Kessen

The Good
When I bought this game, just a little over a month ago, I didn't know what I was letting myself into. But the price was cutted to half comparing to other games on the shelves so I had no choice but to take it. "From what I saw in Kessn II's commercials, this is a full 3D real-time strategy, and I'm most certainly to like it." is what I kept saying myself not to get discouraged to purchase it, but I did, and hesitation wasn't active not for a split-second. So I stretched my arm, grab it off of shelves and add one more game to my ever-growing collection. Of course, that day I went sleeping somewhere after 3am, though.

It didn't take me too long to realise my first thought of what this game may be or look like are not just wrong, but entirely wrong. Still, strangely enough, I really got addictive on such a game pretty soon. It was real-time to some point, actually, it was all the time, but it's almost as hard to notice that role. It resembled so much to some old Amiga games, such as "Carthage" or even "Centurion: Defender of Rome" by a little. You had you units with commanders of each, and all you could see is statistic of your men (or women, yup, ya heard me right, ninjas and some cavalry are women, hehe, nice touch though) represented by a number. However, that alone could not be enough to make me the least addictive, something else was... the interactivity. I'm not sure the term I used was right, but the game and the battles are handled though the serious array of animations, and I oughtta admit, there's many of 'em. What one of the creators of this game said at Koei once said, we wanted to make you feel like watching and controlling an interactive war movie, and by all means, I don't doubt they failed at achieving this. No wonder my first thought after playing this game was "Hey, when will I get myself Kessen II?".

The thing is, the game only gives you five battles to battle, three major battles, and three smaller skirmishes. But, the story and locations are changed depending on whether you control eastern or western army. And after finishing the game with both armies, you're opened the ability to play each of those battles, and with each of the sides (though my preferrance were always campaigns, not much of battles or skirmishes I chose myself, probably why I didn't like "Age of Empires" that much for the reason, although graphically it was stunning). Prior to every battle you have about 5min long animation, so for 6 battles you'll have 12 really nice animations, and for other 6 skirmishes you'll have 12 shorter ones. Not to count certain animations that finds their way into the game itself.

Okay, the animations are kewl and I'm sucker to those, always have been, and as some friends of mine like to demolish upon my taste for rather enjoying self-developing stories by going by some missions, areas or whatever, rather than putting parts of the story here and there randomly by myself, well, what can I say, it simply doesn't have to be be complicating way of collecting the parts of the story to make me like it. Another this is that music in this game was really fantastic. So good to describe the atmosphere, yet good enough for having a soundtrack, also, rather relaxing type of music.

As for the game itself, it doesn't go that complicated once you learn how to strategy yourself, and the idea of commanding your officers and seeing their reactions to your commands is quite nicely integrated. Sometimes, your officer may challenge an enemy warlord to a duel, or vice-versa, of your cavalry can simply raid through the enemy lines, or you can order your warlord a special kind of attack when he alone enters the enemy lines and take as many enemies he can (usually resulting in 100-200), and it's an awesome pre-defined coordination of moves, hehe. Of course, you have archers, pikemen, horsemen, ninjas and other type of units, but victory usually depends on better strategy, not on better units, believe me, I've seen that many times when I was certain of my doom in battle.

The Bad
I'm sorry, but I simply don't find repetitive battle animations boring or something like annoying, not at all. Hey, I adore that Shiva animation from "Final Fantasy VIII" and could watch it for ages (but you could probably count the number I saw it in thousands). This game is something like resurrection of an old time given the better coordination, interface, dramatic and graphic, which ended in my liking it, for what probably wouldn't happen for those older games, which wouldn't have anything to boost me hard enough to finish them. This one took me less than a week per army.

The Bottom Line
Don't confuse this to typical 3D RTS like you can find on PC computers (like I did to some point), as it really resembles more of a real strategy than to hold its power on real-time satisfaction. It has really long and many animations (though I've heard Kessen II has 'em even longer and more, if that's even possible), and battles are purely strategic, with very nice melodies and pretty great voice-acting throughout the game, but it won't give you some feel of dynamic as if you'll think computer is faster than you, will you be in time to move all 13 armies before he escapes. Naaw, it's not that kinda real-time ;) I personally like it, but I have a good feeling much bigger percentage of players will find it rather boring than actually good. Just heed my warning, and don't judge the game by the screenshots you can see, 'cos graphic is great, but it's not the graphic you control, it's animated, what you control is small dusts of cloud which are your people marching across the countryside, hehe.

The Good
Hmmm... lots of guys on the screen, pretty graphics. Some nice animation.

The Bad
Just about everything else. It's so boring to watch the same fights over and over. Every fight is the same thing- a bunch of Samurai-type guys whacking eachother with sticks until they fall over. Repeat about 1000 times and you have your average battle. Every mission is the same.

The Bottom Line
Don't even bother. Save your money for something better.