Koei Tecmo recently took to Twitter to announce that the Samurai Warriors series has sold over 8 million copies. The recent launch and sales of Samurai Warriors 5 will have obviously helped the series’ overall sales, and it’s a pretty impressive figure, all things considered.

Samurai Warriors 5 is available on PS5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A demo of the game is also available on all platforms. You can read our review of the musou action title through here– we quite liked it, in spite of a few issues.

The #SamuraiWarriors series has sold over 8 million copies worldwide!

Experience the latest release #SamuraiWarriors5 available on PS4/Xbox Series X|S/Xbox One/Nintendo Switch/PC Steam! Not sure? Give the demo a try!

Thank you for the love and support everyone! #KTFamily pic.twitter.com/jKjfAalmBh

— KOEI TECMO AMERICA (@KoeiTecmoUS) August 6, 2021

Rather than talking about what’s in store for us in the future, though, let’s instead take a look back and talk about what have been some of the best ninja and samurai related games over the years. In this list, we’re going to take a look at fifteen such games. Given just how vast and popular this genre is, it goes without saying that this list isn’t going to be exhaustive by any means, so if we failed to mention any of your favourites, fire away in the comments section below.

Also note that just for the purpose of this feature, we’re clubbing samurais and ninjas together- we know they’re not one and the same. But you know, convenience and all. Also, this list is in random order and isn’t ranked, so keep that in mind as well.

Without further ado, then, let’s get right into it!

SAMURAI SHODOWN

Back in the days of the insane craze surrounding Street Fighter II, fighters were all the rage. Samurai Shodown came along and put an irresistable, samurai-centric spin on it. It wasn’t a revolutionary game, and it didn’t do anything that could be called unprecedented, but as those who have played it would gladly tell you, it was an absolute blast. With its dedication and focus on samurais, it’s a a game you simply must play if you’re a fan of the subject matter.

Samurai Warriors 4 is the latest incarnation of the series, hot off the heels of Warriors Orochi 3. Though the two entries do have a lot in common, Samurai Warriors does enough to differentiate itself and offer a good time, even for those who’ve just come down off the last Warriors title.

" The smaller scale story lends a certain, personal angle to the narrative that the sweeping, grandiose Orochi title never could find "

Samurai Warriors is obviously vastly more grounded than the fantastical crossover found in Orochi, treading the ground of feudal Japan and, using the biggest quotation marks you could conceive of, retelling the battles that shaped the country. Instead of a single overarching story, Samurai Warriors splits itself into many more intimate stories, following a handful of major characters and their struggle.

The smaller scale story lends a certain, personal angle to the narrative that the sweeping, grandiose Orochi title never could find, and it shows the various players that shaped the region, their personal stories and goals. Each tale only lasts a handful of missions, meaning the pace is kept fast enough to maintain interest.

Each story has the benefit of not only the army leader, but a dynamic of some kind of companionship between two other characters, such as brothers. This additional interaction adds to the story for sure, but it also ties in nicely to the gameplay design.

" Use of two, truly separate fighters allows a far greater flexibility with the battlefield management that makes up the metagame. "

Unlike Orochi, which had players switch between three fighters they swapped between as they went, Samurai Warriors 4 gives you two characters, and gives them separate placement on the map. Use of two, truly separate fighters allows a far greater flexibility with the battlefield management that makes up the metagame.

Characters being independent of each other lets you tackle multiple fronts at once, reducing or even eliminating long traipsing across empty battlefields. You can direct the character you aren’t controlling to specific points on the battlefield, and give them specific high profile targets to take out. They never seem to have a ton of luck when you let the CPU take the reins, but it at least makes it easy to get them in place to protect key areas or make multitasking simple.

As far as the actual act of fighting, the formula hasn’t been messed with drastically. Fighters have affinities for standard, heavy, special, and so on. They don’t drastically differ, and the act of taking out a group of thirty solders with a single slash is still as cathartic and potentially therapeutic as ever.

" the act of taking out a group of thirty solders with a single slash is still as cathartic and potentially therapeutic as ever. "

Stringing together combos stays just as simple and flashy as ever, though by stringing in reverse, heavy attack to light, you’ll begin what the game calls a “Hyper attack”. Its fast, frantic and mows right through the crowds of peons, and builds meter fast, yet becomes useless against enemy officers. The commissioned foes know how to block, demanding a tactic change, if only slight.

Chronicle mode is the only other mode to speak of, again contrasting the recent Orochi title drastically. You create a new officer from scratch, though options are rather limited. Afterwards, you’ll take them across the map of Japan in a contrived effort to “chronicle all the warriors of the age”. Maps and missions are much smaller in scale, and though it tries to be more, it results in a very rudimentary map to map advancement, with weaker characters that you care even less about. Barely worth a look, but it is there.

" Sorry, Samurai Warriors, none of your tracks are going on my iPod. "

Actual presentation is just as underwhelming as Orochi, mostly acting like a cleaned up PS3 title, able to push higher resolution and a few more solders on screen. Technically, it runs flawlessly, allowing you to relax into the world of Samurai Warriors and lose yourself without and janky frame rates. The music is unremarkable – it works well in the moment, adding to the mood and the atmosphere, but it is nothing that sticks with you once you’re done with the game. Sorry, Samurai Warriors, none of your tracks are going on my iPod.

Samurai Warriors 4 is different enough from Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate that it’s an inoffensive game to follow so closely, and works as a good enough hack n’ slash hybrid with RTS to catch the attention of anybody who might jump in. If Warriors hasn’t been your kind of thing in the past, there is still nothing that will change your mind. If you want to give it a shot though, it’s hard to find a better place to start.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.