Samurai Warriors 5

Launched: July 2021

Playable on: Luna, PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox

Speaking of samurai warriors…Samurai Warriors is my fave samurai-based franchise largely because of the power fantasy it presents to you. You play as any number of historical figures—the aforementioned Nobunaga Oda and Yukimura Sanada, ninjas like Kotaro Fuma and Hanzo Hattori, even maidens such as Oichi and Noh, and so many more—battling through an assortment of historical events from the Battle of Mikatagahara to the Battle of Sekigahara and beyond. These types of games, typically referred to as Musou, often get a bad rap for being mindless button-mashy affairs. Samurai Warriors fits that bill, too, but there’s an oft-overlooked strategic component here that tasks you with controlling parts of the battlefield and completing certain mission objectives to gain the upper hand. You can, of course, simply over-level your character to just plow through obstacles if that’s more your speed, but engaging in the strategy enhances the fantasy of these games. Samurai Warriors is also a neat little piece of playable history as the series attempts to create a visual representation of various parts within Feudal Japan’s timeline. That alone makes it worth checking out, with one of the better entries in the series being the latest one, Samurai Warriors 5. Play that one. Ignore the rest.