Slashing through hundreds of anime soldiers can't always be a fun time
Koei continues their crusade to create as many Dynasty Warriors clones as possible. Up to this point they have created games based on anime's that I knew about. That is no longer true with this one. This story is about the prince of Pars who is named Arslan. He is a kind man who gets thrown out of his kingdom by the invading army of Lusitana. Starting only with his loyal lieutenant Daryun he must slowly gather up a army to take back what he has lost. It is hard for me to not compare this to the Three Kingdom story in the way they set up the characters. Even though this is based on the period of time in Europe in which holy knights invaded other countries on a crusade to spread the word of their one true god. The story is well told and the only downside is that they decided stop midway through so they could do at least one sequel to this game.
Now the gameplay is about as by the numbers as you might expect. This is the light/heavy attack combo system that has been a standard since Dynasty Warriors 2. To bad part of this combat system has regressed to a previous state. For some reason they decided to omit a lock on mechanic. Without it some encounters are tougher to beat and it just feels like I’m playing a older game. It does have some link combos to stretch out certain moves. Along with elemental attacks that can boost the amount of damage dealt out. When first starting this game it kinda looks like they revamped mounted combat slightly but it turns out those moments are just big set piece moments. Every now and then a mardan rush point appears and you quickly gather together 100 horses/warriors/archers to rush through about 500 soldiers in about 30 seconds. Although cool at first I quickly got tired of them since they play out the same way throughout the 14 hour campaign.
A basic level up system is in the background that is augmented with a card system to buff up certain skills. To be honest the card system did nothing for me at all. Sure some of them can boost attack/defense but I never really noticed much a change during battles. Leading me to haphazardly slap them on my characters since they didn’t seem that useful on normal. I’m sure good use of this system is useful when taking on some of the harder difficulties but challenging some of the tougher battles on hard isn’t that fun in my opinion. The usual additional modes are included. Free battle lets you challenge the battles you see in story mode but with only one character instead of shifting the playable character around to better fit the narritve. Online lets you pair up with someone else to attempt any of the battles you’ve already competed offline.
A few things point to this being a game I should like. The story is something I haven’t seen before and visually this does a great job emulating a animated art style. Yet the minor relapse of not including a lock on made me very much not enjoy any of the battles. A lack of unique boss enemies is a problem too half the time you’ll be finishing a battle beating up generic general. The characters are rather one note too with a lack of any progression with any of the characters other than Arslan. Finally no real post game is a problem as well. With my only option being that I could replay missions on a harder difficulty I just don’t see much of a reason to do that. Oh I can unlock better cards huh? Nope that isn’t a good enough carrot on a stick for me.
I really wanted to like this game just as much as the Dragon Warrior spin off game also put out by Koei. But the additions they decided to go with this time didn’t impress me at all. Looking at it as a whole this is probably on par with a dreadfully average game. Everything works but nothing about it was that fun. I don't think this is a very good game and it isn't worth playing even if you are a Dynasty Warriors fan.