Samurai Warriors Chronicles

A strong 3DS title making full use of the consoles features that has been overlooked. This will keep you busy for hours and those looking for a good 3DS game should look no further and give Samurai Warriors: Chronicles a look.

It's mystifying that Samurai Warriors: Chronicles hasn't been endorsed by more stores, because it is a surprisingly strong title, trumping the quality of the Wii version by quite a long shot.

It's basically a history lesson meets the X-Men, and every bit as goofy as that sounds. [Apr 2011, p.70]

Fans of hack 'n' slays and an affinity for Japan can't do anything wrong by picking up this title.

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles is, above all, a Musou. And anyone willing to play a Musou must be prepared to deal with the excessive repetition.

But instead of controlling just one character on the battlefield, you can switch between up to four combatants as will, which adds strategy and helps keep up the game's pace. [April 2011, p.85]

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles provides some nice additional element to the series' tradition, but remains identical in the gameplay's main mechanics.

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles does not bring a lot of big changes to the core gameplay, but the extra features and tweaks make it a worthwhile purchase for fans of the series, as well as someone who has never even played a Warriors game before.

Regardless, these games all provide a certain kind of mindless fun you can't get in overproduced big-budget action titles, and that includes Chronicles. And the fact that you can level-up your weapons to prepare for the next big fight adds at least some purpose to the whole affair. It's not easy to explain why a non-fan should give these games a try; you just have to try them somehow and see if that mindless fun strikes a nerve. Otherwise, being loosely tied to the last Samurai Warriors should make Chronicles a fine choice for the series fan who bought a 3DS.

Series followers will like the game and the new ideas it brings to make the most of the touch screen. Those who have never liked the Warriors formula, or have gotten tired of it, won't find anything exciting here.

With lots of missions, items and characters, Samurai Warriors: Chronicles is a must buy for all the fans of the series. However, this 3DS episode comes with no major changes from the previous releases.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles isn't the best game of the saga, but it offers an interesting challenge for 3DS.

The slowest of slow-burners, yet it offers a huge challenge that deserves better and more varied combat and AI.

With its extravagant art direction, Samurai Warriors was the obvious franchise for Koei to debut on Nintendo's new platform. The surprise is how well the simple combat and new ideas work as a portable experience. [May 2011, p.105]

Samurai Warriors Chronicles is a good Mûso. It provides its share of new features, and is also better structured and paced than the previous ones. The fans of the genre will probably like it a lot, but it still not a sufficient effort to charm the others, especially since the 3D isn't much more than a gimmick on such a formula.

It feels more like a stopgap that's worth borrowing or renting, but can't justify a full cash price.

If you grew tired of this type of game, there's little about Samurai Warriors: Chronicles that'll pull you back into the series. At the same time, it's still an impressive and surprisingly enjoyable title that showcases the 3DS' graphical capabilities.

Chronicles isn't the wonder 3D that we expected, and everything was ruined by useless and unskippable texts, a bad camera, repetitive and simple gameplay, and the need for more development time. It is long but boring.

Though the campaign is of decent length, the lack of new content really hurts this title.

When given the opportunity to perhaps offer something new or different, Samurai Warriors Chronicles fails to deliver anything worth while.

There could have been so much more to Samurai Warriors Chronicles…but there isn't. Unlike its source material, this game will never make history.

Fans of the series might be delighted to have this game in their pocket, but I can't imagine anyone choosing it over the recently released Dynasty Warriors 7 or a favorite console entry in the Koei canon.

Things like the touchscreen map should have opened up the opportunity to plan out strategies and position troops about the battlefield, but your allies never live up to your demands, and organising a strategy is rendered useless by the idiotic AI. There are a lot of missed opportunities here, as strategic troop planning could have added a lot of depth to the title.

There's a fun game lurking underneath the surface here, but lazy voiceover decisions, overly-dry, didactic lectures between missions, and wall-punchingly frustrating ally AI keep the bright qualities of the game from shining through.

Chronicles' biggest problem is its repetitive combat.

The camera is also a little problematic. With no right analogue stick, you'll have to periodically squeeze the left shoulder button to see what's directly in front of your hero.

Quotation forthcoming.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles does a fine job of bringing the shallowness and tedium of the series to the 3DS.