"My first Playstation 2... Book???"

As a long time Playstation owner, I've seen several great games, and several games that made me wanna kick a cow in it's right knee cap and stick a spork in it's left ear. This game feels more like a book than anything else though. Japanese history has always interested me, so this obviously peaked my interest. What probably makes this game most deceiving is that it isn't a game, you don't really DO that much. It's mostly a matter of watching things go on, and during a battle, you just tell the losing forces to back off, and the winning forces to shoot the other guy with muskets.
All and all, this game is NOT worth forty bucks, probably not even thirty. Rent it, beat it as West, and as East, then put it back. It's nice to see the biggest battle in Japanese history from battlefield view.

-------------------Graphics-------------------
7/10

The graphics here are something to see up close, but when you are giving orders, and watching armies move, it looks like a bunch of blobs moving around. Special Orders reveal some impressive sights, and fmv's are incredible. Half the game is out of battle, just watching people talking and things happening, that's always great.

------------------Sound------------------------
9/10

This score is right on, voice acting is a lot of times that same voice for many people, but otherwise, sound effects are brilliant, and voice acting is perfectly timed.

-------------------Control---------------------
6/10

There's no real problem with timing or anything, it's just that you never even get to issue orders since the other generals are always interupting you.

-------------------Fun Amount------------------
5/10

If you are interested in Japanese warfare and history, this is interesting and informative, but not really fun. So don't count on sword clashing fun.

-------------------Storyline-------------------
8/10

Obviously a good score for a game that is pretty much only storyline to begin with! Japanese history is quite fun to see, especially if you wanna see some of the biggest, stupidest looking hats ever in history.

--------------------Characters------------------
6/10

The Tokugawas or the Ishidas, those two families are the big characters to watch. Other than that, everyone else is just there for conversational purposes, none of them really matter for the plot.

--------------------Replay Value-----------------
3/10

Zilch. You can play as the East, then the west, but after that, you've seen it all. Once you've beaten the game with them, you can just try to highten your score overall, which is pretty pointless.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/04/01, Updated 11/04/01