Romance of Japanese Warring States period unfolds before your eyes

User Rating: 8.6 | Kessen III PS2
If you are a fan of the ROTK genre, than this is a deffinite a game you want to pick up. It deals with yet another time period of betrayel, war, and honor. But this time you find yourself in Japan. Fighting for the freedom of the people!

Gameplay: You take the command of the Oda clan and fight to unify the land. Each new campaign has multiple ways you can proceed and each new battle is a totally new experience every time.The basic gameplay has two aspects. Government Council and the War Council.

In the Government Council, you make campaign decisions. Arm your officers with items and new troop types, as well as embark on punitive expedition agasint rebels and bandits. it is also here that you decide the flow of the game. What mission you wish to tackle, progress the game in the different paths.

Once you have selected a battle, it is of to the War Council. This takes place before every battle and here you are given known info about the enemy and your objectives. This is where you select the tentative tacktics of your army and what each selected officer will carry into the battle.

Once you are in battle, you can issue commands to your units or take controll of the all together. Different troop types give a different strategic and gameplay options and can be quite intersting to play around with.

Unfortunately, your officer are alwyas either outnumbered or out classed by the enemy. And though it is fair in terms of gameplay, it does make you jump from fighting unit to unit, in order to make sure that they do not rout.

Graphics: Cinematics are amazing and progress the story very well. Depending on your choices in what battles you partake, gives you new movies and insight into the troubled times before the people of this land.

Battle graphics are fiarly decent, in terms that you could have upto 500 little Japanese dudes hacking away without any slow downs. Characters change their appearence depending on wht you equip them with, as for the generic troops, they look fairly decent.

Sound: Voice acting does come off a bit cheesy at times and the old famous heavy rock makes yet another appearence in this, though the music is toned down, so you do not really notice it. Other than that, Koei did a good job a tackling this aspect.

Value: If your looking for a tactical challenge mixed with the feel of button smashing, then check this out. At times the council and battles can be very repetetive, but the payoff is very well deserved.

If you like the DW games, then be sure to check this out as well. (and if you haveplayed the Samurai warriors, then you just must complete the story once again). You will spend a good amount of time replaying the game, so in the long run it is worth it.