Samurai Warriors for the PlayStation Portable is essentially a follow-up to the PSP version of Dynasty Warriors. KOEI, publisher of this long-running Warriors series, seems to have managed to squeeze blood out of a stone to make another game in a hack-and-slash genre that should have been retired after the Qing dynasty.
Japan had a warring states period (Sengoku) from the 1400s to 1700s, some 1,200 years after China's Three Kingdoms era (220-280 AD). The main character from this era was Lord Oda Nobunaga, who rose to the top because he had the means to buy significant quantities of European-made firearms.
In Samurai Warriors, you start off with roughly six characters (exactly as in Dynasty Warriors) to choose from in the 'Story Mode'. Play through one of his/her scenarios and it will unlock new characters and scenarios. Deja vu anyone? All in all, you will eventually have 22 characters to control.
The original console versions of these games had expansive battlefields that took an hour for players to roam across and kill every enemy solider chanced upon.
In the PSP version, the battlefields are divided into grids and players must conquer each square, one at a time. This takes only a few minutes because the victory criteria is usually quite easy: just charge and kill the enemy commanding officers.
This type of game play makes sense because the PSP is a portable platform, but fans of the game may feel that this breaks up the rhythm: as soon as you get your adrenalin pumping from hacking and slashing the enemy, you find it's all over - and way too soon. It's another few minutes before the action gets going again, and the same thing happens again, so players never really get to fully enjoy their rampage.
An interesting addition to game play is the use of charms that can influence events that occur when you are viewing the map. Charms can boost morale, heal your soldiers and sub-officers, open or close floodgates, stop opposing forces moving, and a number of other things. Unfortunately, this inclusion does not add anything special to play.