_Ryu
2002
One of the most unique open world games you'll come across on the PS2, your choices have a big impact on how the story unfolds and there are six different endings you can achieve based on which faction you joined and what specific events you took part in. It's incredibly immersive, both the visuals and the music create this melancholic "end of an era" atmosphere that permeates throughout the whole experience, which is fitting for a samurai game set during the start of the Meiji Period. The combat isn't anything mind-blowing, but it's serviceable and the different swords you can get add a bit of variety to it.
The biggest issue I have with this game is one that unfortunately plagued all of its sequels as well: It's just too short. I know, it may seem like the multiple routes/choices make up for the length, but they ultimately don't, because this short length causes the story and characters to feel underdeveloped, even if they are functional and captivating as they are. Every Way of the Samurai game always left me wanting to see more, to see the characters in it getting more fleshed out, having complete story arcs, but it never happened because the game doesn't really have time for that.
Despite this criticism, I still think this and all the other three WOTS games are worth checking out for the novelty alone, especially if you're into samurai-themed stuff. All I can hope is that if they ever make a new WOTS game, or some kind of spiritual successor, they succeed at keeping the good qualities that made this series stand out, as well as offering a longer experience with a fully-realized story.
The biggest issue I have with this game is one that unfortunately plagued all of its sequels as well: It's just too short. I know, it may seem like the multiple routes/choices make up for the length, but they ultimately don't, because this short length causes the story and characters to feel underdeveloped, even if they are functional and captivating as they are. Every Way of the Samurai game always left me wanting to see more, to see the characters in it getting more fleshed out, having complete story arcs, but it never happened because the game doesn't really have time for that.
Despite this criticism, I still think this and all the other three WOTS games are worth checking out for the novelty alone, especially if you're into samurai-themed stuff. All I can hope is that if they ever make a new WOTS game, or some kind of spiritual successor, they succeed at keeping the good qualities that made this series stand out, as well as offering a longer experience with a fully-realized story.
2010
For such a short and simple game, I did get invested enough to replay it through incognito mode until I've seen all the possible routes/endings.
2018
This game really makes you feel like Spider-Man.
2011
I do appreciate the improvements made to the combat and the more open-ended design XIII-2 gives to the locations you travel to, this time it actually felt like I was interacting with the world the game was presenting to me instead of being led through the most boring rail track imaginable. That being said, it still has a handful of things I don't like about FFXIII by default, like the combat relying so heavily on everyone ganging up on one single enemy until it's staggered and destroyed, elemental resistances and weaknesses barely being relevant and MP just not being a thing at all, also most of the sidequests are just "NPC tells you to pick up a specific item and bring it to them" or "NPC tells you to kill generic monster", but the game does make up for that by having all the different unlockable time periods to explore and the alternate endings, so it's fine,I guess. The story is bad, but it's not like the story in the original XIII was good to begin with, so whatever, I'd even say that aspect was also improved because at least XIII-2 has Caius, he's easily the best character in this trilogy.
1988
Pretty fun until the game decides it hates your guts in the last couple of stages.
"Escapism bad! Reality good!"
2009
While I appreciate the new characters, the new battles and that banger of a soundtrack, everything else is a major downgrade from the previous game, especially the allied AI. Jesus, what the hell did they do to my army? Even though I do all the missions in order to keep morale high, these dumb motherfuckers still keep falling like a stack of dominos for no reason at all. Was it so hard to just copy SW2's morale system and paste into this one? Holy shit, guys.
2003
Yeah I remember thinking this was pretty great back when I was 15, and I stil commend the idea behind its story and characters. However, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get bored to tears while playing it, maybe I should have just let it stay a good memory of my PS2 days.
Made me wish I was playing Shadow the Hedgehog. If I'm playing a game and it made me have that kind of thought, then something went horribly wrong.
2006
This review contains spoilers
Samurai Warriors 2 literally made me spend hours looking up sengoku jidai stuff online to see how the historical versions of the characters compare to the ones from the game. I had no idea those characters and battles actually existed in real life, so it was pretty fascinating.
There is a pretty obvious bias towards the Toyotomi side here, given how a lot of the more developed characters (Mitsunari, Yukimura, Sakon, Ginchiyo) are in it during the Sekigahara campaign, while the Tokugawa side is mostly composed of boring one-note characters aside from Ieyasu himself. Still, I think SW2 (Xtreme Legends expansion included) does a pretty decent job at covering the general story of the Sengoku Jidai and presenting it as a complex war story with multiple perspectives. While the first game was mostly focused on Oda Nobunaga's conquest, this one goes from that all the way to the Siege of Osaka, with a bigger emphasis being put in the Sekigahara campaign, which is understandable since it was the most climactic part of the period.
That's not to say other characters and parts of the period don't get to shine, the way Koei handled the tragedy surrounding Azai Nagamasa and Oichi, Shibata Katsuie's relationship with Maeda Toshiie and the theme of passing the torch their story tackled, the build up to Akechi Mitsuhide's rebellion against Nobunaga... And many other stories, it's all pretty fantastic. There are just some liberties taken with the characters and historical events that felt weird, like Saika Magoichi being the one who kills Nobunaga, and Fuuma Kotaro being this cartoony-as-fuck villain who's evil because he likes chaos and randomly appears in battles that have nothing to do with him saying "PEACE BAD, CHAOS GOOD" for no reason, and Date Masamune is portrayed as an unlikeable spoiled brat, these two characters would thankfully see a lot of improvement in future SW games, at least.
As for the gameplay... Well, it's a musou game, you know what you're getting into if you played even one of them. This one does shake things up a little by having characters with different styles of combos, but ultimately it's still very much a musou game where you fight hordes of enemies, most of them don't present much of a challenge besides some officers and other main characters.
That being said, this is probably the musou game with the best use of the morale system, as it really seems to make a big difference when you complete the objectives in the battles that make it unfold in your army's favor. When your army's morale outweights the enemies' morale, your soldiers and officers actually start to fight better, I've seen multiple instances of allied officers and main characters holding themselves pretty well during the battle and defeating enemy officers/main characters without me having to come in and do all the work for them. I swear to God, when I played the Battle of Sekigahara in the Western Army's side and managed to thwart the Eastern Army's plan of getting Kobayakawa Hideaki to betray me, as well as completing all the previous missions, my allies were able to defeat Honda Tadakatsu by themselves. Honda Motherfucking Tadakatsu, basically the Lu Bu of this series, and they kicked his ass on their own! This would never happen in any modern musou game, or even some of the older Dynsaty Warriors titles, your allies always have to rely on you to do everything in these games and it can be annoying sometimes. In Samurai Warriors 2, though? Your army can hold their own against the enemy just fine, provided that you complete the missions in order to raise their morale, which feels a lot more like participating in a war, I love this.
What else is there to talk about? The graphics won't blow anyone away, but they look good enough, especially for a late PS2 game. The soundtrack is fucking fire, but that's a given with most musou games, even the shittier ones have some great music at the very least, so no surprises here.
So... Yeah, Samurai Warriors 2 is one of my favorite PS2 games of all time, I spent hundreds of hours playing, experiencing all the different character stories and the ways battles can unfold depending on what missions I complete or fail to complete. It was a great time by itself, but it also led me to have an equally amazing time reading about the Sengoku Jidai as it was historically. Game journalists don't like this or musou games in general, but they can all go suck a big fat wiener because my opinion is superior to theirs.
There is a pretty obvious bias towards the Toyotomi side here, given how a lot of the more developed characters (Mitsunari, Yukimura, Sakon, Ginchiyo) are in it during the Sekigahara campaign, while the Tokugawa side is mostly composed of boring one-note characters aside from Ieyasu himself. Still, I think SW2 (Xtreme Legends expansion included) does a pretty decent job at covering the general story of the Sengoku Jidai and presenting it as a complex war story with multiple perspectives. While the first game was mostly focused on Oda Nobunaga's conquest, this one goes from that all the way to the Siege of Osaka, with a bigger emphasis being put in the Sekigahara campaign, which is understandable since it was the most climactic part of the period.
That's not to say other characters and parts of the period don't get to shine, the way Koei handled the tragedy surrounding Azai Nagamasa and Oichi, Shibata Katsuie's relationship with Maeda Toshiie and the theme of passing the torch their story tackled, the build up to Akechi Mitsuhide's rebellion against Nobunaga... And many other stories, it's all pretty fantastic. There are just some liberties taken with the characters and historical events that felt weird, like Saika Magoichi being the one who kills Nobunaga, and Fuuma Kotaro being this cartoony-as-fuck villain who's evil because he likes chaos and randomly appears in battles that have nothing to do with him saying "PEACE BAD, CHAOS GOOD" for no reason, and Date Masamune is portrayed as an unlikeable spoiled brat, these two characters would thankfully see a lot of improvement in future SW games, at least.
As for the gameplay... Well, it's a musou game, you know what you're getting into if you played even one of them. This one does shake things up a little by having characters with different styles of combos, but ultimately it's still very much a musou game where you fight hordes of enemies, most of them don't present much of a challenge besides some officers and other main characters.
That being said, this is probably the musou game with the best use of the morale system, as it really seems to make a big difference when you complete the objectives in the battles that make it unfold in your army's favor. When your army's morale outweights the enemies' morale, your soldiers and officers actually start to fight better, I've seen multiple instances of allied officers and main characters holding themselves pretty well during the battle and defeating enemy officers/main characters without me having to come in and do all the work for them. I swear to God, when I played the Battle of Sekigahara in the Western Army's side and managed to thwart the Eastern Army's plan of getting Kobayakawa Hideaki to betray me, as well as completing all the previous missions, my allies were able to defeat Honda Tadakatsu by themselves. Honda Motherfucking Tadakatsu, basically the Lu Bu of this series, and they kicked his ass on their own! This would never happen in any modern musou game, or even some of the older Dynsaty Warriors titles, your allies always have to rely on you to do everything in these games and it can be annoying sometimes. In Samurai Warriors 2, though? Your army can hold their own against the enemy just fine, provided that you complete the missions in order to raise their morale, which feels a lot more like participating in a war, I love this.
What else is there to talk about? The graphics won't blow anyone away, but they look good enough, especially for a late PS2 game. The soundtrack is fucking fire, but that's a given with most musou games, even the shittier ones have some great music at the very least, so no surprises here.
So... Yeah, Samurai Warriors 2 is one of my favorite PS2 games of all time, I spent hundreds of hours playing, experiencing all the different character stories and the ways battles can unfold depending on what missions I complete or fail to complete. It was a great time by itself, but it also led me to have an equally amazing time reading about the Sengoku Jidai as it was historically. Game journalists don't like this or musou games in general, but they can all go suck a big fat wiener because my opinion is superior to theirs.
1998
Hasn't really aged much worse (or better) than most early 3D platformers to be honest, people just rag on it 'cause it's Sonic and saying "Sonic bad" gives you cool points on the internet.
2021
So terrible I almost thought it was an official Sonic Team game.
Considering that a good chunk of the original game's difficult parts stem more from questionable level design, I don't really mind this one being easier, though they could have made it more challenging since this is more of a reimagining instead of a faithful remake. There's not much to complain here, but there's just nothing really outstanding either, it's a harmless, comfy little platformer, which is good enough to warrant a pass.
Unironically peak 2D Sonic holy shit, I don't even care if Frontiers ends up being bad because I already have my 2022 Sonic game.
2013
"Yo let's make a Sonic game for people who don't like Sonic"
"Sure"
"Sure"