Warriors All-Stars

The latest in the hate-it or love-it "Warriors" series brings little to no innovation to an already aging series. You start off selecting your general from those initially unlocked, these include, other than the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors characters you'd expect to find, a few from other Koei Tecmo's published franchise such as Dead or Alive, Rio Blackjack , Atelier and more. Most of which, I'd have to admit, I've never played or even heard of, but are interesting and their skills match nicely to their theme while also working in the context of a Warriors game. I obviously went for the cat version of Nobunaga Oda.

I was then treated to a weird cut-scene involving some kind of furry nightmares summoning our heroes using Magic the Gathering cards and some freaky mirror for reasons. But who really cares and even if I did have an interest in following the plot I would be hard pressed to, as I do not speak Japanese, and trying to read the text boxes that show up during battles, through which most of the story is told, would be quite a task. I was then thrown into a tutorial mission which halted my gameplay constantly for lengthy explanations of the game's systems most of which should be familiar to Warriors fans, who would be the main audience of this game, but it's all in fashion as they rarely dare to try anything new. Cat Nobunaga turned out to be a great choice as he spouted cheesy lines about world domination in a tough, deep voice and summoned cat firing squads to lay waste to his enemies accompanied by various meows and hisses, extremely entertaining. You meet other heroes who join you to form a group with four others that then follow you and fight by your side. While they mostly do their own thing they can be commanded to use special skills which can be combined effectively into combos or be controlled directly by replacing the hero and joining him in a combined attack that can include all four, both on a shared cooldown. Besides your character's level you gain star levels during a mission, the enemies have star levels as well and you are advised to take care of lower level ones to level your star power before trying to tackle higher ones on that level, but I found no problem dealing with any on the difficulty settings the game defaults to at the start (And locks you to until you finish the game at least once). All-Stars replaces the "Musou Rush" with "Star Rush" where most of the game's "innovation" comes to play, once activated your attacks get stronger and faster and the screen fills with enemies. As you work through enough of them your teammates join in cheering you on and throwing their attacks into the mix, culminating in an all out shared attack once the timer runs out. Though it can be satisfying, the game's decision to add swarms of enemies to the battlefield, will, most of the time, get you disorientated and I found myself having trouble finding the base commander or general I was aiming for in the first place.

You are then introduced to your main base "Sanctuary" where you can talk to the characters who joined you, level them up in the training grounds, craft or upgrade cards which are this game's replacement to equipment, accept missions from your companions and take a bath with them (When the horse or bear aren't occupying it, obviously). The world map acts as your mission selection, missions very between resource/card collection, challenges, hero recruitment and main story missions. Most missions offer little variance, the maps, much like the character models, are recycled from older games and have not aged well at all.

The game's strongest point is the way the characters from different worlds interact, making friends or enemies based on their own ambitions carried over from their respected worlds, the main story changes as well depending on which heroes you choose and recruit. After having played a few missions with Laegrinna and Millenia from Deception IV they decided to basicly rebel against the plot and sacrifice this world to the devil and, in a mission which ended the game, were banished along with all the other heroes back to their worlds. The game then creates a save file allowing you to start over with everything you’ve achieved in the first playthrough saved (Money, cards, unlocked characters and their levels, ect.). This feature may keep you interested for a while, seeing how different characters interact and change the way the story goes, that is if you can follow the story in the chaotic nature of this game.

In conclusion, die hard fans of Warriors games might enjoy it, although they may find it too easy and simplified for their taste. All-Star’s best feature, the branching story with multiple endings, is negated by the Japanese only voices. Still had some fun with this title, but I attribute it all to Cat Nobunaga.

Time Played: 12 hours.

Final Verdict: Competent, but not good. Wouldn't recommended, unless you got that itch.