Samurai Warriors 4 Empires

Written by Nathan Carter on 3/11/2016 for PS4  

I have reviewed a number of games in the Warriors franchise here on Gaming Nexus. I reviewed Warriors Orochi 3 and two of the One Piece, Warriors games. I have also played a ton of Hyrule Warriors and long story short, I really enjoy these games. Sure they are monotonous but they are incredibly fun. Taking out hundreds of enemies with ridiculous over the top moves, taking over bases, it's fun, but the one thing I have noticed about a lot of these games is that they are quite similar.

Obviously they are similar in their gameplay, but also in what they offer for game modes as well. For the most part, the story modes in these games usually involve being placed on a map, killing all of the enemy bosses, taking over the map, getting a short cut scene in between and then you move onto the next map. Sure there are some fan-service type game modes in the One Piece games and Hyrule Warriors that appeal to fans of those franchises, but for the most part, the meat and the potatoes of these games is the story mode, so when I was asked to review Samurai Warriors 4 Empires, I was expecting it to be the same thing that I have played multiple times before. Boy was I wrong. Samurai Warriors 4 Empires takes the hack and slash action that you love and adds strategy elements to the game to become a pretty fun and unique title. 

The biggest difference you will notice in Empires is that it's as much of a strategy game as it is a hack and slash. When you first start the game you can select one of three scenarios, with more unlocking over time. Most of these scenarios have a single objective that needs to be completed. I think the first scenario I finished in about three hours, but you do get the option to end the game and start a new one, or continue playing. Once a scenario is selected, you will be taken to the map screen with many areas of Japan populated by the various clans in the game. Think of it like the start of a game of Risk. You can select any clan you wish to play as but the game does suggest that certain ones are used. Then you need to appoint your political staff. From strategists, military, personnel and development, putting certain characters in these roles will give your overall camp a number of stats including troop strength, fame, and loyalty, and these stats are extremely important because they all come into play as the game goes on. Let me tell you, there is a ton of stuff that you need to take into account before you even get into battle.

There are two parts to every turn your camp has in the game. The first part is the political side. Here you need to decide what actions you want to take to help your camp. The decisions made here can range from shifting your Warriors around your various castles for the next battle, trying to form an alliance with enemy clans, trying to recruit new members, or you can impose a tax on the people you rule over to bring in some extra cash. Of course taxing your people will not earn you any brownie points with them and can lower your fame, and fame is important since it decides how many of these political actions you can take during the planning turn. When starting out, you usually get two actions you can take and if you aren't sure about what to do, you can have the computer do it for you, but of course this may screw you over if you aren't careful. Raising your fame gets you more actions. There is a lot to think about here as ever move is critical to success, a wrong move and your squad might not have enough strength to carry out an attack. More on that in a bit. 

The second part, if you choose to, will be going into battle to try to conquer an adjacent territory. Instead of selecting a single character to go into battle, you need to select an entire squad. Each character in the game has a "troop strength" number. The more Warriors you add to your squad, the higher your troop strength is. The catch however is that it takes gold and resources to enter a battle as well which is something else you need to pay attention to. When selecting an area to invade, you will be shown the stats of the other clan. Troop strength is an extremely important one to pay attention to because going into battle with the opposite clan outnumbering you is suicide. You can sink all of your troops into a single squad to out number the enemy, but you might spend all of your gold and resources which means that on your next turn, you may have to skip the battle, and that could lead one of your camps open to attack. Even though your objectives involve defeating the boss and making sure your squad stays alive, if your enemy has a slight advantage, you will run into incredibly overpowered minions of the field that will harass you and block you from getting to the boss you need to defeat to complete each battle. Your squad can also get wiped out rather quickly if you rush into battle under powered.  

And this brings me to one of the biggest problems I have with not just this game, but all Warriors titles. My biggest issue is that the map you are given doesn't really tell you where you need to go. Often times you will head in a direction that looks like it's open, and then you run into a wall. This also becomes annoying when one of your squad is in trouble. Sometimes during battle you will get a message saying that a teammate is in trouble and that you need to "assist immediately". Well, that's all fine and dandy but the game gives you almost no time to react at all. If this message pops up, you better hope that you are right next to your allies because they will usually fall in battle, resulting in a game over, seconds after getting the warning message. This is something that unfortunately has plagued all Warriors titles of late and it's something that really needs to be addressed in future installments. Other than that though, the game runs at an incredibly 60FPS on the Playstation 4. I honestly didn't notice any framerate drops at all, regardless of how hectic the battle got.

The other game mode, "Free Mode" allows players to create their own scenarios where they get a blank map and can place the clans where they wish. The game also features a really cool edit mode where you can create your own character. You can choose whether they are male or female, what class of Warrior they are, their weapons, what clan they belong to and you can even choose if someones spouse or if they are the child of two other Warriors already in the game. You can then use said created character in either the main Conquest story mode or in the free mode. 

While Samurai Warriors 4 may not have a lot of extra game modes like the other Warrior titles have, it still is a very fun game and the added strategy elements are a nice change of pace for those who are looking to get a bit more out of these games than just the traditional hack and slash action.