I wrote a little mini-review for SW5 in the Japanese Niche Games thread, so I'm going to paste it here for anyone interested:
Finished Samurai Warriors 5 the other night, or rather, I did everything in the game I felt like doing. Got both Nobunaga and Mitsuhide's story endings, but only did around half of the Citadel missions and only two of the Reverie (what-if) scenarios. The materials needed from the Citadel mode to upgrade your dojo/blacksmith/shop/stables pulled a mobile game and went from requiring like 80 lumber/metal/fabric to like 300 in one level. Then it was 300 to 800! I'm not grinding your garbage tower defense crap mode for that. I'm surprised Koei doesn't sell packs of materials for real money. The Musou mode stories unfortunately never got better and I felt little investment in any of the characters (though the villain was surprisingly cool, despite his motivations being a little sketchy). Finally, my biggest complaint was the lack of weapons. You guys cut the roster in half from the last game, you couldn't have given everyone their own, unique weapon and moveset? Hell, I don't even care about the 10 extra characters that were essentially unique NPCs. Just give the 27 main guys their own weapons! I sort of forced myself to complete this game because I was getting so bored with it, and that was due in large part to having to play with the same weapons over and over. I think, as a video game, it's a 6/10, but as a Warriors game, it's like a 5/10. To quote the great chef Gordon Ramsay, "Damn, what a shame."
