Thanks for making the thread LORD.
If anyone wants one Musou game for PS4, I'd recommend Samurai Warriors 4-II, here's my review of it, don't worry about the graphics since PS4 ver. would not have these issues
I've put 20 hours by now into this game. Samurai Warriors 4-II gameplay-wise is a revision of Samurai Warriors 4. Reading up on both games it seems 4-II has a different story mode to 4, and makes Naomasa Ii the main character for the game.
Set during the Sengoku warring period, various figures from that era are re-imagined in crazy outfits or armor and splashed with a barrel of typical anime tropes.
The gameplay is standard Musou fare, using the PS controller for reference
Square: Light Attack
Triangle: Strong/Dash Attack
X: Jump or dodge
Circle: Musou attack (Super move)
L1: Fixes camera in front of you
R1: Special skill unique to each character
R2: Zooms in on the mini map
L2: Call your horse
Select Button: Switch to Secondary character
Basically you are put into a map where you fight off against hundreds of mooks, you level up as you defeat enemies and generals. Each map has a set of objectives that must be met in order to progress or complete the stage, in addition there are Defeat Conditions, such as if any of your allies die or if an enemy takes control of an area on the map, it's game over.
Not achieving objectives is generally not a game over, but it's generally better to complete them because you get bonus gold, etc. There are also Bonus Objectives, optional ones but there is a decent reward for completing them.
The combat generally has you mashing between Light and Dash attacks in the hopes of taking out as many dozen soldiers as possible and see the KO count rise and rise. For the most part each character has their own unique attack animations, however all characters who are Lvl. 1 only start with a limited set of attack combos and must be played with for a while to unlock more attack combinations.
I should point out that due to some of the bizarre weaponry given to some characters they tend to do some whacky attacks, like Kojuro firing a green laser from the shield on his arm.
The game has a few modes being Story mode, Free mode (play as any character in any of the completed story mode arcs) and Survival mode.
I've put most of my time into Story Mode, and although you can create your own character to play in the game, I didn't bother to do so since I'm generally bad at character creators.
At any rate, Story mode consists of around 10 story arcs wherein you play as various characters. There are cutscenes that play before and after you complete a stage but for whatever bizarre reason, they're 30 FPS and the graphics quality takes a bizarre drop. I prob. should've skipped these cutscenes after finishing the 5th character's story mode since they had a lot of anime tropes applied that I'm surprised I hadn't caught onto them until I finished Yoshitsugu's story mode.
Before playing a stage, you can upgrade/strengthen horses or sell horses you don't want. Horses are the fastest way to go through a stage, as walking on foot takes a longer time to reach certain destinations.
You can also upgrade or sell weapons you've earned from playing through and completing stages. Generally in the lower difficulties you get weapons that go up to Lvl. 10 or 30, but I hadn't played on the higher difficulties to see what stronger weapons looked like.
Finally you can strengthen your characters using a Sphere Grid like menu to get passive abilities (such as increase attack or defense) and active abilities. Active abilities offer bonuses such as earning extra gold or increased attack damage against enemies.
When playing in Story mode you must choose 2 characters which you can switch between using the Select button, this allows the player to have one character focus on one objective while the other can be used to complete another.
While the gameplay would've felt repetitive, I still enjoyed playing through the story mode, mainly as it gave me that beat'em-up fix I've been craving for quite some time. And for as absurd some attacks looked they were really cool and wracking up 1000+ KOs per stage was fun to achieve.
I can't comment on the music much, as it did nothing for me. It was good for what it was but nothing memorable like Sengoku Basara's character themes.
This being KOEI Tecmo their PC releases have been criticized for the substandard graphics and some performance issues on some PCs, while I can't say for certain if this applies to SW 4-2, the main character models all look good and animate really well.
The graphics options aren't that major but on my end I had to use NVidia Control Panel to get the game to run at 60 FPS with settings at max. While I do get single digit dips, nothing gamebreaking has ever occurred to me.
One major gripe I have is that for whatever absurd reason, KOEI Tecmo didn't bother to have icons switched out; basically each button or command has its own icon and the game displays this even during tutorials. You'd think they'd show 360 buttons or even keyboard keys but no you get to see an icon and figure out for yourself what it does.
Overall if you want to experience a Musou game, this or One Piece PW3 would be a good entry, both are easy to get into and pick up and their gameplay and combat is fun in short bursts. If you want to experience a completely different game, try playing on higher difficulties although this is something best perused when you have stronger weapons and are at a high level.
Note that you DON'T need to play SW4 first, IMO 4-II is simple enough to get into and play and has better strengthening options for your characters
, I will continue waiting, I want these games digitally but I can also wait.
