Samurai Warriors 4: Empires Review

Last month, I reviewed a hack and slash JRPG named Arslan: The Warriors of Legend which was developed by Omega Force and published by Koei-Tecmo. Given the quality of Arslan I was keen to delve into Samurai Warriors 4: Empires, however what I found was a game that is superficially enjoyable in small bursts and one that quickly descends into tedium.

Samurai Warriors 4: Empires is a standalone expansion to the illustrious hack-n-slash title, Samurai Warriors 4, and is the third title in the Empires series. It features very similar gameplay to the aforementioned Arslan: The Warriors of Legend and is sure to feel (very) familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Dynasty Warriors series. The basic gist of SW4: Empires is to take to the battlefield with your army and lay waste to ludicrously large hordes of enemies. The moves are flashy and over-the-top, combos are simple yet satisfying to pull off and combat in general is rather smooth and refined. There’s also a political twist to things in which you align with a clan for your given era (there are six eras to choose from) and this is where the game shows its more tactical side. You will be responsible for plotting moves, forming alliances and allocating resources and the clan you choose dictates how to complete the era. Some clans wish to just conquer all the land, others wish to retake old land, others wish to form alliances and create peace. Who you choose will also dictate how long your era is.

In the tactician phase, you are given control over resources. You choose whether you will spend gold and food to recruit new members to your army, build infrastructure to support your nation or focus on gathering resources to benefit your nation later.. However, when the tutorial system kicks in it introduces you to these basics, teaching you how to spend resources, but it doesn’t actually tell you how to earn them. This is quite an oversight as without earning these resources progression becomes impossible as they are critical to your ability to recruit and deploy units to aid you in battle. It took the better part of five hours to figure out the convoluted system behind earning these precious resources. The idea of resource management is fine but the fact it is so obtuse, unintuitive and laborious is a significant deterrent.

Other than the political undertones of the tactician phase, there is no real underlying plot. The game will try and convince you otherwise with an almost irritating amount of fruitless cutscenes (which are also frequently repeated), but in the end these add a vanishingly small amount to the experience. This is a bit of a shame as this dev team have proven with previous titles that they can weave a decent story. There are no real standout characters due to the lack of any real story, so caring about your character is next to impossible. The characters are all a bit of a drab bunch too, and their dreary aesthetic didn’t really draw me to them.

The cel-shaded art style of this game isn’t very power hungry, but for some reason the game suffers stability issues. While the art direction of this game is superb and does a great job of making you feel like you really are in an anime set in the clan wars of the samurai, the framerate does appear to be sporadic in its stability. Framerate issues often occur when the mayhem on-screen ramps up, and naturally this significantly hinders the gameplay. What is mostly smooth and fluid gameplay turns into a nightmare of blind hacking and slashing as you fight through a scene with the same framerate as a Powerpoint presentation. Framerate issues aside, the game is quite visually accomplished, and things like detailing on the armour sets of bigger characters are very well designed. It helps distinguish between who is who on the battlefield, but being lost in what’s going on around you will still likely occur frequently given the hordes of enemies that surround you, and it’s also easy to lose track of your allies in the chaos.

The music direction fits the game well and provides a good background to the frantic action. The soundscape is mostly filled with traditional Japanese instruments and the battle cries of warriors. You can feel the tide of battle shifting with the rise and fall of your allies’ chants as they clash katanas with their foes. It makes battles feel like epic conquests and sound effects on weapons are also quite satisfying, giving a sense of weight to your attacks as you cut through swathes of enemies like butter.

Final Thoughts

Samurai Warriors 4: Empires is the perfect example of creating something that looks and plays decently, but is marred by technical issues and the failure to inject it with enough life. While the game features generally smooth and fluid combat, a solid soundtrack and great art design, it is vastly overshadowed by unstable framerates, a lack of story/notable characters and an annoying tactician phase where resources are not easily acquired. The game is entertaining for a brief period of time, but too quickly loses its sense of drive and purpose.

Reviewed on PS4