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Remember when all that Koei ever produced was one text-heavy strategy game after another? Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition, and so on turned the company into a one-trick pony that knew its audience so well they basically knew exactly how many copies of each would sell and how long it would take. Powerful stuff.

A New Era

The Koei of today seems kind of the same, except they've traded in historical strategy-based war games for pseudo-historical games where Chinese or Japanese lords run around battlefields cutting down hundreds upon hundreds of enemy foot soldiers.

And nothing ever seems to change.

Samurai Warriors is basically more of the same. Choose to play as any number of ancient warriors, choose your battlefield, and rush head-on into throngs of braindead enemy soldiers, slicing through them like a hot knife through so much butter.

Carpal Tunnel

Although there's a tiny bit of strategy to playing Samurai Warriors -- you move your armies around a grid before each battle -- it takes a backseat to the standard hack-n-slash craziness we've been enjoying in the Dynasty Warriors series since time immemorial.

The problem is that the whole concept began to wear thin a long, long time ago. And on the PSP, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the hardware has real trouble displaying the sheer number of enemies you're fighting at any one time. While the console versions of this series have always come with a bit of pop up, here your foes literally appear right in front or beside your character. In fact, if you rush forward and start cleaving, chances are you'll actually hit some folks before you even knew they were there.

View Askew

The other issue introduced into the game thanks to the PSP hardware is a downright horrible camera. The lack of a second analog stick makes it really hard to follow the action in Samurai Warriors -- you'll find yourself running into the screen more than is comfortable, relying on the real-time overhead map to guide you rather than actually being able to see your enemies.

Not that it matters too much, considering there's so little technique or challenge to be found here that your chances of suffering a crushing defeat are next to nil.

If you absolutely must have some portable Samurai Warrior action, then this PSP title is really your only bet. But it's really not a very good, challenging, or fun game in any respect.