Samurai Warriors 4 (Sengoku Musou 4) In-Depth Review

Note: This review is based upon the Japanese version of the game (Sengoku Musou 4) and uses translated names. English names of certain things may be different in the English release.

INTRODUCTION

KOEI TECMO's Samurai Warriors series has occasionally been undermined as the unexplored sister series to the more widely popular Dynasty Warriors series. That to which is a shame, as Samurai Warriors at certain times in its history are eminently less rehashed and more developed in comparison to its Dynasty Warriors counterparts.

2014 marks the 10th anniversary of Samurai Warriors, with the initial Samurai Warriors dating back to 2004 on the Playstation 2. In its celebration, KOEI TECMO has decided to unleash the long awaited next installment to Samurai Warriors—Samurai Warriors 4, which has been in secret production for at least a year or more. Samurai Warriors carries on the same iconic game formula of Dynasty Warriors: a simplified hack and slasher that couples mindless army killing with unparalleled character roster. The only difference being that one takes place in Japan and the other in China. Can you guess which one is which?

When Samurai Warriors 3 debuted on Wii, players were confused and indignant to the abrupt dominant Sony platform switch to Nintendo. There's not a lick to worry here however, as Samurai Warriors 4 has sailed back to its roots as a Playstation 3 and later Playstation 4 title.

GAME MODES

Samurai Warriors 4 is divided into three main game modes, edit mode, gallery, encyclopedia and of course compulsory game options. For the sake of not detailing the unnecessary, I'm only going to focus on the main game modes as well as touch briefly on edit mode.

STORY MODE: The predominant Story Mode in Warriors games is like a child that can't make up its mind. One day it is character based, where stories are all divided up individually to every playable character. The other day it is region/clan based, where stories are bunched together as larger regions/clans. Samurai Warriors 4 goes back to being the less vast latter. This negatively cuts the longevity of Story Mode to a great deal in comparison to Samurai Warriors 3, which was thoroughly character based.

There are a few pros to being region/clan based, regardless. You have the freedom to swap out your characters prior to playing each stage, rather than be permanently affixed to one person the entire way through. If you're interested in playing this game for its historical retelling, I guess playing as regions/clans will offer you a much quicker knowledge and experience of the story, as opposed to playing individual character stories on at a time.

Story mode scenario selection

The implementation of Samurai Warriors 4's Story Mode is quite remarkably similar to that of Dynasty Warriors 8. Scenarios of specific regions/clans can be chosen, thereafter will be several episodes (stages) to clear from within. If enough scenarios are cleared, then additional ones are unlocked. A direct deposit from Dynasty Warriors 8 are also branching paths that are injected usually near the final bits of a story, usually swapping sides of the army you are playing for and against. Being in close proximity to the end means that separate branches are only up to two stages in size and moreover there are no three branch setups of any kind, shamefully. Additionally, once you travel up the to branch point, you can select which branch to play right off the bat without restriction. In other words, there are no requirements to unlock the top or bottom one as opposed to Dynasty Warriors 8. Gaiden episodes also makes a return in Samurai Warriors 4, filling in some extra bits for several scenarios.

Another problem of Story Mode lies within the amount of length and its annoying inconsistencies. The majority of scenarios are constructed of only three or four mere total episodes, dismissing Gaiden episodes. A few sprinkle of scenarios may establish more, but the lengthiest are only around eight episodes long. Coupled with the rather low amount of scenarios to chose from and unlock, don't be utmost surprised if you end up finishing the game's Story Mode swifter than prior Warriors games.

The game has a new conversation feature where certain characters will be interacting with one another face to face almost constantly throughout Story Mode. These bits aren't too terribly interesting, as characters are placed motionless on a blurry backdrop, talking to each other non-stop, while you have to listen or read and press a bunch of text dialogue boxes. Moreover, these "cutscenes" aren't exactly beneficial as you are never allowed to make choices during all the talking. That is a definite heavy blow to something that can be made substantial, as allowing the player to make choices that can effect the storyline and its consequent branches would be glorious. Too bad they skimped over that.

The conversations aren't actually detrimental to the game, as they help aid the storyline in places where battles aren't erupting and characters just simply need to talk with one another. The earlier games didn't have these drawn out bits nevertheless and the storyline experience fared about the same. The less time spent out of battle the better. No one wants to always sit around idle while there is another enormous battlefield to slay thousands upon!

Talk is cheap, just bring it!

Speaking of cutscenes, I regret to say that Samurai Warriors 4 has just about the least amount of CGI cutscenes in comparison to any current Warriors game. In the past, all endings were done in dazzling CGI, whereas in this game only a hand selected few endings are actually honored with that prize; the rest dumped with in-game rendering.

All in all, while Story Mode gets the job adequately done, I'm not ecstatic to reach a conclusion that this game's Story Mode is quite an inferiority compared to Dynasty Warriors 8's. Then again, Dynasty Warriors 8 has one of the best story modes in any Warriors game for a long time, so it will be a challenge to match it. Still, I expect KOEI TECMO to at least carry on a great establishment, rather than taking lots of step backwards for their next game.

FREE MODE: There isn't much I need to say much about this mode, really. If you played the many multitude of Warriors games, you'll realize that Free Mode is simply a mode where you are essentially freed from your chains and shackles of restriction in other modes such as Story Mode. In other words, you are free to select any character and play in any stage without restrictions. Capeesh?

CHRONICLE MODE: Chronicle Mode is designed specifically for CAW, or Create-a-Warrior, which is what we like to call the custom characters we design in Warriors games.

It basically tries to reenact Mercenary Mode seen in other Warriors games, borrowing traits from Samurai Warriors Chronicles' main story mode.

After selecting your CAW, you start off as a mercenary and are given the choice to start under several factions that are mentioned in story mode. After pledging your allegiance, you can then travel through different provinces of Japan's Warring States in order to complete various requests given to you by the main cast.

Map of the Warring States of Japan in Chronicle Mode

Characters from the main cast are scattered throughout specific points on the map, giving you options of befriending or alienating them through personal conversations, fighting them in battle or traveling with them. Personal conversations that are engaged carry the same setup as ones that occur in story mode. The only notable difference here is that your character can actually make a two choice statement or decision during the chit-chat, with one raising your affinity with a character and the other lowering it. By raising your affinity high enough with a certain character, his or her conversation will change during battle. By raising it to max, you can then unlock that character's moveset/weapon to use within character creation. A secondary character can also accompany you through your travels depending on your relationship with them, fighting alongside you on the battlefield.

There's a lot of choice making in Chronicle Mode, LOTS...

A nice feature of this mode is the ability to swap in and out characters as you please, even edit your CAWs during play. Hence, you are not locked to one character the entire time, which is a definite necessity as Chronicle Mode takes an enormously long time to finish.

EDIT MODE: If you sadly recalled the character creation from Samurai Warriors 3, you'll be laughing at yourself like a hyena if you consider calling it anything other than a giant pile of excrement. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. In fact, the sheer memory of editing any kind of "custom" character in Samurai Warriors 3 gives me brain cancer, from just even thinking of its limitation and very little actual customizing.

Well, I'd say if you yell at a company enough and lend them a chance, they can likely improve. Elation ensues, and I have to say KOEI TECMO delivered well in the character creation department of Samurai Warriors 4, offering the best yet editor in any of their Warriors games. Regardless, I will shudder and call inappropriate names at anyone even attempting to label this mode as new, as aside from a few minor features and new parts thrown in, it's an exact replica from Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires. But hey, why fix what's not broken right?

So if you happen to be joyful of the character creation in Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires, then be grateful that there's not much that's going to disappoint, with the exception of the obvious lack of Chinese clothing in exchange for Japanese (although some of these clothing may just scream "Chinapan!").

Looks familiar? You're not alone...

Okay, I will have to stop and briefly mention one of the more unique features that have been added in character creation in Samurai Warriors 4, which is the ability to upload custom photos from your Playstation 3's hard drive and display them in-game on a variety of decorations for your character. These can include your character's portrait, musou finisher symbol and even crest on your clothing. I bet in no time there's going to be a slew of inappropriate usages of this feature online, so much that KOEI TECMO may be needing to hire special personnel to monitor everyone's custom photos.

GAMEPLAY AND CHARACTERS

If there's one thing that rival game developers envy any Warriors game on, it would have to be the ridiculous amount of unique, playable characters that keeps piling up after every new trillionth release. Why am I not rolling my eyes that Samurai Warriors 4 continues that tradition by expanding that table of characters further?

So there it be—nine wholly new Japanese characters are introduced, including such names as Nobuyuki Sanada, Yoshitsugu Ōtani, Hisahide Matsunaga, Koshōshō‎‎, Lady Hayakawa, Kojūrō Katakura and others. Now is that a mouthful of foreign names or what? That's not all, adding further from Samurai Warriors 3's roster are returning new characters from Samurai Warriors Chronicles 2nd, including Takatora Tōdō (Ice Man), Naotora li (Japan's biggest stereotypical woman) and Munenori Yagyū (Japan's answer to Zhou Tai).

New cast of characters. Lots to like, some to despise... maybe.

A fellow viewer did brought up a valid complaint regarding the new characters, which was basically—"RECYCLED WEAPONS, RECYCLED WEAPONS AND RECYCLED WEAPONS!!!". True, some of the weapons these new characters wield look as if they blatantly stole them from existing Dynasty Warriors characters and re-equip them with new movesets (those cheeky bastards!), but come on... How many types of weaponry exist on Earth that are actually unique to one another? After a few hundred movesets, there's no doubt that some weapons start appearing scarily similar to one another. In fact, a better statement would have simply been—"Thanks Japan for not going too crazy ape sh*t with us on the weapons, as if they are not already unrealistic enough!".

What KOEI TECMO did go a little overboard on however was rather character design. Take Koshōshō‎‎ for example, which is just about the most unconvincing Japanese person one can imagine, feudal wise. She's a love woman alright and surely an undeniable great sex demon, but why does her shockingly realistic orange pink hair resembles an afro?!

A long time ago in Japan, once lived this very woman...

Jokes aside, the majority of new characters are actually great and uniquely done from their attires, personalities and weapons/movesets. The only other character I tend to cringe at is Hisahide Matsunaga, which is like KOEI TECMO attempting to craft their own Spider Man, ugh...

Gameplay wise, you won't find it a surprise of the century that Samurai Warriors 4 behaves largely identical to Samurai Warriors 3 in the gameplay department. Of course, that foundation is both improved and dug upon with the implementation of the new and scrapping of the old.

Let's take a step back and reminiscent a bit for unfamiliar folks who have never touched a Warriors game, and lightly skim over the basics of gameplay:

In any Warriors game, after you selected your killing machine of choice, you are placed upon an usually overly large battlefield that are comprised of minions of your own army as well as the enemy's. You are free to roam around the battlefield, either by traveling via foot or more fortunate methods such as horses and bears, slaying army peon fodder and occasionally higher class officers as you please. Completing a stage requires you to complete one or more missions, that will usually guide you step by step through the stage from point A to point B. The final mission will predominately involve killing off a boss NPC or reaching an escape point.

But the point of these games are not strictly about a one man/woman army massacring everything, as you are also required to feed attention and focus to your own army, including assuring important officers are kept alive, escorting them or defending crucial areas of the map such as your main camp from enemy attacks. This is also where your morale bar comes into play, as ensuring it is kept high through killing and successful missions will more guarantee you success of your army being victorious.

If you like this screenshot, this game may be for you.

The combat system in Warriors games are comprised of two primary types of attacks—normal and strong (sometimes also referred to as charge attacks). Normal attacks are regular attacks executed using the square button (up to 8 consecutive times), but can be immediately followed up with a strong attack by pressing the triangle button after a certain amount of normal attacks are executed, which will vary dependent on character. Thus, a variety of combos can be developed using these attacks. Also in your combat arsenal is Musou, or a more powerful attack that will require your Musou bar to be filled by at least one bar (raised by killing enemies, using items or collecting pickups). In Samurai Warriors 3, Ultimate Musou was additionally added that was unleashed when the newly introduced spirit bar was fully maxed and a Musou was performed.

In your defense arsenal, you have the ability to guard and side step. In Samurai Warriors 3, you also had a roll, which allowed you to evade farther than a side step. This roll has been removed from Samurai Warriors 4, which is completely silly, as both the side step and roll serves different purposes and should not really be interchangeable.

In Samurai Warriors 4, an entirely new attack string was added aside from normal and strong, called "Hyper Attack" or "Shinsoku Action", initiated using solely the triangle button. Therefore, this also entirely eliminates the C1 (first strong attack) of every character. This is a faster type of attack that continuously rushes the enemy at swift speeds and allows easier group damage; however, are completely ineffective against officers. Hyper Attack works similarly to normal attacks in which a new attack can be executed following every successful one. Finally, different attacks can be carried out by using the square button instead of triangle after every Hyper Attack (e.g. triangle, triangle, square), much like how normal and strong works.

Confused or think the above is all a bunch of mumbo jumbo? Why don't you take a look at the video above, which exemplifies both normal and strong attacks as well as Hyper Attack in the first few minutes of gameplay.

Hyper Attack does add a bit of intricacy and benefit in the combat system that helps elevate Samurai Warriors 4's combat system further away from dullness. I'm sure players will appreciate another welcomed ability to not only kill groups of enemies faster without any sacrifice (because what is a thousand enemies if you can't kill them screamingly fast?), but also help plow through the battlefield without the constant need to hop on and off a horse all the time.

Hyper attacks are a completely new set of attacks with lots of possibilities.

Samurai Warriors 4's Musou takes on several unexpected twists. The most noteworthy is that all characters are now blessed with an elaborate finisher that is injected at the end of their regular Musous, adding on further possible damage from the set in stone original Musou attacks, which has not surprisingly been altered. A few unwanted negatives have reared their ugly heads up because of this. First of which is that Musous can no longer be manually and tightly controlled like in previous Samurai Warriors. What do I mean by that exactly? In previous Samurai Warriors, one could press the Musou button, release it, still be in their invulnerable Musou state and carry out regular normal and strong attacks, even travel until their Musou bar was depleted. They could also return to their Musou attack animation by pressing and holding the Musou button again during the Musou. This has been entirely thrown out the window in Samurai Warriors 4 for no particular reason, and one of the first reasons of why I consider the combat system being simplified in the depth department. Another minor gripe is that all Musou finishers contains several seconds of stylish, close-up shots of the character posing before the actual attack that you are required to always watch. Sure, it looks pretty sweet and awesome the first time you see it, but after being forced to watch it every time you pull off your Musou, it almost urges you to not wish to execute your Musou anymore. Simply being able to skip such useless interruption would be a welcomed addition.

Musou finisher close-ups: Awesome and annoying at the same time.

A feature called "Rage" has returned from Dynasty Warriors 8 and works how you expect it to. When you max out your spirit gauge, you can use it to instantly dive into rage mode, temporarily increasing your overall stats such as attack power, attack speed and defense. May you imagine what on Earth happens when you perform a Musou in this rage state? Yup, you perform your Ultimate Musou, which has not been tampered with from Samurai Warriors 3. Because of rage implementation, you can no longer execute your Ultimate Musou simply by maxing your spirit gauge. You now have to enter rage mode and only then can you unleash your ultimate attack of death and destruction you so love.

Say, have you ever desired to instant kill an enemy, especially when their health is so low they should be considered graveyard material already? Well rejoice, as you now can with a new ability called "Mighty Strike", which is just that—instant kill an enemy (officer only) when their health is low. Triggering Mighty Strike requires you to just wail on your poor victim until their health becomes low enough to pop up the an alert icon above their heads, and then executing them in devilish ways with the triangle button. Mighty Strikes can also be manually triggered all the time by side stepping into their attacks. If you time it just right, you can immediately break their guards and perform a Mighty Strike that way. Of course, instant killing with Mighty Strike is only available if the officer's health is low, so performing a Mighty Strike anytime else and the officer will very likely still be well breathing afterwards. Nevertheless, Mighty Strikes that doesn't instant kill can be beneficial to help open up for your initial attacks on officers (so long as you aren't actually pressing triangle to perform them).

Mighty Strike is not perfectly well implemented. For instance, there should definitely more open time and less punishment to execute them. Often times, you're so busy wailing on an officer that you don't even realize the opportunity for Mighty Strike pops up until it's too late. If you simply do a consecutive attack during the trigger time and hit the officer, the option for performing Mighty Strike will go away instantly. It will not return either until you manually trigger it with side step or attempt to wail on them again until it pops up. Sometimes the latter fails to work; so you're back to square one killing the officer the long way.

Mighty Strike is also a potential to lower the overall difficulty of the game, as it becomes easier to kill officers quickly and triggering it with side step is undeniably easy to perform. If you master the art of Mighty Strike with side step, officers will not even have a chance to attack you.

Something a lot more interesting than Mighty Strike is the game implementing straight out character switching in midst of battle. No, this isn't your expected Musou Orochi style character switching where all characters are meshed up together in one being all the time like some mutant bizarre freak, but works more in the lines of Samurai Warriors Chronicles. Two characters are always needed to be selected prior to entering the battlefield, but they remain completely independent beings from one another, traveling and fighting on the battlefield separately. Switching between another character is instant without any delays, and you can easily monitor your secondary character's location and stats including health and defense all the time. While you control one character, the other character will be controlled by the AI. This artificial controlling can pose a problem on higher difficulties, where the AI of your other character will sometimes not act the way you want them to. In the worst case scenario they can get themselves killed, ending your game abruptly.

Two characters are allowed for selection, allowing instant switching during gameplay.

Proficiency levels are now present in this game, but affixed to character attacks categorized in—normal attack, strong attack, special skill, and hyper attack. Wait, you have to level up certain types of attack for each character?! Yes, that does seem a bit weird to you, correct? Well, in a game sense it's sensible as players can build up stronger attacks in which they frequently use the most. Regrettably, leveling any category to the max 20 is definitely no walk in the park and requires much dedicated effort. Therefore, if you hated the grinding in previous games, the grinding here with these proficiency levels will make you hate them more... Oh so much more.

Consumable items gets a bit of an overhaul in Samurai Warriors 4, but not to an enormous extent. The most significant change is that you can now freely choose and customize each item you want to take with you on the battlefield. Yeah, I ain't dreaming a good dream here, but there is absolutely no more of that ludicrous three items presets for each stage from the third game. An abundance of new items are also introduced, but more particular noteworthy are that each item has three sets of levels, increasing in their efficiency the higher the level. Individual special items cast into character's faces are available to equip, and these all do various different effects, but most are derived from an attack or special ability of that particular character.

The weapons system keeps it traditional by reusing the weapon system introduced in the third game, adding and subtracting a couple minor features, leaving it largely stagnant and rather displeasing. Any kind of tailored weapon customization is incredibly difficult and inane to even think about, as attributes are set in stone on every weapon purchased or picked up. Attack power can moreover only be increased with a certain type of attribute, which isn't guaranteed to be a selection for every weapon. Samurai Warriors 4 has additionally eliminated the three class weapon system from the third game; that is speed, normal and power. This class elimination can be considered a sin to some and a blessing for others. Players who appreciated a bit more depth and variability in the weapon system will likely be disappointed that their weapon choices are now more limited. Others will be glad that they no longer have to worry about weapon classes weighing them down, as all regular weapons are now created equal.

Developing weapon attributes to higher levels are done by utilizing gems collected or purchased. A big pro of the new weapon system are the ability to donate any weapon from any character to one another; however, all leveled attributes on that weapon will be lost during the transfer. A second pro is that any weapons picked up during gameplay will belong to the character who picked it up only, so it helps shed down the enormous randomness of weapon collecting in the past.

I honestly think having gone through so many iterations of Warriors games, including giving players much more freedom in customizing their weapons in newer Warriors games, KOEI TECMO has decided to stick with its annoying restricted weapon system that's antiquated and five years old. Why, why and why is the only thing I can say.

Finally, do you remember armor and boots that can be equipped in Samurai Warriors 3? Of course you do. Well, they are gone in Samurai Warriors 4. Just trashed, wiped off the face of the planet. If you have a fond memory, you'll recall that both armor and boots can add a significant amount of various attributes to your character when equipped, usually non-offensive related. The attributes range from increasing your spirit charge distance, allowing you to spirit charge without depleting your spirit gauge, increase invulnerability from side stepping/rolling and others. Now that both of these are annihilated, every attribute, even if they are not offensive related, have to be jammed into your weapons, creating sometimes a bloody mess. The worst part about all of this is that lots of beneficial attributes from Samurai Warriors 3 were lost because of the axe, including most of the ones I mentioned above. Moreover, you have less total attributes to develop your character, as again every attribute are derived from your weapons only.

AI AND DIFFICULTY

Samurai Warriors 4's difficulty is definitely more challenging than Dynasty Warriors 8 and about equally challenging as Dynasty Warriors 8: XL, but regrettably lags behind in the AI department of literally almost any current Warriors release.

The game has four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Hell. The jump from one difficulty to another is sometimes abrupt and not as smooth as it should be. For instance, normal to hard has a more lenient difficulty increase that's somewhat discernible. From hard to hell however the jump in difficulty is much wider, as hell is almost literally twice as difficult as hard was.

There's always two primary ways to increase difficulty in most games—one is to increase the AI and have the player work harder to be successful, the other is to just ramp up enemy defense and damage. The best difficulty implementations in games are to have a perfect balance of the two.

Unfortunately, Samurai Warriors 4 does much more of the latter than the former, throwing on as much damage and defense amplification to the enemies as possible on Hell difficulty while neglecting the actual AI. Who would have guessed, right? It's apparent that AI seems to be a particular problematic point for Warriors games since literally forever. On the other hand, this also makes me a bit frustrated and sad, because KOEI TECMO has almost perfected, or rather produced really great human-like AI in Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate, but only in Unlimited Mode. So why do they keep bringing in low quality AI that tarnishes the difficulty of their games?

The enemy AI, even on Hell difficulty, do not pose too much of a threat so long as you are avoiding their few attacks they throw from time to them. Officers almost never execute their musous, do long combos or dodge attacks. Be forewarned that some of them will love hyper attacking you to death, however. I dare to say that the most harsh part is actually avoiding being ganged up upon, as that usually causes instant death.

Officers also now have their usual ability to recover by somersaulting when they hit the ground or in the air during certain player attacks, rendering juggles much less efficient then previously. In Samurai Warriors 3, juggling officers could become infinite so long as you had enough spirit gauge and continuously abuse the spirit charge, because officers back then had literally zero recovery. The recovery speed for officers in this game is perhaps one of the fastest in any Warriors game. Hence, if you plan on pulling off combos via juggles, expect it to be prominently more difficult than ever.

Going back to character switching, you'll remember what I said earlier that this feature can impact difficulty in a great way. Basically, you now have to not only worry about your controlled character's well-being, but your partner's as well. Since your partner is automatically controlled by the AI when you aren't controlling them, and pairing that with not a game's greatest AI, you'll find common instances where they can just rush into a group of enemies and kill themselves. Thus, this game absolutely requires you to constantly switch back and forth characters all the time on higher difficulties to ensure you won't be suddenly greeted with the game over screen.

With the implementation of Hyper Attack, Rage, easily abused Mighty Strike and such broken weapon attributes as 克己 (self-control), a player can breeze through a max star stage in Hell difficulty without a weighty amount of sweat loss, not even mentioning all the items they can additionally bring along to help amplify their ownage.

Nevertheless, I'm not saying that Samurai Warriors 4 is an easy game. It is easy if you purposely make yourself broken and be abusing the combat system. That in itself is not easy due to the game's lottery styled weapon system and requirement of heavy grinding. If you go in unprepared or normally prepared, you can easily expect some of the best challenge you will experience in a Warriors game in awhile. Again, just don't expect miracles in the enemy AI.

GRAPHICS

Who actually talks about graphics in Warriors games should be ashamed of themselves, as these types of games are always focused on filling the screen with as much junk as possible without degrading frame rate. That of course comes at a cost of reducing overall graphics quality. Compared to other games where things are less hectic and much less has to get rendered, overall graphics will suffer in Warriors games in comparison simply because of its nature.

Still, KOEI TECMO seem to be always be hopping through hoops attempting to improve their graphics in Warriors games further and further. With the now next-gen Playstation 4 and Xbox One available, graphics for these games are better than they have ever been.

The PS3 version of Samurai Warriors 4 graphically is about what you'd expect for this type of game—not great and not terrible. Sure, it looks dated by at least one console generation in comparison to other games, but at least it's still a remarkable step up from the previous Samurai Warriors. I actually went and played Samurai Warriors 3 again for the first time in years on the Wii, and that game seriously made Samurai Warriors 4 look like a game that belonged on a future console, like a PS5!

Graphics aren't winning any awards, but still manages to please the eye.

The most important bit regarding graphics is at utmost the frame rate, which is surprisingly very solid. There is almost literally no hints of slow down regardless of how much stuff flies on the screen, and trust me, stuff are flying everywhere literally every second.

AUDIO AND MUSIC

Rock tunes mixed with oriental instruments fill the speakers in Dynasty Warriors games, but Samurai Warriors takes a different approach and shifts its music more towards club, dance and techno. Both genres are of course pumped and energetic enough to get most players excited towards ravaging the battlefields. A blend of Japanese instruments in conjunction with more mellow tracks makes the soundtrack to Samurai Warriors 4 very nice and diverse. You'll also be treated with the obligatory and popular remix tracks of Honda Tadakatsu's theme, Anegawa and others.

Japanese voice overs are unstained and phenomenal for the most part, with voice actors rarely ever changing their roles for returning characters unlike the sloppy mess that's embarrassingly evident in English localizations. Voice overs for the new characters fits their personality well, even if I have to admit some of them can be overly grating to the ears.

REPLAYABILITY

There is no denying the potential for virtually unlimited gameplay length given how much underlying stuff there is to accomplish and unlock in Samurai Warriors or virtually any other Warriors games. That is of course only if you are committed to and thoroughly enjoy the game in the first place.

Still, this isn't a type of game that is meant to be played hours on end without break. Literally any type of hack and slash game will wear out your fingers and thumbs and turn very monotonous and repetitive after a few hours, the exact same can be said to Samurai Warriors 4.

CONCLUSION

While Samurai Warriors 4 is a good Warriors game on its own, it doesn't necessarily exceed in rivaling its current Dynasty Warriors counterparts nor greatly improve upon Samurai Warriors 3 as one would have hoped. There's not a whole lot of new that's refreshing, and several areas of refreshment in the third game has been wholly scrapped in 4. The results is that Samurai Warriors 4 is simply just a sufficient step upwards from 3, while a step backwards in a few cases. Another unmentioned area is combat depth, where Samurai Warriors 4 is shamefully lacking, as the combat system hasn't been nearly evolved or contain as much intricacy as either Dynasty Warriors 7 or 8. In both Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8, many Earth shattering advanced combat techniques can be done because of the game's diverse weapon swapping system coupled with better character classes and types. The same cannot be said to Samurai Warriors 4's more back to roots, simplified combat style.

One thing can certainly be said however—never has a Warriors game been so stylish looking with so much on-screen flash. Samurai Warriors 4 is the utmost king of that at current for sure; the amount of bright lights and flashes this game throws at a mortal can render them blind, literally. But without a lot of depth tacked on the actual combat, that becomes less relevant as more advanced players will be more dreary of its not particularly deep combat system. There is no fighting game equivalent combat system to see here, basically.

Nevertheless, the majority of players who play any Warriors game usually don't play it to experience deep combat, do they? Of course not. They simply wish to just delve in, release tension and slay thousands of army fodders to satisfy their inner evilness. If that's your type of thing, then rest assured Samurai Warriors 4 will definitely make you a happy person. For the rest, I'm sure you'll find yourself more at home with Dynasty Warriors 7, 8, Musou Orochi or even the Sengoku Basara series.

OVERALL RATING: 7.0/10

 

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Access Forbidden Japanese Pages on SAVEDATA.JP and Other Sites

There has been a bit of an online thing in Japan recently, where websites are cracking down on who actually gets to view their content—preferably only their own species. Why is that, you ask? Well, imagine you created a website in English for English speaking audiences, then along comes a bunch of foreigners from another country who generate content on your site in a different language you and your audience doesn't understand. You wouldn't like that too much, right?

So hence, if you try to visit a few Japanese sites/pages recently and discovered you are unable to access them due to errors (e.g. Forbidden Access), then you are most likely purposely locked out due to your location not being in Japan.

The most recent example of this is on SAVEDATA.JP. I already detailed what this site is about and why it is useful here. However, they have begun to make all their save codes (セーブエディット) section available only to people living in Japan. So if you try to access these pages outside of Japan, you'll be now greeted to the following:

Red text translate to: You do not have permission to access.

Here is an easy way to get around this, and no, you do not have to move to Japan or any other country.

All you really have to do is to switch to use a proxy address. Proxies not only help you retain anonymity over the internet, but it additionally solves the issue of blocked/forbidden websites and pages, even ones set up by the server/network you are currently using.

But the above page will not just work with any proxy. You specifically need to use a proxy that is located in Japan. By doing such, you are basically masking yourself to the internet as coming directly from Japan instead of where you are currently.

So where do you get a Japanese proxy address? That's easy, just Google "Japan proxy" and you'll get sites offering free Japanese proxies. Here is one that I've actually used myself. Here is another one.

Most proxy lists should indicate the proxy IP (proxy address), port, speed, level of anonymity and country it comes from.

In order to browse the internet with at least decent speeds, you should select a proxy that has the highest speed. Not all proxy addresses also work, so you may have to end up trying multiple ones until you come upon one that does the trick.

So looking at the above proxy list, I would first select 179.60.241.173, copy it to the clipboard and keep the 8080 port number in mind (as I'll be needing to input it later onwards).

Do not simply copy and use this proxy address I'm using or refer to the screenshot I posted for addresses. Proxies change all the time, so you most likely won't be able to continuously use the same ones for an infinite amount of time.

Let's briefly go over how to actually switch to a proxy address in your internet browser settings. All browsers will be different, but in general they should all give you adjustable proxy settings.

In Firefox, proxy options are located under browser options/preferences in Advanced -> Network -> Connection -> Settings.

After clicking "Manual proxy configuration", you need to enter the proxy address you copied previously and paste it into the "HTTP Proxy" number field. Additionally, input the port number tied to that proxy address into the "Port" field. Leave everything else unchanged and save the changes.

In Chrome, proxy settings can be changed by going to Settings -> Show Advanced Settings -> Network -> Change Proxy Settings. The steps should then be the same as Firefox above.

After changing the proxy, you can then test the page that you couldn't access earlier by simply reloading or going to the address again. If you cannot get the page to load or you are still getting error messages, you should go on to try the next proxy address.

So after doing that, I was able to access SAVEDATA.JP's save codes pages again!

Now that you know how proxies work, you can use it to your advantage in other ways, and I do mean not strictly for Japanese web content exclusively.

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Game Genie with Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends

You may have remembered I posted a guide on this blog on how to mod your weapons in Dynasty Warriors 8 via Windows software Bruteforce Save Data.

Mod?! What a crime, you say! But nah, this came into existence dominantly because the majority of people, including myself, absolutely dreaded the awful weapon tempering system in the game originally. Modding weapons was therefore a way to relieve yourself (your temper, not your pants) of this agony and have some actual fun with the game once again. It was also useful for test purposes, e.g. testing out different element builds.

Albeit the weapon tempering has gotten much better and almost perfected in Xtreme Legends, people who have used it have been kind of spoiled, apparently. They desired to mod their weapons (and other bits) in Xtreme Legends as well, even though the only thing that urges any modding now is the endless grinding and farming the game requires.

I have to maybe pause and say that some things are better left in secret. KOEI has caught onto our shameful tactics and in defense have double layer encrypted their game saves starting from DW8:XL and onwards. This means that Bruteforce Save Data can no longer be used to decrypt the game saves in order to modify their data. Even worse, the developer of Bruteforce Save Data has withdrawn development of the software entirely and pulled it off from his own website. Oddly, I still can't find reasoning of the sudden departure, but this may potentially mean the road will look very bleak for support of newer games, even for mere profile resigning.

Nevertheless, double layer encryption is not foul proof. It can still be destroyed via third party devices such as Game Genie (English) and Cyber Save Editor (Japanese). Yes, Game Genie still exists and not a mere distant memory from the 90s. I know for a fact that Cyber Save Editor has added support for the latest KOEI games such as DW8:XL and SW4 (as documented at savedata.jp). These are of course the Japanese versions. There is still uncertainty that English versions of these games are supported in Cyber Save Editor (Japanese do play our games too, ya know?!)

Anyway, onto the most important part—viewer T Blipz has written the following message to me through e-mail and declares I should let everyone know of this. Hence, I shall not let him down.

He states that basically Game Genie can now decrypt DW8:XL and allow hex editing:

Therefore, if you want to continue to mod stuff in DW8:XL, then Game Genie (English games) or Cyber Save Editor (Japanese games) will be your only bets. The best thing is that Game Genie is a mere 30 bucks, compared to $50-$100 for Cyber Save Editor.

Now stop asking me how to mod stuff in DW8:XL. :) And I have no experience in either of these and never used them, so please don't ask me how to use them. Besides, I believe there are already a few guides on the internet for both.

Finally, I wonder what KOEI will do now knowing of this evil I just unleashed through the bag... *Gulp*

tl&dr: DW8:XL cannot be used with Bruteforce Save Data; however, you can now overcome that with Game Genie.

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Translate In-Game Japanese Text with OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

I know that a lot of my viewers are interested in playing imported games, particularly newly released Japanese titles or earlier titles that were unfortunately pushed off into the abyss for English or other international audiences. While I think the idea is wholly crazy for reading intensive games such as RPGs, it's otherwise alright for games that are rather light on it, such as action games in veins of KOEI's Warriors series.

To help your experience be less of a misery, I'm going to share with you a useful tool you can use yourself to quickly translate in-game Japanese text to English, or whatever other language you desire. Now if you are already fluent in Japanese as I mostly am, you can still use it for a dozen other languages and not just for games either. I've used this tool myself to translate Chinese, Korean, German and Russian text to English from games, movies, video clips and television shows (none of which I'm fortunately any adept in).

The tool in question is called OCR, or Optical Character Recognition. If you haven’t heard about it yet, it essentially allows you to grab specific sections of text in a picture/screenshot and converts them to machine-encoded/computer-readable format, which is text that you can manipulate freely on your PC including copying and pasting into a translator.

OCR is widely available as both online web embedded services or via downloaded software. There are additionally both free and paid versions; free versions offering basic functionality with less accuracy while paid offering higher accuracy and more features.

Before we dive into anything, let’s briefly go over the prerequisites. You’re going to need the following:

1.) A computer that preferably has access to the internet.
2.)  OCR software.
I tend to favor and prefer ABBYY Screenshot Reader, included in ABBYY FineReader. Although it is paid software, it has worked mostly flawlessly for me converting virtually any text in any language in screenshots to computer-readable with high accuracy. If you visit their website, you can download a free, fully featured trial of the software. Albeit its rather hefty price tag, I highly recommend purchasing as it is one of the best OCR software available on the internet.

Do not download or purchase ABBYY Screenshot Reader individually, as you will not be receiving Asian language support with it.

If you prefer to go the free route, there are numerous free OCR services available, both as online web embedded and via downloaded software. Be wary that a lot of them do not support Asian languages.

Capture2text is a free downloadable OCR software with Asian language support and specific section/text area capturing:
http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/

Here are some free OCR web embedded services that have Asian language support:
http://newocr.com
http://maggie.ocrgrid.org/nhocr/
http://www.i2ocr.com/free-online-japanese-ocr (Japanese only) 

Keep in mind that I have no experience or knowledge with Capture2text or any online based OCR services, let alone free ones. All I ever use is the fantastic ABBYY Screenshot Reader. Nevertheless, a simple Google search will yield more results, if the above ones are not favorable or working for you.

The following is necessary if you desire game console support (e.g. PS3, Xbox 360, etc.):
3.) A capture card or device compatible with your game console.
The capture card or device is necessary because we require a method to take screenshots in the game with the text we want converted/translated, so we can then run OCR on it. Now, you may get away substituting this with a camera, but since most OCR requires the text in the picture be very clear and precise, a capture card or device will undoubtedly work much better.

If you want to do this on PC games, then you can simply use "Print Screen" command.

Alright, now with the prerequisites and boring things aside, let’s get into the actual process!

Let’s say for example you're playing Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate right now on your PS3, pretend you don’t know Japanese and really like to know what the highlighted text said.

Now being that it’s a game, you can’t really just copy the text and paste it into a translator, could you? You could possibly manually convert the text into computer-readable by finding out which letter is which (using some sort of Japanese dictionary or characters list) and typing it out one by one on the computer. But let’s face it, that’s going to take until Hell freezes over and infinite eye strain, especially given the amount of Kanji that exists!

Well, fear not, as this is where OCR comes to save the day! It will easily convert the text to computer-readable for you in the speed that it takes you to type a sentence or less.

So the first thing you have to do is take a screenshot of the screen with the text on it you want converted, utilizing your capture card or device. If you're on a PC game, print screen should work dandy. Remember, you can also attempt to use a camera if you're on a game console and have no access to a capture device. That may or may not work, depending on how large, clear and prominent the text comes out on the photo.

The next step is to run OCR on the screenshot. For this purpose, I'm going to be using ABBYY Screenshot Reader exclusively. Methods and instructions will vary upon the OCR being used. In my case, I'm going to show you how easy and fast it is to use ABBYY Screenshot Reader.

Here ABBYY Screenshot Reader can be launched directly from the Start Menu after installing ABBYY FineReader:

In order to change language to Japanese or any other Asian language, click on the Language drop down menu and select "More languages...":

In the Language Editor window, Asian languages, including Japanese can now be selected under "Asian Languages". Be sure to uncheck any other languages that have already been enabled, such as the default English. If you have more than one language selected, the software will attempt to read all of those languages in the screenshot, which may make the results not come out what you'd expect.

After clicking OK and confirming that you only have one sole language selected, you can now go ahead and click on the capture screenshot button (the big button with the notepad and clipboard icon to the right). However; before doing that, you have to make sure the screenshot the software needs to read from is already opened in a picture viewer, fully zoomed to 100% and non-hidden/obstructed on the screen. Because once you click on that button, it will essentially freeze everything on the screen.

Click the capture screenshot button to start the reading process, but do not click it until your screenshot is launched in a separate window, fully zoomed to 100% and non-hidden/obstructed on the screen.

After clicking that button, the ABBYY Screenshot Reader window will disappear and your cursor will transform into a crosshair.

What you basically wish to accomplish here is to simply just drag and select the section of text you want the screenshot reader to read and copy from.

It might consume a few lousy seconds, but once it's done its magic, that bit of text that is in the screenshot should be correctly converted and additionally copied to the clipboard.

We can find that out by simply opening a software that can input text (such as Notepad) and clicking Control + P to paste.

So here are the results of attempting to run ABBYY Screenshot Reader on that specific section of Japanese text in that Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate screenshot:

In comparison to the actual text that appears in the game, it read it 100% perfectly!

The next step is, as you have guessed, copy that bit of text and paste into a translator. My main web translator of choice is Google Translate, but if results fair poorly for you, I also recommend Babylon Translation or Babelfish.

After running that bit of Japanese text on Google Translate, this is what it returned:

Google Translate doesn't do a fantastic job on translation, especially regarding Japanese to English, generating broken Engrish a fair majority of the time. Regardless, it should be enough most of the time for you to get a general idea of what the text means. Here, I can pretend that I can only read the English, so to my understanding it basically means that turning this on will cause enemy morale to raise greatly at the start of the battle.

Now if you still don't understand it after the above translation, you are welcome to torment ask me to give you a proper translation that doesn't make anyone's mind melt in confusion (Japanese only of course). No OCR necessary, just send me the screenshot or text directly. :)

And that pretty much concludes this guide on OCR. You can envision other endless possibilities you can have with OCR, given all the possible languages it can read from. Of course and like I already indicated, it doesn't have to be Japanese or be a game. I honestly think every person who enjoys foreign media and games should have knowledge on how to effectively use OCR, and most certainly ABBYY Screenshot Reader.

One last thing I want to mention is that any OCR, even ABBYY Screenshot Reader, isn't a miracle product by any means. Meaning, it's not going to perfectly read all text you hand to it. If you desire perfect or near perfect results, you have to make sure whatever text in your screenshots you want read from is as crisp, clear and in large font as possible. The text should additionally have no background behind the text, straight (not crooked) and be single colored. Vertical text is fine as long as it's straight.

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How to Resolve the BLANK Issue with Bruteforce Save Data

Lately, there have been reports of people having pesky troubles resigning PS3 game saves to their profile using Bruteforce Save Data, the main culprit being the dreaded BLANK they receive when they attempt to setup a PARAM.SFO template.

Keep in mind that getting BLANK doesn't essentially equate to failure. Some games do not mind game saves with a BLANK profile. To them, it just means that game save has no attached owner and they will allow you to save over it just fine and dandy. Other times however, games will reject game saves with a BLANK profile. The only way to tell for sure is to simply test the game save.

So what if the game does mind, and it really needs an appropriate profile (16 digit ID) attached to it? Well, lately all I have been telling people with this problem is to keep trying different game saves until you get one without BLANK. However, that doesn't work a lot of times. I have been searching around the internet to answers of why BLANK occurs and even e-mailed the software author about it (with no response). That is until, I finally believe I solved the mystery!

What you basically need to do is to simply tie a PSN/SEN account to your PS3 user account and log into it.

That's it! That will generate that magic 16 digit ID for you on your game saves. After you logged into your PSN/SEN account, make sure you create a new game save or save over a current one.

After you transferred the game save to a USB drive and configured your PARAM.SFO profile once, you can then continue to use that saved profile configuration on the rest of your game saves you need to resign. After that, it is your choice to continue to log into PSN/SEN on your PS3 or just stay offline.

I have tested with success on a brand new PS3 user account. The PS3 will continue to create BLANK game saves until I created a PSN/SEN account, log into it and then save the game.

Hopefully, this helps answers the continuous messages I am receiving about this issue!

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Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate 100% Platinum Game Save with Patch 1.05 Updates

 

Shame on me; the prior game save I posted of this game was a little premature. It was all based upon the ancient patch 1.02, so therefore things weren't as right as they should be. My PS3's wireless internet was misbehaving, so I could not update to more recent patches until recently when I finally got it fixed! I also thought character growth and leveling was quite uneven, so I desired to get them to a more even level.

This game save contains the same data as the original (had you managed to nab it while it was online); however, it is dramatically improved to better suit patch 1.03 through 1.05.

It is highly recommend that you switch to this game save to receive all the new and improved benefits!

  New Changes:

•  5 star Shin weapons (unlimited mode crafted weapons) now all have +99 attack power from max compatibility. These weapons have been upgraded from max +18 attack power to +99 in patch 1.03, essentially making them now the most strongest weapons you can obtain in the game.
• 4 star weapons with +99 attack have been removed for every character. They are now worthless in patch 1.03+ (see above).
• All characters have now been reincarnated at least three times instead of once. Several characters (5-10) have been reincarnated eight to nine times.
•  Stock experience has been raised to 9,999,999 to adjust to the max limits of patch 1.05. 
•  Stock weapon attributes in the blacksmith has been all raised to 99.

Game Save Features:

• 100% unlocked and clear including story and unlimited mode.
• All 145 characters unlocked (unlimited mode included).
• 5 star mystic weapon for every character.
• 5 star Shin weapons for every character (crafted from unlimited mode materials).
• All weapon attributes unlocked with up to 99 stock.
• Level 100 for every character.
• Reincarnation three times for every character; eight to nine times for a few (5-10).
• All items unlocked and at max power.
• Max 9,999,999 stock experience.
• And more!

Feel free to use this game save to help your experience with this game be more enjoyable. However, I do not recommend using it unless you really desire some of its features, as having everything unlocked can potentially spoil the fun factor and longevity of the game.

This game save is only available in Japan region, as the game has not been released anywhere else. When it does come to NA and EU, I'll be sure to give you guys also English versions. But for now, enjoy the Japanese version of the game save, and keep nagging KOEI TECMO to localize, localize, LOCALIZE!!

DOWNLOAD GAME SAVE

Remember to resign the game save to your Playstation 3 profile before usage, if you wish to save over it and earn trophies. Full tutorial can be found by visiting this link!

If you need help resigning or want me to resign for you, feel free to e-mail me!

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Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate Patch 1.05 - Analysis of Extra Reincarnations

 

So I had the chance to update Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate from version 1.02 all the way to the present version 1.05 released around Christmas time. I know, you're probably thinking: "Where the hell have you been, living under a rock?!" But trust me, there's a valid reason why I was staying on 1.02 for what seems to be an eternity. You see, my PS3's wireless has gotten funky and hence caused me to be offline since around October with no connection to the internet. I could theoretically connect using a wired Ethernet cable, but since my home's router is upstairs and my PS3 and HDTV are downstairs, I didn't want to run an hundred feet cable and have everyone tripping over it. Anyway, I finally got the chance to fix the wireless on the PS3. So now, I can finally connect with it to the internet once again, hurray! Still, I don't have a PSN account, so don't bother asking (I don't play online on the PS3 anyway).

You don't want to hear my sob story about my PS3 hardware woes though, so enough of that and let's get into the topic of this blog post—why nine reincarnations in patch 1.05 is overkill, and why KOEI even bothered to add in that many reincarnations.

So if you haven't learned yet, patch 1.05 adds a few new features, most notably extending the maximum numerical values of various elements, including reincarnations. In versions prior to 1.05, reincarnations are capped at three total. This cap allowed almost all characters to max speed (180) and an additional two to three other stats (health, defense and musou). That being said, it left you with the inability to max all five stats, so KOEI has kindly raised this cap to an absurd value—nine.

I decided to test it out and reincarnate a few character nine times. Not that you'll really want to though, because it's quite senseless to raise stats beyond their normal max values without reincarnations, strictly due to diminishing returns (you'll be working much more than what you'll be gaining in return, basically). The formula is two growth points per level after reincarnation, so 891 points is possible for every character.

What I discovered was that for a few characters that I did reincarnate nine times, I was able to max out all five of their stats by the eighth reincarnation. This meant their health was 999, attack was 999, defense was 999, musou was 999 and speed was 200. Yes, they did raise the speed cap to 200 instead of 180, which is still pretty lousy. Beyond the fourth reincarnation, speed remained capped at 200.

Keep in mind that in order for this to be possible, I had to be conservative with my growth points and use them only after I have leveled the character to 100 and not in-between.

I was then left with around 200 extra growth points on the ninth reincarnation for all characters, with nothing able to pump them into it. Hence, making the ninth and final reincarnation completely non-beneficial to your character stats.

Xu Shu ninth reincarnation with 176 extra growth points.

Nu Wa ninth reincarnation with 234 extra growth points.

Zhao Yun ninth reincarnation with 219 extra growth points.

Yukimura ninth reincarnation with 225 extra growth points.

Diao Chan max stats at eighth reincarnation with 21 extra growth points.

So in conclusion, reincarnating characters the max nine times is not necessary to max a character's stats. You may gain other rewards, but certainly not in the stats department!

I was also curious to what the max speed you can now have on a character, including all bonuses from items. With Charm of Alacrity (神速符) +20, Dual-Layered Armor (両当鎧) +20 and Tag Shell (札甲) +20, along with the new 200 speed cap, you'll end up with a grand total of 400 speed.

400 speed on Yukimura at max stats.

Testing out the 400 speed definitely felt insanely fast, and much, much faster than riding on both Red Hare and Matsukaze. Picking up speed shoes unfortunately didn't seem to have much of an effect, or there seems to be a cap on the max speed of the effect on the shoes. I didn't have time to test Rabbitskin Leggings (脱兎脚絆), as that will also double your speed when your life is in the red. I doubt you'll need them anyway, as you'll be blazing through battlefields like a rocket. It almost feels like cheating!

Anyway, I don't want to turn this post into a book, so I'll leave it at here. There are other things that 1.03-1.05 added, but they aren't significant enough to write about.

Also, I want to also mention I will be updating and reposting the Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate platinum status game save I posted earlier, which is now taken down. The reason why I took it down was because I desired to update it for subsequent patches past 1.02. I also liked characters growth and levels to be a bit more even, so I am in process (and nearly finished) of reincarnating all 145 character three times. Some characters will be reincarnated nine times due to the experiment above, but I am definitely not planning on reincarnating everyone nine times. Weapons will also be updated. I will be removing all 4 star +99 weapons, since they have become useless in patch 1.03+. The strongest weapons are now the 5 star crafted weapons from Unlimited Mode, because patch 1.03 allowed them to have +99 attack power from max compatibility (from the previous +18 max).

I will let you guys know when the new, updated game save will be available. I'll likely have it tomorrow or by Friday the latest, actually.

Until then, take care!

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Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate - English Release Date and Weapon Attributes English Translations

I didn't really meant to make this an actual blog post, but I've been getting two particular questions regarding Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate from viewers continously. Hence, I might as well make a big public post about it for everyone.

When will Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate be released in English for North America and Europe?
At this moment I'm typing, neither KOEI TECMO Japan or NA/EU has made a public announcement regarding whether the game will be localized to English, that includes specific dates. However, one of the company's officials (鯉沼P - Koinuma) has tweeted they might release an English version in summer of 2014. Here is the link to the tweet.

Can you supply a translation guide for weapon attributes in English?
I would translate them, but a kind soul has already compiled a list of weapon attributes in both Musou Orochi 2 and Ultimate, plus provided English translations for them. You can find the list here.

If you need other bits of the game translated, feel free to send me an e-mail. I could also work on a thorough translation guide for this game if you guys want, since this game doesn't look like it's going to localized any time soon. If so, let me know your thoughts and I may look into it.

I might as well add another question I was asked just recently on a different game...

How come I can't decrypt the game save of Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends with Bruteforce Save Data?
Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends, like a lot of newer games, uses double layer encryption for their game saves. Hence, you won't be able to decrypt it via software as of yet. The only way to do so is to use a third party Game Genie device. PS3 CYBER Save Editor (Japan only) has added support for Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends. I have no familiarity with this item, but I know it lets you modify game save code. I'm not sure if it will allow you to resign your game saves like Bruteforce Save Data. Remember: Don't mod/cheat unless absolutely necessary; try to stay legit!

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