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Koei has seemed to make a living off of the same game made in a multitude of different ways. Dynasty Warriors spurred a long list of sequels within one console lifespan, Mystic Heroes, and now the newest addition to the "beat up everything that moves" mindset - Samurai Warriors.
State of War is the newest in the Samurai line and the first offering on the PSP. The essential gist is a rewriting of history – a large game of what-ifs that involve a lot of ancient Japan's foremost heroes and historical figures locked in struggle. This translates over into a bunch of dialogue from legends like Yagyu Jubei attempting to sound 21st century while you stare at a pretty background. These guys knew what phrases like "as if" and "like, totally" meant in today's vernacular, all the way back then? Historical, indeed.
After being treated to the story (both 'treated' and 'story' being used loosely), your chosen leader prepares himself and his subordinates for battle...which is held on a map. Yeah, a tactical map – checkered squares show which is your territory. and which is the enemy's. Campaigns usually consist of trying to overtake a main stronghold, defeat a specific general, a combination of the two, or some obscure miscellaneous task. Your main character controls his own unit while everyone else in your camp works independently. (Sometimes you can focus attacks and team up against enemy leaders, but it's more a matter taking your main unit to where the action is.) In other cases, you can use charms to immobilize or damage far off units or change the map's layout to your favor. Though no Samurai Warriors would be complete without a good dose of blood-letting!
This is where the second half of gameplay comes around. Running into opposing units initiates combat, as does…well, anything that doesn't involve you landing on a empty blue square. Conflicts switch gameplay over to an action beat-em-up brawl – the sort of thing we've grown to know from the Samurai Warriors series. The only real change is now the skirmishes are very short and focused, usually asking that you defeat a unit's leader, so many enemies in a time limit, or some other random task. These goals keep the battles from getting tedious, but can also be finished in a minute or two.
So the typical flow of the game is: move one of all your units around; watch your other units move independently; get into a fight that lasts a minute; come back to the map; watch your opponent move…wash, rinse, repeat. This keeps the game very fast paced – a good thing considering you can only save at the map and between campaigns. The quick flow also creates something of a new breed to Koei's series by allowing players to jump in and out of play relatively easy, which is a great blessing for any portable strategy game.
This all amounts to little though, since it's all the same thing you've played time and time again. Beating up brain-dead drones and generals may be fun to watch for the first few minutes, but State of War degenerates into an exercise in monotony. Keeping individual battles short and sweet would be nice if it didn't feel like every battle was just like the last one. You do gain extra abilities and strength as the game wears on, but it never feels like it's necessary to do anything other than hit X over and over. The actual idea of a strategy-based brawler is very interesting, but ultimately fails in execution.
Unless you're a diehard fan of Koei's brawler franchise and have yet to tire of its repetitious nature, State of War will do little to win you over. The concept behind it is an interesting one, but it just feels like a bunch of half-hearted attempts tacked onto a worn-out gameplay system. |
