A spinoff of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, Samurai Warriors is perhaps best-known for its hack-and-slash gameplay in a historically based world. The games loosely base the plot and characters on the historical events and participants of the Warring States era of Japanese history. Samurai Warriors: Chronicles is the first title in the series to allow the player to enter this history themselves.

The player chooses to be a Hero or Heroine and is placed into a class based on their answers to an introductory quiz. The class, it seems, is completely arbitrary, as all player characters regardless of class have the same personal skills, and level up in the same way. Once the intro has played, the character travels between armies to fight for different factions. In this fashion, the player stumbles into important events, interacts with the characters before, during, and after battles, and finds a unique path through the warring states.

To those familiar with the Samurai Warriors games, this title really contains nothing new as far as story and customization. If anything, the story has suffered in that you can no longer play the story as any character besides the nebulous Hero or Heroine, and the character creation mode is lacking as well. Players can no longer fiddle around with the height, weight, hairstyle, clothing, and weapons of the player character as freely as in other games. At the very beginning of the game, you can't change a thing; as you progress further, you unlock the ability to change clothes and colors. To get new weapons, the game implements a new "friendship" system.

The friendship system can be a pain, but adds an extra layer of intrigue to the game. Playing through battles and post-war cutscenes with a character will raise their disposition towards you, while playing against a character will drop it. Once the character has reached a high enough level of friendship, the character-specific weapon is unlocked for the player character to use. Characters with a high friendship towards the player will also react differently to the player's achievements in battle. I've found that high friendship with female characters while playing as the Hero will cause the ladies to swoon a bit, while high friendship with male characters as the Heroine will drive them unabashedly crazy for her.

The game mechanic of swapping between warriors in-battle is a new addition, as well. Two to four playable characters are involved in every battle, and the player can switch between any of them at will. This is particularly useful given the large fields of battle when missions send you across the entire map. Frequently, missions also offer a special reward for completing a given task with a certain character or in a specific amount of time. These characters can die on you, but only the death of the player character or a mission-specific warrior will cause you to completely fail a battle.

Other new additions to the Chronicles game that hasn't been in previous Samurai Warriors installments include personal abilities and ability to give specific orders. Pausing the game in the midst of battle presents the player with an overview of the missions on the top screen, and the game map and switchable characters on the lower screen. Touching a character in pause mode allows you to touch a space on the map that you want them to go to, while touching an enemy will send them off to attack him. A button in the bottom corner of the screen sends the player to a list of character-specific abilities to be used in battle. Certain combinations of characters can provide group abilities based on their history together.

Overall, it is an interesting new look for Samurai Warriors, and I wouldn't say it's a perfect game. For me, the Japanese voiceovers were the most disappointing part, as reading the subtitles can distract from the mission and get you killed on higher levels. The 3D, while lovely, can be headache-inducing after a long day of battle. As a 3DS title, the game also uses SpotPass to add extra content to the game and provide further historical baclground to the characters. Additionally, the extra cutscenes that allow you to interact with the characters definitely add more personality and depth to the characters. All that said, if you are already a fan of Samurai Warriors, this title is worth checking out.