Kessen III

"A nice addition to any gamer's library"

Kessen 3 tells the story of Nobunaga Oda as he brings Japan together by hitting people with swords. If that's not cool I don't know what is. It's based on historical fact, with Koei's magic touch for over-exaggerating details and characters so you can pretend to learn things too……..anyway.

Game play: After a tutorial battle the game starts you off on the main map. From there you can go to the shop and buy weapons, armor, troop types. You can also go to your HQ and equip your officers and check your history. The character customization is very well done, and there are plenty of unique weapons and armors to tame even the most avid collector. Afterwards you choose a battle, whether it be a major story battle, or one of the many side-jobs. Once a battle is chosen you begin to plan your attack. You pick which units to deploy and for the most part, where. You can even give units support units which allow you to use coordination attacks for extra damage. Once that's done the normal flow of battle has you picking a target for the other units and then controlling one yourself. You can switch units at anytime, as well as pick targets for your other units. The game takes terrain and position of your units into consideration as you attack also. There are also officer skills which will increase your stats, or even launch magic attacks on your enemies. Also there is the new rampage skill that lets your officer charge into the enemy's unit and fight in a mini-hack n' slash game. Missions range from escort, beating units, and taking objectives. It's not just a one trick pony, and the story unfold over 12 chapters, 13 on a replay. Loading Samurai Warriors and/or Samurai Warriors Xtream Legends data unlocks 2 new officers as well.

Though some aspects of the hacking and the slashing are a bit weak, the game play is still solid: 8/10

Sound: Some of the characters voices are reused, which I can overlook because the voice acting is decent. The battle sounds are also well done. You hear all the yelling and banging you'd expect to hear when two armies start stabbing each other.

Maybe the voice acting could be better, but I have heard much worse. 9/10

Graphics: This game is very well done as the graphics go. The in-game models are highly detailed, the backgrounds are nice, and the animations are fluid. Some of the magic effects are dated, but the overall production values are great.

This is a fine looking PS2 game 9/10

Summery/Endgame: A fine game for what it is. If you're a fan of Koei and its other works you'll like this game. If you're looking into buying this game you won't be disappointed. This is looking to be the first sleeper title for the PS2 this year.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/05