Archview #41: Samurai Warriors 3

 There are better Musou games out there, just sayin'.

 Samurai Warriors 3 is yet another entry in the long-running "Musou/Warriors" games and holds the distinction of being a Wii exclusive. Outside Japan anyways. In Samurai Warriors 3, you take the role of one of 37(And a hidden extra) different generals as you lay waste to hundreds of enemy soldiers, while re-enacting(In a very loose sense) battles of the warring states period of Japan History. Except they couldn't produce flames out of their swords, but that's a whole 'nother story.
 Gameplay is very simple, pick a character of your choice, pick an item preset( There are three preset with 6 different items per stage), mash the attack button and clear hundreds of enemies. Most enemies are just fodder, being quite content at taking a beating, enemy officer however(They have their names over their heads, so you just know that they are special) will put up a battle. Most of the time, you have to slay a certain general in order to finish the battle, and more often than not, a battle is lost if either you die or a certain general of your army dies.

 Characters have two branches of attack strings, one performed by pressing the attack button many times( From 8-10 depending on the characters) and another one by pressing Charge Attack during the nortmal attack string, which produces many different attacks. There are three types of characters: Power, Skill and Normal, and they have little nuances to their charge attacks, some get multiple charge attacks in a row, some get a single one per string but have more charge attacks to choose from. There's also a Musou Attack, which consumes an energy gauge, that you rise by attacking and recieving damage. Unique to the "Samurai" spin offs, characters get an Evade button and an exclusive Skill, different to each general(Though some are suspiciously similar...).
 There are four modes, most of the playable in co-op: Story Mode, in which you tackle 5 stages that follow the story of a certain general(Only 30 out of the 38 characters have a story mode), Free Mode, in which you can replay any stage as any general, Historic Mode, in which you take your created(More on this later) character through 15 battles that follow the story of Japan and Murasame Castle, a stage-based mode that follows a original story, featuring demons and the like. Needless to say, there are lots of things to do in the game, and luckily, character levels carry throughout the modes, so you can level them up in Free Mode before tackling the harder Murasame Castle Mode.

 There's a Create-a-Character feature, but it's pretty basic, with few pieces to pick from, at least you can equip characters with any moveset from the other generals. Speaking of Movesets, there's not a single clone in the game, and each general has 4 different types of their weapons to be found. Each Weapon, regardless of type, comes with random skills, so you might have to grind before finding just the kind of weapon you want, and you can power up those skills at the Blacksmith, for a price. While there are no alternate costumes, you can edit the color pallette of every general.
 The game looks pretty good actually, while the in-game models don't move their mouths when they speak, they have a lot of detail. Stages can look a bit drab, but they have their defining features and props. Most impressive, there's almost no slowdown, despite the huge amount of enemies on screen, plus the special effects of your attacks. The music I found to be a tad boring, it's fitting for such a Japanese game, but I didn't feel it. Voice acting is... there are some really good voice actors, and some bad ones, not as bad as Dynasty Warriors, but still bad. There's dual audio, if you are into it, but Warriors games are meant to be played in English.

 Samurai Warriors 3 is not a bad game, but it feels a bit boring when compared to the other Warriors games, however, this is the only Warriors game on the Wii, so if you are a fan, there's no reason not to get it. In summation, it's a very good looking game, it's pretty solid and there is a lot of content, however, it can be a bit boring at times.
 7 out of 10.