Samurai Warriors returning

By Tom Bramwell Published 1 August, 2006

To 360 and PS2 next month.

Koei is planning to bring Samurai Warriors 2 kicking, screaming and swishing swords to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 this September - and the 360 version will feature a two-player versus mode over Live.

Filleting our way through the release, SW2 sounds like another of Koei's legendarily orthodox sequels - with things like the ability to charge up your Musou gauge three times over and level up during combat figuring highly in the "new features" area.

Another hackandslash on a huge scale, SW2 will introduce character-specific special abilities triggered with R1 (or the right bumper on 360, presumably), which can also be combined with the face buttons to set traps and generate decoys. You'll also be able to unlock special abilities by tackling enemy generals on the battlefield.

Improved graphics ought to demonstrate more reaction on the part of enemies, who have a greater range of attacks at their disposal too to mix things up, and with 26 playable characters in total you can expect some ten newcomers - including (no idea here) Musashi Miyamoto, Ieyasu Tokugawa and Kotaru Fuma.

Another new addition is a board style affair for four players called Sugoroku, based on the Japanese game of the same name, which hides a number of head-to-head challenges, while the usual Story, Free and Survival modes, along with co-op play, remain in place.

Fans can also expect 70 cut-scenes supervised by The Princess Blade director Shinsuke Sato, with music from Minoru Mukaiya.

Expect a review of the whole lot nearer release, and we've some screenshots oft yonder.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 6 years ago

    Wasn't the last one rubbish?

    Hmmm, thought so...

  • Flabio #2 6 years ago

    I quite liked the previous one. It was different enough from Dynasty Warriors to avoid some of the usual complaints. And the fact it was based on Japanese instead of Chinese history meant we didn't get the same old bunch of characters either.

  • toy_brain #3 6 years ago

    Koei UK seem to be getting a bit faster with their PAL localisations.
    Last few years I remember waiting about 4 months after the US release to play DW4 and 5, now the wait is just a month or so. Which is nice.

    And seeings as, after playing 12 of these games (DW2, DW3, DW3:XL, DW4, DW4:XL, DW4:Empires, DW5, DW5:XL, DW5:Empires, SW, SW;XL, SW:SOW) I'm still not sick of repetative hackandslash action, I am very much looking forward to this.

  • Aysir #4 6 years ago

    SW1 was great fun, and yeah, it was a nice difference from DW.
    The character abilities in SW2 do add a lot; Mitsuhide can now perform Battoujitsu moves and Yukimura can call a horse to his side from anywhere. Can't wait for this, though I think i'll end up importing the american. While Koei are getting quite quick with thier localisations, they're also getting a bit lazy. After DW3 Empires perfect PAL conversion they've started using a lazy blur-screen method of converting to PAL. Just look at any writing in the game and you can see it's ghosting.

  • Latin #5 6 years ago

    Based on japanese history like Genji 2 with all the giant crabs with weakspots for massive damage or based on japanese history like shogun total war?

    Finally will it have real time weapon change on the 360 version but not the PS2 version?

  • Lex_Luthor #6 6 years ago

    Wow, that's certainly gotten old.

  • Lead #7 6 years ago

    @ Latin

    Actually we 1 up Genji 2 we have 'Real Time Character Change' in both PS2 and XboX 360 versions. Maybe we should release a viral ;)

  • Aysir #8 6 years ago

    "Based on japanese history like Genji 2 with all the giant crabs with weakspots for massive damage or based on japanese history like shogun total war? "
    Based on Japanese History quite strictly (not like Genji - though Genji is based on a mythical period of time - kinda like Otogi) The only flights of fantasy come in with the Musou specials attacks and women on the battlefield - but those are easily forgiven.

    "Finally will it have real time weapon change on the 360 version but not the PS2 version?"
    Why would you want real time weapon change in SW?

    "Actually we 1 up Genji 2 we have 'Real Time Character Change' in both PS2 and XboX 360 versions. Maybe we should release a viral ;)"
    Who's We?


  • Isonic #9 6 years ago

    Well koei's Dw+Sw always get bad reviews.Now im a guy who totally trusts reviews and very much always agrees with them(well the reviews in ops2 magazine anyway).But i have to totally dissagree with anyone who gives Dw a below 7/10 score.I love the Dw series,not only does it give you a fair bit to do,but its soo addicitve so the replay value is gd to.But i cnt give koei credit for producing Sw.Its adsactly the same as Dw.The story may be diffrent but the gameplay is almost identical.