Kessen

"A disappointment if you want strategy, a delight if you want a movie"

I bought this game because I wanted a good military strategy game. What I got instead was essentially an interactive movie. Whether this is good or bad depends on your expectations. If you are searching for a military strategy that includes operations, tactics, strategy, civil administration, etc., then this game gets 2/10. If however you are searching to learn about Japan's feudal past, to watch some excellent cinematics, and to take a less controlling approach to a game, then it gets 9/10.

Gameplay (3/10): There are three main sequences to this game: story, planning, battle. The game opens up with a narrative worthy enough to be shown on television as a documentary. I wish to stress this further. The narration is so good and informative, that you could fool people into thinking that you are watching CNN or TLC. Afterwards the game goes into a planning sequence that has multiple stages: deciding which warlord to influence, examining the initial position of the enemy troops, and planning the course of action that your troops will take. Once this is complete, you go to battle, which often begins with a cinematic sequence that charges you for the conflict ahead. Unfortunately, it is at this point that the game falls apart. The battles have a certain ''RPG'' feel to them. Your troops have a certain number of ''special attacks'' that they can use, such as cannonade, cavalry charge, raid, etc. Every time you use a ''special attack,'' an animation occurs and your ''special attack,'' counter goes down one point. It kind of makes me feel like I'm using magic spells; not commanding my troops in combat. Also, whenever a special attack occurs (whether it is initiated by you or the enemy), the map ''zooms'' to that spot and the screen changes to show you the animation. Once this is done, you often find that you are disoriented as to where you are now situated on the map. I would often have to keep rotating, moving, and zooming around the map over and over again because the game would keep resetting my settings every time an animation would occur.

One major disappointment with this game is that there is no civil administration whatsoever. All you do essentially is go from one pre-defined battle to another.

Graphics: (9/10): Both the pre-rendered and real-time graphics in this game are very impressive. The cinematics between battles are simply a pleasure to watch. In fact, the entire reason why I kept pushing forward to win the battles was so that I could watch these movies, not because I enjoyed the actual battles. On the other hand, the graphics of the battle map is rather bad. Your troops look like a clump of black dots with clouds of smoke around them. When you order your troops to turn around, this mass of dots and smoke looks like a tank that's rotating on itself. One cool feature is that during battle, you can ''zoom'' into this mass of dots, and actually see your troops standing still, running, fighting, etc. (down to a single soldier). However, you will not be spending too much time in this mode, because you need to constantly keep looking at the battle map, searching for opportunities to secure and threats to avoid. But overall, the graphics for this game are quite good.

Audio (7/10): This game's soundtrack is better than average, especially the song during the initial planning stage which is simply phenomenal. The sounds of war are realistic. One bad note is that the voice-acting is not synchronized with the character's lips, most likely because it had to be translated from Japanese. It would have been a nice option to hear the voices in Japanese, with English captions at the bottom of the screen (a la Onimusha Warlords). However, since this was one of the first games to be released on the PS2, I will disregard this omitted feature.

Story (9/10): This game is based on Japan's actual past, and the story itself is fascinating. There is also an option to view the biography for each of the characters, which should immerse you further into this game.

Replayability (3/10): I'm not too sure that you would want to replay this game once you have fully completed it (i.e. you begin the game only able to play as one kingdom. Once you ''complete it,'' you can play it again as the other kingdom. Only at this point would I consider the game ''completed''). Chances are that once you have completed this game, you will either put it away and never play it again, or sell it.

Load Time (7/10): The load times of this game are easily tolerable. No gripes here whatsoever.

Buy or Rent: Unless you are extremely passionate about Japan's feudal past, I would recommend renting this game before buying it.

Overall (6/10): As mentioned in the first paragraph, you will either love or hate this game depending on what you are searching for.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/01, Updated 05/29/01