Good, but not great.
Much like my opening sentance, this game is a mix of both Japanese and Chinese, a Mix of Dynasty Warriors, and Samurai Warriors. The storyline basicly breaks down to "Big evil guy appears, tries to take over the world, and mixes the worlds of Three Kingdoms China, with the Warring States era of Japan". When it comes to mixing the two games together, it's not that hard of a task to do, since both games play pretty much exactly the same. And really, it's gonna play the same, so don't worry about having to learn something new.
The only change they made to the gameplay it's self, is that it is based around "teamwork" instead of one single hero. Their idea of "teamwork" is giving you control of three heroes at once, instead of just the one. This is done simply by pressing a button on the Pad, that switches you instantly between characters. There are posatives and negatives to this system however. The posative, is that with three characters at your disposal, you can pretty much make sure your ready for anything. Like for example, when I play, I have one character who is good at killing waves of soldiers, one guy who is good at killing generals, and one person is medium at both. This game also uses the three differant character types in it. Those being Power, Speed, and Technique, I'll elaberate on them alittle further down.
The down side of this three man system, is that because you have three heroes at your disposal, each hero is about 1/3 as powerfull in the other games. This is really bad especialy in the case of Hit points. While you can switch between the other characters instantly, you can't do this while you are getting hit. And as any player of the previous games will know, there are some moments in the game, where you are getting beat down so bad in a string of combo's, that you can't do anything but stand there, take it, and hope you survive. This is especialy true in this game, since you still get caught in the same type of combos, but don't have the hit points to back it up. This can become even more annoying in this game than the others, because you will get through 80% of a mission, before fighting a tough General, and then he will kill you in three or four hits.
One more side benefit of the tri-hero system, is that while your reserve heroes are not being played they are slowly gaining back health and Mousu while they are not being played. Though you will soon find while playing it that you need to rotate your heroes, if only to keep their health up. Another benefit is that any enhancement bonus (such as X2 attack, speed, armor, health, or mousu filling) transfers over to all of your characters. XP bonus pick ups do not however, which leads to the last problem with the tri-hero system. It may just be myself who has this problem, but I find it very hard to keep all my heroes at the same level, more often than not I have one hero who has twice the levels of my second character, and the third character hashalf the levels of my second. This can of course be fixed by doing some low leveled quest grinding, but that can be annoying at best.
This game also uses a system to class all of the heroes under one of three categories. Power, Speed, and Technique. Each of them have their own unique special abbilities. Power characters as the name says... generaly do more powerfull attacks than the other classes. Ontop of that, they are able to take a few hits to themselves, without breaking the combo they are trying to do. This is really usefull for fighting both soldiers and generals, or just basicly anytime you are overrun with a bunch of differant people trying to hit you.
Speed characters, once more like the name says, are generaly faster than other characters, they move faster, and attack at a faster rate. They also have a special abbility which lets them do a type of double jump, though instead of jumping once more upwards, they almost do a quick glide towards any direction you tell them too. This is usefull for when you are overrun, and want to get out of the fray to either run away, or start attacking again.
Technique characters, have increased Mousu, and a variety of differant attacks that they can use. They also have a special "counter" move, which if you press the special attack immediatly after being attacked (and enough Mousu in your gauge) and you will perform a special counter attack that will remove you from immediate attacks, and hit your foes around you.
I played this game on the PC, and not the PSP, though I would imagine that they were pretty much the same, with the only differance being that PC possibly has better graphics. The game has basicly two modes of play "Story and Free play mode", so it won't keep you entertained for much longer after you beat it in story. I would imagine that for a portable game on the PSP, it might be a pretty good game to buy. But for the PC, it's only good, if you either havn't beat it yet, or if you don't have other Dynasty warrior or samurai warrior games to keep you busy.
I would recomend this game only if you are either a hard core fan of the series, if you are looking for the convenience of having a version of the series that you can play anywhere. Or if you can find somewhere cheap.
While it's not a bad game, it's not that great either.