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As a relative newcomer to the musou style of play, where you’ll often feel like you wield almost god-like power slicing through entire squads of enemy fighters with repeated swipes of your sword, I’m by no means a ride or die proponent of it. However, as skeptical as I once was that the subgenre could appeal to my tastes, thinking it would be too goofy and repetitive in some fashion, a simple revelation has made it grow on me. With SW5 specifically I hit a point in my repeated combos, enjoying my meter getting more and more ridiculously high, and then unleashing my fury on a level boss… that there was a reason it appealed to my inner primal gamer. It’s just a different way of playing great games in one of my old-school favorite genres, the beat-em-up. Maybe I’m late to the party, and this is something well-known, but for me it was an easier way to access this world and helped make it click. With that core play out of the way, which can be extremely satisfying when you’re in the zone (though, watching it played back, it looks far more dull than it is in the moment), you can then take in everything else about this specific title that clicks quite nicely. It looks fantastic, full of color and detail, and the story (though perhaps a bit of a soap opera in many regards) is actually fun to watch play out with its twists and turns. I can’t speak to how this shapes up to its predecessors, what tweaks may or may not have been made to its formula, but I feel I can speak to the reluctant gamers out there who’ve never given the series a try. If you have any love for classic beat-em-ups in your heart you should absolutely have a great time with this revisionist take on the formula. The action is intense, if you want to find success you’ll need to be precise and make full use of the formidable powers each character wields, and once you’re in the flow of things it all comes together to be quite satisfying.
Justin Nation, Score:Nindie Choice! [8.9]