Whoever you happen to be, Koei’s many warrior games can’t possibly fail to give you a mighty sense of empowerment. They’re the ultimate turn your brain off entertainment, where you can carve through whole armies just by hammering a single button. Due to its many quirks and simplicity It’s also the ultimate love it or hate it series (I refuse to think of them as separate series’). Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends is the second Samurai Warriors 2 expansion and the zillionth (ok, not quite there yet, but with the rate they’re coming it can’t be too far away) Warriors game to be churned out.
For the uninitiated: Warriors titles are large scale battle games, where you take charge of a mighty overpowered warrior (either of Chinese or Japanese ethnic) and go to work on slicing up hoards of inept troops. There’s some minor strategic elements to think about and the combat, whilst never really approaching anything much more than brainless, can be deeper if you so want it to be. Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends sticks rigidly to this well worn formula.
Being an expansion, Xtreme Legends unsurprisingly doesn’t offer the same level of content that a regular Warriors game does, though there’s still plenty here to keep the fans joyfully hacking away for quite some time.
There are new characters (of which you can take through individual story modes) new weapons, new attacks, an increased level cap (from 50 to 70, so you’re now able to make your warriors even more overwhelmingly powerful than you could before) and the addition of the mercenary mode, which functions much the same as the Xtreme mode in Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends.
Diehard fans will enjoy Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends, just as they did the many previous games, but those who detest the series will find little that’s going to change their (possibly too cerebral for such a game) mind here. There’s little in the way of new here, but to be fair it is just an expansion (albeit a bit of a cheeky one) and is also available for a decent price, so if you’re a fan, you can’t really go wrong here.
7/10
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