Samurai Warriors 4 release date marks ten years of campy action
Samurai Warriors 4's release date is a reminder that the series is ten years old. Ten whole years I've been obsessed with Sengoku-era Japan and the many, many slash-able historical figures camping it up in Omega Force's hack-and-slash action effort.
Tecmo Koei has announced that Samurai Warriors 4 will be shown at E3 2014 in the Sony booth to celebrate the series's first next-gen release.
The series is ten years old now, the publisher said, and has sold over 34 million units ahead of Samurai Warriors 4's launch on PlayStation 3, PS4 and Vita on October 20 in North America and October 24 in Europe.
We know quite a lot about Samurai Warriors because while Japanese publishers quietly pretend we don't read Faimtsu all the hard PR work has already been done over the pond. It boasts 55 playable characters, the largest cast of the series to date, including newcomers Nobuyuki Sanada, Yoshitsugu Otani, Takatora Todo, Naotora Ii and Munenori Yagyu. You'll be able to switch between two characters in battle, sort of like in Warriors Orochi, too.
Combat now includes Hyper Attacks and finishing moves called Mighty Attacks, as well as additions imported from the latest Dynasty Warriors releases such as Rage Attacks and better horsemanship (seriously: hold down the horse call button to get into the saddle seamlessly. Thank you Omega Force). Portable items return from Samurai Warriors 3 - that only came out on Wii in the west, so you might have missed it - and you'll be able to affect morale and officer development.
Rather than the character-driven stories of past games or the multiple-faction narrative of Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors 4 follows two stories, set in opposing regions. In Chronicle Mode, you'll create your own (probably ridiculous) officer and tell your own story.
On PS4 there'll be fancier graphics, of course, and there's cross-save and cross-play between all three systems.
In short, I'm going to have a great time reading too much into every dialogue exchange and setting up headcanons fetishizing every single officer over the age of consent. Hooray!