I really enjoyed this game.
First of all let me start with the design. After crappy super realistic designs of DW9 this was absolutely the best choice. And they changed how these characters look after such a long time.
The story is more detailed and they gave personality to people who didn't have it that much. Also the fighting system improved a lot.
The thing that annoyed me was the weapons diversity. In old koei games each character had a unique weapon. Also there wasn't enough ally soldiers. It looks like you and your friend officers is kinda alone. Even after capturing the bases the density of allied soldiers is really really low.

lots of characters, and lots of variety! I had originally thought i would only play a few characters, but ended up trying them all! Samurai warriors 5 has pretty solid hack n slash fun.

However, the gameplay doesn't change much at all once you've tried all of the weapons, and while it's fun, it noticeably overstays it's welcome. I have no motivation to do the post game chapter.

With that said, Mitsuki is the FINEST woman i've EVER played as in a video game. I'm giving Samurai Warriors 5 an extra half star just for gracing my eyes with her ethereal beauty.

Cut characters and cloned movesets suck, and while the story starts off promising, once the timeskip happens it goes to shit with some characters doing a 180 with their personalities. Gameplay is definitely an improvement over 4, with less focus on hyper attacks and more diversity between the rather low variety of weapons.

As for new characters, Yasuke, Sandayu and Kazuuji all kinda suck and are mostly forgettable. Mitsuki was alright, but I don't like OCs in historical games. Shikanosuke's a good addition, and I'd like to see more exploration of 'western' Japan in future titles. Lastly is Sena, who was by far the best new addition to the cast. A great design, a rare Imagawa character, and a well told, if underused, story.

Lots of problems, but a decent groundwork to build upon for future SW games.

I've been a fan of the Warriors games since trying a PS2 demo of dynasty Warriors 3 back on the PlayStation 2. When Samurai Warriors came out as a spin off a friend and I played it co-op for hundreds of hours as well as it's extreme legends expansion pack. 17 years later we both picked this up to play co-op together despite now living miles apart only to find the online for this game is irredeemably broken. You have to have played the levels first before you can play them co-op. It's so infuriatingly stupid in it's design it baffles the mind that a game released in 2021 would be so poorly designed. We ended up playing the same levels at the same time talking on headsets to pretend we were playing together rather than play through the entire game twice for no reason.

That aside, this is probably my favorite Warriors game. For those who haven't played one before the series is essentially you playing the role of an insane warrior cutting through thousands of troops in historical battles with historical figures. Obviously this is all completely unrealistic but I really enjoy them all the same. The combat has the staple attacks, hyper attacks and special attacks called musou as the series is known for but now each character can learn and equip ultimate attacks which take time to charge. These new attacks really add to the combat options over previous entries, I really love them.

The game has a large amount of content with a packed story mode, 37 characters to unlock, level up and equip as well as a sort of defend the base mode called Citadel. This mode isn't all that interesting though and you have to grind a lot to get budget characters scenes that are really boring. So your mileage may vary.

The biggest change is the complete overhaul of the visuals. It now uses a slight cell shaded style with completely new character designs. I really like the new art style here, everything feels a lot more colorful.

Overall though certainly flawed in a hard to ignore way I really had a great time blasting through this in the evenings, just play it single player.

+ Ultimate attacks are a great combat addition.
+ Fantastic new art and visual style.
+ A ton of characters and content....

-......not all of it great.
- Worst online co-op implementation I've seen in any game.

When a game goes under a "revamping" it's usually bad news, but they actually delivered on this one. Nobunaga is now finally his own character instead of discount Cao-Cao. No more open world shenanigans, but a few lessons learned with newer games. They tried a new more dramatic approach to storytelling which I'm not exactly thrilled by, but I can appreciate the variety. The most common criticisms levied at this game such as "not having enough content" is cherry picking what's not there instead of all the new things they tried. It's honestly a good musou game, haven't had so much fun with one since the PS2 ones.

SW5 is probably the biggest departure in the series. Emphasis on a few characters for story and the new cel-shaded artstyle. Many returning characters also get dramatically different designs as well. The actual gameplay itself is fun like the rest and the formula hasn't changed much there for better or for worse.

The story mode is pretty detailed in showcasing the events of Nobunaga and those closely around him. For those that liked his character, will probably like the new story mode. As someone who didn't really care much for him to begin with, the actual story was just okay. The lack of key SW Veterans not just in the story department, but also as actual characters in the game was very disappointing.

The one big "side mode" to the game is Citadel Mode which is like a base defense mode. It's not really interesting which is a shame since there's nothing else besides the Story Mode and the Free Mode equivalent to it.

Compared to SW4, it feels lacking in content.

Samurai Warriors 5 é basicamente um reboot da franquia, focando totalmente no conto da figura histórica japonesa: Nobunaga Oda e trazendo sua jornada de forma mais acessível para o público em um único jogo, adicionando um pouco de ficção em certos eventos pra deixar a trama mais interessante. Por consequência, esse título pode ser aproveitado de forma independente, sem ter conhecimento prévio de jogos passados, e por falar em jogos, vale lembrar que existem 2 franquias principais da linha Warriors, a primeira delas é a própria Samurai Warriors, que são jogos baseados no período Sengoku do Japão, transformando figuras históricas japonesas em personagens; e a segunda é Dynasty Warriors, sendo jogos baseados nos eventos turbulentos próximos do fim da Dinastia Han e da era dos Três Reinos da China, seguindo a mesma pegada da primeira.

Mas deixando a aula de história de lado, o quinto título chegou para atrair novos jogadores, com uma nova direção de arte, novidades no combate e uma atenção adicional no enredo geral.

Agora vamos tirar o elefante branco da sala dizendo o óbvio: senhores, esse título é um musou, de musou pra musou, ou seja, é esmaga botão nos inimigos, especialzinho nos chefões e completude de objetivos; nesse quesito o game não tem nada de inovador, sendo aquela velha fórmula de enfretamento de exércitos totalmente repetitivo, mas hey, pra quem gosta, é um prato cheio, são os famosos jogos no-brainer.

A história é dividida por rotas, tendo roteirização, cinemáticas e diálogos de personagens para apresentações; mas nem se anima nesse quesito, já que não rola muito aprofundamento, desenvolvimento ou riqueza de detalhes de maneira geral, tudo isso acaba servindo mais como um pano de fundo para as coisas acontecerem.

Questão de combate, bom, como eu disse é esmaga botão e especialzinho nos inimigos, o diferencial desse aqui é que agora temos uma paleta de skills pra nossa disposição, quem lembra ai de Pirate Warriors 4? É a mesma pegada; podemos trocar entre dois personagens nos campos de batalha, montar no cavalo eee só, só isso mesmo.

Uma coisa que me deixou puto incluindo a comunidade de SW com essa sequência, são os movesets clonados, pensa no seguinte, vamos supor que todos os personagens do elenco desse game não passam de meras skins pro jogador, e o que realmente determina seus golpes, paleta de skills e movesets no geral, são suas respectivas armas.. por conta disso, todo mundo pode equipar qualquer tipo de arma, mas por consequência, todo mundo vai ter os mesmos movesets.. isso é Samurai Warriors 5; uma péssima tomada de decisão na minha opinião, já que acaba eliminando a individualidade de cada personagem, coisa que era enaltecida nos jogos passados, aqui eles cagaram completamente, uma pena.

Questão de gráficos e trilha sonora é tudo positivo, a repaginada nos personagens e esse novo estilo anime´like ficou bem bonito para o jogo; teve uma galera que ficou pilhada porque alteraram o visual da Nõ em especial, mas sinceramente? A mina ficou bem mais bonita, então pra que reclamar? As músicas são boas e decentes de maneira geral, seguindo aquela pegada oriental e tals.

Pra concluir, SW 5 é um bom jogo no geral, além de ser um musou decente, eu apenas gostaria que ele fosse mais que isso, porém me divertiu da mesma forma; então fica a recomendação pra galera do gênero.

Review from a Musou first-timer.

Pros:
- Fast, satisfying gameplay. Game gives you broken weapons and you feel like a badass. Simple two-button combo system that has enough depth to not bore.
- Stable 60fps with zero drops (on PC).
- Great music, fusion of traditional Japanese instruments with modern genres.
- Story is well presented and enjoyable (even if all the cinematics are people standing or sitting cross-legged while talking).
- The overall presentation is very sleek.
- Characters are cool, a mixture between anime and J-Rock sex gods.

Cons:
- There really isn't much to the game. There's only Story mode and a Base Defense mode. If you've played one stage you've played them all, so you really have to enjoy this type of gameplay.
- There's three difficulties + a harder one that unlocks when you beat both Story modes. You're so overpowered (unless you bring in a character you haven't leveled) that there really isn't much difference between them.
- The game feels like it has levels, skill trees, horse stats, all for the sake of having something to do. But there's no reason to do any of this, and it's completely superfluous. Only the craftable weapons give any kind of customization.
- There's 15 weapons but 37 characters. Some of the characters use the same weapons as others, and any character can use any weapon. Movesets are shared. So no reason to really play as any of the second-tier characters, unless you're compulsive-obsessive and just want to level everyone to 50 to check off a list.

Because of the last points, the game feels kind of... pointless? It's more of a way to decompress and just pass the time mindlessly. Which is both a pro and a con. I just wish it had something more, something to unlock or strive for.

Overall, still highly recommended. The gameplay is fun. I'll definitely be purchasing the next Musou game.

Ok I'm done with all 3 routes.

As a casual first timer to the Musou genre who mostly just did observing through the DW games this has been almost exactly how I envisioned them to play.

I like the character variety and how their combos differ with certain paths, I enjoy the story even if they basically were all real events (basically I like how they adapted it here) and the game's artstyle is super pretty with the paintbrush aesthetic.

I think this game is great on short spurs however, it can get quite repetitive if playing for long periods of time and Citadel mode is a fun distraction but otherwise it lost me near the end and I just stuck doing the main campaign.

Still it's a lot of fun and a really good "cooldown" game for me during last year and the beginning of this one.

Low 8/10