Samurai Warriors 4 arrived in 2014 as a tenth-anniversary victory lap, and Omega Force built it to move. Koei Tecmo shipped the hack and slash sequel to Samurai Warriors 3 on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, and the pitch is simple: two fighters on the field at once, a crowd-clearing dash, and a burst mode that makes you untouchable for a while. It is the most confident the series had been in years, and it earns most of that confidence.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
Two Fighters, One Battlefield
The headline change is character-switching, borrowed from the spin-off Samurai Warriors: Chronicles. You take two characters into a battle at the same time and swap between them whenever you like. It sounds like a small thing. It is not.
Swapping mid-fight lets you cover ground the old games made you run. One character pushes a flank while the other holds a line, and you can jump between the two without pausing the action. The feature gives every stage a second layer of planning that the series had been missing.
Hyper Attacks and Rage Mode
Two new moves define the combat. Hyper Attacks are a secondary moveset available to every character, a dashing sweep that clears crowds. Against rank-and-file enemies it is a joy — you carve a path through a packed field in seconds.
Against enemy officers it is useless. They either deflect it or shrug it off entirely, which forces you back to your standard combos the moment a real fight starts. That limitation is deliberate, and it keeps Hyper Attacks from becoming a win button.
Rage Mode is the other half. It renders you invincible for a period of time, strengthens your attacks, and boosts your Musou attack through the Spirit Gauge. Used well, it turns a losing fight around. Used badly, it burns out against a crowd you could have handled anyway.
Ten Stories Across the Sengoku Period
Story Mode abandons the old story-per-character format. Samurai Warriors 4 instead runs ten stories built around clans and regions of Japan’s Sengoku period, closer to the kingdom-based structure the recent Dynasty Warriors games used.
Each stage offers a set of playable characters based on who actually fought there. Some characters sit out the story entirely as a result, though they remain available elsewhere. The trade is real: fewer vanity campaigns, more coherent ones.
The setting is the Sengoku period, the long stretch of civil war when Japan was split among rival warlords. The game’s version of it is romanticized, and it does not pretend otherwise. Nobuyuki Sanada and his brother Yukimura are shown fighting at Kawanakajima, though neither had been born when that battle was fought.
Women who largely stayed off the battlefield get expanded roles. Koshōshō, Motochika Chōsokabe’s wife in real life, becomes his chief rival in his conquest of Shikoku and the Miyoshi clan’s representative in the game. That is invention, and it is the kind that improves a campaign.
The battles run from Itsukushima in 1555, fought between the Mōri and Ōuchi clans, to the siege of Osaka in 1614–1615, where the Tokugawa faced the Toyotomi. There are no hypothetical routes this time. Characters meet the fates history gave them.
A Roster of 55, and a Parallel Sanada Path
The original release carries 55 characters. Nearly everyone from the previous games returns, including Goemon Ishikawa, Kojirō Sasaki and Musashi Miyamoto, all cut from the main series in Samurai Warriors 3 — Goemon since Samurai Warriors 2.
Munenori Yagyū, Naotora Ii and Takatora Tōdō arrive in the main series after debuting in the spin-off Sengoku Musou: Chronicle 2, and the promotional materials count them as new. Nine genuinely new characters join them, several promoted from generic non-playable officers.
A parallel path follows the Sanada clan through the same sweeping events, giving the game a second spine alongside the clan stories. Generic officers can be recruited as partners in Chronicle Mode to become pseudo-playable.
Create-a-Warrior and Chronicle Mode
The create-a-warrior mode returns with far more to work with. It adds two weapon movesets from the male and female leads of Samurai Warriors: Chronicles on top of the three carried over from earlier games.
Custom generals can be taken into the new Chronicle Mode, where they pick up requests. There is also an option to turn off female characters, a toggle that says more about the audience Koei Tecmo expects than about the design.
One note for import-minded players: this entry has Japanese voice overs only.
The Road After 2014
Samurai Warriors 4-II followed in 2015 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Windows via Steam. It added Naomasa Ii as playable and reworked Story Mode to focus on individual characters, alongside Survival Mode, rebalanced action, cut-scenes and a deeper character development system.
Samurai Warriors 4 DX came to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in Japan in 2019, then to Windows via Steam worldwide in May 2024 with Japanese and English support. It bundles more than 150 pieces of previously released downloadable content: costumes, weapons, customization parts, scenarios and background music.
Samurai Warriors 5, a reboot, launched in June and July 2021 for Nintendo Switch, Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
| Release | Year | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Samurai Warriors 4 | 2014 | PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita |
| Samurai Warriors 4-II | 2015 | PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Windows |
| Samurai Warriors 4 DX | 2019 (Japan) | Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 |
| Samurai Warriors 4 DX | May 2024 (worldwide) | Windows |
| Samurai Warriors 5 | 2021 | Nintendo Switch, Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
What Holds Up
The character-switching is the real achievement here. It changes how you read a battlefield, not just how you fight on one, and it is the cleanest idea this run of games produced.
Hyper Attacks are the weaker idea. A crowd-clearer that officers simply ignore is a tool with a hard ceiling, and the game knows it — the dash is a travel option as much as a weapon.
The romanticized history is the part worth arguing about. Putting the Sanada brothers at Kawanakajima before their births, or handing Koshōshō a rivalry she never had, is not a small liberty. But the ten clan stories hold together because of choices like that, and the fixed fates give the campaign weight the hypothetical routes never did.
Twelve years on, this is still the entry to start with. The Japanese-only voice track will put off some players. That does not change the verdict.
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