Samurai Warriors Chronicles

Genre: Action Brawler

Players: 1

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Review:

Samurai Warriors Chronicles is an Action Brawler released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2011. This Musou-style Action game in the Japan-centric spin-off series based on the gameplay of the Dynasty Wars series, which is known for their large set piece battles with massive hordes of enemies.

That sort of spectacle is highly scaled down on the Nintendo 3DS. The areas you fight in are generally smaller, the number of enemies on-screen at a given time are much lower, and the pop-in here is pretty bad, meaning that enemies just 20-30 feet away from you will be invisible until you get closer. At the very least, the 3D character models in this game are exquisite, but that hardly seems like the most important part of the series’ visuals to preserve here.

These visuals are backed by fully-voiced Japanese-language characters, which is nice, but as much as this series pretends to be about recreating some fictionalized version of Japanese history, it largely feels like a bunch of stock RPG and anime dialogue that’s far from inspired. This is backed by an cinematic soundtrack that’s flavored by the use of traditional Japanese instruments, at least lending some part of this game a bigger-than-life feel.

For the gameplay… well, this is a Musou game, all right. That means numerous repetitive battles with cookie-cutter enemies. Thankfully, this game does make good use of one of the Nintendo 3DS’s features, giving players the power to direct teammates on a map using the Nintendo 3DS’ touchscreen, which is an excellent touch.

Unfortunately, even the stale Musou formula is done poorly here, with stiff combat that lacks the fluidity of better entries in the genre, and the reduced enemy count making for a far less satisfying experience. When your massive attack can only take down maybe a half-dozen enemies as opposed to fifty at a time in console games, it’s hard to feel like this is anything more than a horrific downgrade.

Because of this, Samurai Warriors Chronicles just lacks the joy of the console games in the series, mostly just leaving the decent presentation and bland, repetitive gameplay. If you really want a Musou game on your Nintendo 3DS… well, Hyrule Warriors is right there. As such, I just don’t see any reason to bother with this game.

tl;dr – Samurai Warriors Chronicles is an Action Brawler in the Musou style, with players fighting hordes of enemies on the battlefield… only “hordes” in this case has been cut back so drastically that it takes much of the fun out of the experience, with the stiff combat taking much of the rest. Either stick to the console games, or get Hyrule Warriors instead, this game is just going to be a disappointment.

Grade: C-

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