Samurai Warriors Extreme Legends review:5 stars (THE BEST GAME EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!) - I really enjoy this game! It's fun to create your own bodyguards. It's also fun to whack the drum. MOST of all, I enjoy saving the main camp.2 stars (Why wasn't this part of the original?) - I liked Samurai Warriors a lot. It was nice to basically play Dynasty Warriors with different characters for a change. It also had a few appreciated graphic tweaks and the addition of interior castle to make up for having nearly a third the number of playable characters.
Extreme Legends adds four new characters and a few much appreciated tweaks. You can have separate Mousou Bars in Co-op mode. (Thank Goodness.) and the ability to shut down the strongholds in the castle levels. (a minor tweak, but appreciated for the 60 second time boost it'll give you for the level.) And removing the experience points cap on learning new abilities. (I haven't done it yet, but it looks like you could conceivably get every ability available to each character if you wanted rather than having to pick and choose up carefully up to level 18) and a small number of new Items to aquire.

It also provides you with a Points Reward System where every time you play you receive points that can be redeemed for gameplay tweaks. (ie. character second costumes, or 5th and 6th level weapons earnable on easier difficulty settings and on up to the ability to advance characters beyond the 20th level ceiling for a million points...)

The problem is that overall, it's so kind of short on value for what it gives you (c'mon FOUR new characters!? What about a few more bodyguard models or Create Your Own...)that you end up wondering why this stuff wasn't in the original flavor to begin with. If you don't already have a copy of Samurai Warriors I wouldn't even consider this one. At least with Dynasty Warriors 4:Extreme Legends there were so many characters available and unlockable that it could have stood as a game on its own right. For this one it seems that you have to Import the other Samurai Warriors characters to play them. That just seems weak.

Another thing is that in Co-op play (this is a game that my wife and I enjoy playing together) there are some very serious issues with frame rates dropping to near standstill. (It's like doing battle in unintentional "Bullet Time" without the fun aspect of it. It's just molasses.)
Another really irksome thing is that every single time you run into a General on the battlefield or defeat one there is a cut scene where they announce themselves (or slink away or die) that just breaks whatever momentum you might be building in a bettle and rips you right out of it. (It also seems to inevitably happen right after you let loose with a Mousou attack thereby cutting it's effectiveness by half...) It would have been nice if there was someway to disable these kinds of interuptions in the Options screen.

So while I don't entirely regret getting the game since it did add a certain amount of replayability to a game that my wife and I both enjoy and can play together, I really don't think it's going to be that worth it overall to all but the most serious of Dynasty Warrior fans. I don't think it really justifies its existence or $30 price tag. 2 stars (Koei has lost it!) - This is a rip! It is almost exactly the same thing as the original Samurai Wariors, with a few minor improvements and the playability of Honda Tadakatsu, Ina, Imagawa Yoshimoto, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. When I beat the original Samurai Warriors, I waited anxiously for the extreme legends version. When I played it, I was gravely disappointed. The only pleasable feature was the archives mode which I could use to look at the history after playing the game. There is little this has that the original Samurai Warriors does not. Koei has continually made strategy and action games, each more and more like the last about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period in China and now action games about the post-Ashikaga shogunite period in Japan. Koei has been milking the same cow for too long! I suggest you only buy this game if you are a fanatic about the Dynasty Warriors series and/or if you do not have the original Samurai Warriors and have a burning desire to purchase this.
Samurai Warriors Extreme Legends Features:
Video Games
PS2 (PSX2)
Sony Playstation (Play station) 2
Playstation2 (Play station2)
Action
Adventure
Fighting
PlayStation 2
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Strategy/RPG

Samurai Warriors Extreme Legends is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 20.98USD.