eight possible charge attacks but does not allow the charge attacks to be extended, or a "Special" moveset that allows two presses of Triangle during attacking but up to three consecutive uses of each Special Ability, in the same manner as performing a Charge-type attack combination). Finally, the Musou bar is divided into three parts, each allowing a Musou attack (whether the predetermined attack or "freestyle") and a different but stronger one if one lets it reach Level 3 before use. (A "flame" indicator under the bar shows how many levels have been filled). Stages and Missions Similar to Dynasty Warriors 3 and 5 each character in Samurai Warriors has their own unique Story mode, five stages long. There is, however, a point in each character's story where, depending on the actions of the player, the path of the story splits and different stages become available. This means that each character in fact has between five and eight different stages. In Samurai Warriors there are three types of stages: The first two are Field and Castle. Field battles take place outside, pitting one army against another (or in a few rare cases, two other armies), and the player must lead their forces to victory through the completion of missions and defeating the enemy commander. Castle battles place the player alone inside an enemy castle without any bodyguards or other allies. They must fight through the enemy troops until they get to the top or bottom of the castle and defeat the enemy commander in a duel. The third type, Siege, is a combination of the other two types of stages. A Field type battle takes place, with some characters(depending on where in your character's storyline you are), being defeated in battle instead of being killed. Once the character has finished the Field part of the Siege, the game asks if you would like to save your progress. Also after finishing the Field part, if your character gets killed inside the castle during the Castle part of the Siege, you may still continue when you return to the "Fight" menu screen. It's just like saving and then continuing a regular game. In the Castle part, those characters you have defeated in the Field part, including the Daimyo or main enemy at the end, die if defeated, instead of just walking away. In Samurai Warriors 2, this is changed so that characters have a single path, plus a "side story" (''gaiden'') that effectively asks "what if". (For example, while Tachibana Ginchiyo's 4th stage is Sekigahara, her 5th stage is after the victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu's army at Sekigahara, while her ''gaiden'' is at Edo Castle after a hypothetical defeat for Ieyasu at Sekigahara.) Also, the difference between Field and Castle stages has been eliminated; both are on the same map, both eliminating the loading time difference. Character Growth The other significant change is the way in which characters grow stronger. There is a new ranking system after battles which depends on four categories:
Each of these categories is given a letter rank (from lowest to highest: D, C, B, A, S) depending on your performance and then you are given an overall rank. The higher you rank and the harder the difficulty setting of the game, the more your character's attributes will increase after the battle. In addition to the growth of your stats you are also awarded Skill Points, likewise getting more the better your rank. With these Skill Points you can buy skills that enhance the abilities of your characters. Such skills include the ability to increase your health and Musou meters, strengthening your attacks with elemental attributes and increased guarding and evasion techniques. In the original Samurai Warriors, there was a limit to the strength your characters could obtain through battle. Once your character had reached rank 20 it was impossible to gain any more Skill points and the character attributes were locked. However, there was a way to maximize the growth of the characters via the Character Reset function. With this function you could completely reset the rank, attributes and skills of a character but keep any weapons you had found with them. By playing the game on the hardest difficulty, Chaos, and with a very powerful weapon you could gain higher attributes and more skill points from battle. This was changed with the release of Samurai Warriors Xtreme Legends. There was no longer a limit on the strength that characters could reach. Even after they had reached rank 20 characters could still gain skill points and increase their attributes without having to the reset the character to default. One of the two most significant changes over Dynasty Warriors is the introduction of the mission system in battles. Each stage has a number of different missions which become available depending on which character the player is currently controlling and the success or failure of previous missions. Such tasks include eliminating specific enemy officers, launching sneak attacks on enemy bases or thwarting the strategic plans of the enemy. Success in these missions can be crucial to the outcomes of many battles as failure often results in a massive loss of morale to your own forces. Items and Weapons Each character can equip up to five items before each battle, which will affect their attributes or give them additional abilities. Like in the ''Dynasty'' games, players can find items which affect their attributes through normal battle by defeating enemy officers or breaking open crates to find them. The items which give characters special abilities are harder to come by. Players must fight a specific battle and complete or fail specific missions to cause an enemy supply team to appear. Defeating this supply team will cause the item to appear. Like items, players can also find weapons in battle. Each character has four different types of weapons they can find randomly like this, with increasing power and attack limit. In addition to these base attributes, weapons will also randomly have other attributes attached to them. The value of these bonuses depends on three things: the difficulty the game is set to, the stage the player is on and the ranks the character has in the ''Discern'' skill. In addition to these random weapon drop there are other special powerful 5th weapons to find. These 5th weapons have randomly determined attributes like the other weapons, but will always have specific (usually very high) bonuses attached to them. Like the rare items, the player has to play a specific stage and complete specific task to get a supply team to appear. However, unlike the rare items, in order to get the weapon the game must be on either the Hard or Chaos difficulty level. Samurai Warriors Xtreme Legends extended this further, by adding even more powerful 6th weapons to earn. These can only be discovered by playing on Chaos mode. (However, paying 100,000 bonus points -- acquired through playing the game repeatedly and unlocking weapons, items, etc. -- allows one to find them on Hard, and 5th weapons on Normal.) In Samurai Warriors 2, there are (currently known to be) up to 4th weapons, while the item system has been replaced with a Skill system; players can have weapons forged by a blacksmith, buy skills from a Shop, acquire skills upon leveling up or "steal" them from enemy officers who have them by defeating the officers. New Officer Training Samurai Warriors gives players the opportunity to create new characters via the officer training mode. In this mode players must study under a mentor and complete 12 training sessions and a final exam. The first thing the player must do is choose the look of their character, from an initial selection of eight different models. The initial stats of the character are dependent on which model chosen. The player must then choose to partake in a test and one of three weapons they will use for the test. The different tests are as follows:
Each of the different tests affects different attributes of the character. In order to make a well balanced character the player must partake in a variety of tests. After the completion of the test the player will be ranked out of a score of 100 points, by getting more points the character's attributes will increase by a greater amount. If the character should be defeated during the course of a test, they will automatically fail the test and will have to spend one training session resting. After 12 test sessions have passed, the character must take a final exam. This exam consists of two training sessions back to back. The player has to score a total of 100 points between these two tests in order to pass the exam. If the player completes the final exam successfully then they will be able to use their new officer in all the other game modes, however if the player should fail then the character will be lost and the new officer mode will have to be started over from scratch. There are also a number of events that can take part during the course of the new officer training, some good and some bad. These include the original playable characters challenging the player for a special skill, weapons going missing from the training hall (limiting the player's choices in the next session) and various effects on the player's attributes. Bonus Points Exclusive to Samurai Warriors Xtreme Legends, through the completion of special tasks you can earn Bonus Points in order to purchase special features. These features additional costumes for characters, voice sound tests, lowering the difficulty required to unlock the 5th and 6th weapons and the ability to break the default limits for characters stats. Methods of earning bonus points include the following: earning all of a character's endings, unlocking rare items and weapons and successfully creating new characters. CHARACTERS Samurai Warriors has a lineup of fifteen playable characters: Samurai Warriors Xtreme Legends introduced an additional four playable characters to the roster:
The first Samurai Warriors also featured Lu Bu from Dynasty Warriors as a hidden boss in the Deep Abyss Survival Mode. However he cannot be played by any normal means. In Xtreme Legends, Lu Bu was also featured as a super enemy during certain Challenge Modes, but he still remained non-playable. Samurai Warriors 2 has ten new characters listed:
Despite initial images being released, Sasaki Kojiro (voiced by Yuji Ueda) and Shibata Katsuie (voiced by Eiji Takemoto) were only special NPCs (with their own character model) as Imagawa Yoshimoto, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Azai Nagamasa were in the original Samurai Warriors. Also, Okuni and Ranmaru do not have Story Modes in Samurai Warriors 2. It should also be noted that characters' backstories were often non-historical (Ranmaru was born two years before Inabayama Castle fell, instead of defending it alongside Mitsuhide), but that many of the relationships (such as what seem to be strong implications of more than a friendly relationship between those two) are greatly changed in Samurai Warriors 2 (Inabayama Castle is not mentioned; Hideyoshi and Magoichi are best of friends; Ranmaru and Mitsuhide are practically indifferent to one another, while Nobunaga and Mitsuhide are particularly close). EXTERNAL LINKS
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