The Warriors renaissance continues, with an original portable title after several haphazard Vita ports. A portable offering from Omega Force is not the most welcoming of ideas these days. The second Samurai Warriors Chronicles never left Asia, and it wasn’t hard to miss after a lackluster series debut and, again, a bunch of really bad ports on Vita. Dynasty Warriors NEXT (also on Vita!) was pretty solid, but almost feels like a distant memory, a curious footnote in an increasingly obsolete idea. 

It really started to seem like Omega Force just couldn’t figure out how to make the Warriors formula work on such restricted hardware. After all, as great as these things can be, it wasn’t until the current generation that we really saw Omega Force get to the next level (and a stable frame rate). But I’m super serious about the developer hitting a new level of competence, and Samurai Warriors 4 brought a lot to the table. Now, Samurai Warriors Chronicles 3 attempts to take that confidence off the table, off the couch, off the consoles and back into the 3DS (or Vita) for one last ride. 

This time, the game made it out to North America, and this time, Omega Force got it right.

Forget everything else about this game. Forget about content, forget about extras, forget about what you might expect from a full-fledged, console Warriors (or Musou, if you’re a nerd like me). There is some fluff on the side, but it’s so inconsequential you may as well not bother unless you really love challenge modes. What’s important here is that Omega Force finally nailed the core.

With Samurai Warriors Chronicles 3, what we have is a portable Warriors joint that is just as stable as its console counterparts. It’s a bit less flashy, a bit less full of enemies, but the experience is largely the same and it runs like a charm. It is a technical marvel on the 3DS, and I wouldn’t be shocked if playing it on the New 3DS helped to some degree.

With Samurai Warriors 4 came a new mechanic; a Hyper Attack that doesn’t hurt officer units much, but destroys grunts and shoots the player across the screen very quickly, adding a whole new dimension to the one part of Warriors still lacking in 2014: movement options. My primary concern with Samurai Warriors Chronicles 3 was whether or not Hyper Attack would be in, and whether or not it would make the game chug. As I mentioned before, nice and smooth.

I can’t speak for the Vita version and, frankly, I’m not interested. Having an entire screen for map real estate makes “portable Warriors game” an Actually Appealing Concept. It’s tough enough to figure out the corner-of-the-screen map in the console games sometimes, so having it take up the whole bottom screen of the 3DS is a boon.

With the impressive stability comes a price, a price I imagine sticks out like a sore thumb on the more powerful Vita hardware. Everything that isn’t the core gameplay is noticeably downgraded. Extra content is limited to one extra mode of consequence, and it’s really just more of the core game with some arcade-like time limit shenanigans. Lately Warriors games have used bonus modes to shake up the core mechanics through introducing funky gimmicks, or doing stuff like Dynasty Warriors 8’s neat town-building mode, but this cart is likely straining hard enough to keep the engine running as smoothly as it does.

Additionally, all the character interaction is suuuuper awkward. Again, due to technical limitations, cutscenes are basically comprised of a barely-animated character model twitching just enough to look like it’s speaking, and text boxes. It’s a presentational low for a series that was starting to get more ambitious on other platforms, but again, the 3DS cart probably couldn’t handle much more.

Luckily, while much of the game outside of the core play feels more limited than usual, character customization is significantly more elaborate than the first game in this series. A 3DS launch title, Samurai Warriors Chronicles seemed all about making your own character, except for the part where you had hardly any aesthetic options. Here, you have a bunch, with more unlockable as you progress. Weapon customization is also pretty in-depth, although it’s mostly all about playing with menus and numbers.

If you’re a Warriors/Musou fan and you approach Samurai Warriors Chronicles 3 with the right mindset, you’re going to have a great time. This isn’t a poorly-coded port of a console experience that can’t maintain a decent frame rate to save its life. It is, however, certainly lacking in the content department. It isn’t nearly as visually impressive as the console versions, and there certainly aren’t nearly as enemies on the screen at one time. However, it achieves what many previous portable Warriors(es? I dunno, what do I look like, a writer or something?) didn’t, which is a stable experience. Hacking and slashing on the go has never felt so right. If nothing else, I’m totally sold on Hyrule Warriors Legends now.

Hint: As I mentioned before, Hyper Attack is a great way to move around, but not a great way to fight stronger enemies. Use it to blast through groups of punks to keep your score up, then really unload on the good stuff when you find an officer. 

by Lucas White