I love Samurai Warriors 2, so naturally more Samurai Warriors 2 is right up my alley. Both Okehazama and Shikoku are fantastic stages, Katsuie, Toshiie and Kojiro are not only very fun to play as, but in Katsuie and Toshiie's case, they offer one of the best stories in the whole series. Gracia has an interesting story mode (though obviously they wouldn't come anywhere near the historical fact that she was a christian), but to be honest her moveset sucks ass, same thing goes to Motochika, while Yoshimoto is... Well... Yoshimoto, he's not allowed to be anything more than a buffoon who's obsessed with Kemari in pre-SW5 games, the only cool thing about his story mode is that you can unlock Okehazama to be played in the Imagawa side.

I mean, this added content is cool as it is, but also a bit underwhelming compared to something like Dynasty Warriors 5 Xtreme Legends, which not only added a multitude of new battles, but there was also that really neat mode where you created your own character and experienced the Three Kingdoms Era story through his perspective as you could follow one of the different factions or switch allegiances if you wanted.

I wish SW2XL was more like that, there are many other interesting historical battles/events that got left out in SW2 and could be added here: The Siege of Kakegawa where Ieyasu defeated Yoshimoto's son and effectively took over what the Imagawa had left, the Takeda, Uesugi and Hojo campaigns in the east that were mostly ignored in the original game also deserve more love, Nobunaga's infamous massacre at Mt. Hiei, and even some other notable Sekigahara campaign battles like the sieges of Gifu, Fushimi and Otsu. But I digress, SW2XL is stil a decent addition to the original game anyway, so I can't complain too much.

Since I just got done playing the Silver demo, I might as well sum up all three campaigns since their stages are all finished and that's pretty much what matters the most. Story? Who the fuck cares? Sonic 06's story is garbage anyway, same thing goes for the boss fights, if anything they'd probably drag my rating for this down instead of helping it go up.

Sonic: Very good, there are the obvious improvements on the original game and all, but the stages also find a pretty neat middle ground between Adventure 1 and 2's approaches to level design, making it feel like a proper evolution of those games. 8/10

Shadow: Meh, I like the core gameplay and the implementation of the chaos powers, but the bland and repetitive "combat-oriented" level design from the original game is still here, so are the shitty vehicle sections. Not terrible, but painfully boring. 5/10

Silver: Holy shit they fixed him! Well, for the most part. He doesn't move at a snail's pace and the telekinesis doesn't have nearly the same collision problems found in the original, but there are still the occasional odd moments where objects hit enemies, but don't cause damage for some reason. The levels are generally good with a lot of solid platforming sections and some cool environment interactions and hidden power-ups to discover. Genuinely surprised that I actually enjoyed this, considering I remember it being the worst campaign in a game where all three campaigns were awful in their own way. 7/10

I swear every single time this game tried to go all "HUMAN BAD, NATURE GOOD" cracked me up, not because I disagree with environmentalism or anything, I just think they did this in an incredibly silly and heavy-handed way here. It's weird because Chrono Cross was released by the same company that made Final Fantasy VII, that game also had environmentalist themes except they were much better handled and more relevant to the plot compared to Chrono Cross' story being this convoluted mess that tries to be a lot of different things but doesn't excel at any of them in particular.

That being said, I do think there are some good isolated moments in the story, the battle system is fun and the sheer atmosphere evoked by the gorgeous art coupled with one of the most beautiful video game soundtracks of all time make this worth playing at the end of the day.