Samurai Warriors 4-II has a few different options for you to play. As always, there is a Story Mode. Here you will choose a stage and then play through the levels of that stage. There are five stages unlocked to start. After you beat one, another will unlock. There are 12 stages total with a varying amount of levels in each stage. You can choose to play as one or two players locally or two players online. Once you choose a level, you then choose a main and backup character. You can switch between them during battle at will. If you are playing as two players, one of you will play one character and the other will play the other. You don’t each get two characters to swap between. Objectives will pop up during the battles. I highly recommend you try to do them as it can make the battle swing to your favor or give you things. You don’t have to complete them though. After battle, you will see what all you earned. You can get weapons, items and horses, and you’ll also get Tomes, EXP, and gold during battle. Free Mode is just like Story Mode except that you simply choose a level you have unlocked during Story Mode and play. You will not unlock new things in Free Mode.
Samurai Warriors 4 had Chronicle Mode. That has been removed in Samurai Warriors 4-II and replaced with Survival Mode. In Survival Mode, you can choose from any of the characters that you have unlocked playing Story Mode. You’ve got two options of Survival Mode: first is Standard, where you just keep trying to get to the highest level possible. Each level you will have an objective. After you beat the objective, you can choose to exit the challenge and keep everything you have or go up to the next level and risk losing. If you lose, you’ll lose everything you have earned, but the rewards get better the higher you go. Of course, the challenges get harder as well. You also need to keep an eye on your time and complete the challenges as quickly as possible. You start with 10 minutes. In each level, you will get two minutes added to the clock, but obviously if it took you more than two minutes to complete that level, then your time will be less than 10. Eventually you will run out of time if you’re not careful. You can unlock characters in Standard as well. Plus, you can get some really great items. Second, you have Survival Mode Challenge where you choose a challenge and try to get the highest score that you can. You can choose to upload your score to compete in online rankings. The rankings are reset each week. I really like both of the Survival modes, but I think I like Standard the best.
In the Dojo, you can make your own custom characters. I do love custom characters. You can have up to 20 at once and they can be used in Free and Survival Modes. You can also get to the tutorials and view unlocked events and more in the Dojo. Lastly, there are Downloads. This is where you go to get new content for the game. As of the time of this writing, there is no new content yet.