When Koei Temco realised people were getting bored of the repetitiveness of the dynasty warriors games, they sat down in a board meeting to brainstorm how to make the game interesting again. Good ideas like improving the combat or adding some form of tactics to the game were ignored in favour of making the same game in Japan. Well this is the 2nd one, and as far as I can tell, nothing has changed. You can imagine exactly how this is going to play out without me telling you. Smash X a million times then frisbee the disk out the window.

“Are you ready for your gameplay lessons?”
Ninja Gaiden Black gulps
God Hand breathes heavily
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix nods nervously
Devil May Cry 5 sighs
“Yes, Samurai Warriors 2” they say in unison

I really loved this game and its story mode. It's a ton of content for such an old game. Warriors gameplay has always been such a satisfying thing to me and the system they've got here works very well. Despite these games always having a terrible dub, I've gotten used to it to a point where I find it charming. The vibes this game gives in its story are exactly what I like from this comical historic interpretations. Magoichi's friendship with Hideyoshi, Tokugawa's guilt after his loss at Mikatagahara, Nobunaga's dynamic discussion of destiny with Mitsuhide, there's some incredibly creative writing choices here that worked great even despite a mediocre translation.

Don't even get me started on Nagamasa. Thought his story was gonna be a rehash of Oichi (or really the other way around) but it turned out to be a much more compelling tale. His contemplation over honor and love was brilliant, despite triumphing over his enemies and his wife's embrace of his choice, he's unsatisfied with the outcome, even after conquering Japan. He desires a better world where he wasn't forced into battle against his former friends within the Oda, with the final level revealing the tale to be a dream and giving him a second chance to rejoin his sworn brother Nobunaga and give him the unified Japan that he believed in, while also fulfilling his duty to the Asakura. But man was this is where I wish there was an improved English translation. I can only imagine how this tale was written in the Japanese version, without the cheesy dub and sometimes strange dialogue.

I guess the most noticeable problem this game had is when they include stories for characters like No and Ina then do absolutely nothing to distinguish them from the near identical story modes of Nobunaga and Tokugawa. At least Honda and Sakon, while also having near identical stories to Tokugawa and Mitsunari, had trade-offs to still make their campaigns enjoyable. Honda is basically the Lu Bu of Samurai Warriors and Sakon is given unique cutscenes/interactions to pull together a unique narrative. But for characters like No, they fill in gaps with reused levels, the stupid village missions, or just straight up don't change the campaigns at all. This is where I appreciate the more modern format of multiple characters in one campaign. Ranmaru Mori doesn't even get one, so I'm not quite sure why they just didn't omit certain characters they knew they couldn't give an entire tale. I just wish they shook things up a bit when they had to reuse levels instead of giving identical objectives. For example, Shimazu surprised me with his final level, where he turns on Mitsunari and then takes out both him and the Tokugawa, finally ending the battle by getting his well earned duel with Tachibana. If they had done stuff like that more often I feel like it could justify having so many levels with identical battles.