Introduction

Diverting ever so slightly from their usual rehashing of the story of the Three Kingdoms, Koei offers us Kessen. A story that takes place in fuedal Japan and involves two characters who are sworn enemies. Kessen is between Dyanasty Warriors 2 and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games in game play concepts. In DW2 you commanded your character individually and he may have had other soldiers (besides the assigned body guards) following him around. In the RotTK you were in charge of everything from making peace to breaking it. With Kessen you control the battle on the unit level. You can go in and observe the foot soldiers as they slug it out, but there really isn't any advantage to that. No, your job as the commander is the direct when units attack and how.

The Characters

Unless you have an interest in Japanese history you're probably going to get lost with all the names that the game throws out right from the beginning. Here are some of the more important characters that will pop up in every battle.

Ieyasu Tokugawa is the leader of the Eastern Forces and general you first play the game through with. His goal is to unite the kingdom under him.

Tadakatsu Honda is Ieyasu's right hand man. He'll give you advice (tutorial) throughout the game.

Mitsunari Ishida is a righteous man who sees Tokugawa as a traitor to the Toyotomi clan. He's taken it upon himself, at the charge of Lady Yodo, to destroy Tokugawa.

Sakon Shima is Mitsumari's right hand man.

Game Play

In Kessen you will have anywhere from 3 to 12+ units at your command. Each unit has certain stats that you'll need to be mindful of. Zeal is how much enthusiasm the unit has for the fight. If the zeal is over 80 (out of 100) you can order a special attack that will spend some of the zeal and hopefully put the unit on the receiving end in a world of hurt. You will also have to monitor the unit's level of fatigue. A unit that is tired cannot regain zeal as quickly and will get stomped when fighting.

What the game boils down to is knowing when to use special attacks, how to rally (raise zeal), and the tactical retreat, regroup, and reentry of units into the frey. As the game progresses you'll have more units to monitor, making the battle that much more difficult.

There is more to the strategy of the game than that, but I don't need to explain it since the game doesn't go to the bother of making the player utilize it. If you want to you can change the formation of the units, what weapon they're equiped with, and their orders before the battle starts. Doing none of this is necessary when it comes to completing the game.

Overall

The learning curve in Kessen involves the "throw the baby into the river and see if it swims" method of teaching. Fortunately the first battle is a piece of cake and your hand is held through the entire thing. So it's a bit of a disappointment that the 'hand-holding' seems to continue throughout the rest of the game. The computer suggests the best formations, strategy, commanders, etc. and nothing has to be altered for the player to have a good enough setup to win. The *system* had depth, they just didn't make the player use it.

Once on the battlefield you will likely feel as confused by the battle as they would in real life. For example, by the end of the game you might have 12 units all attacking different targets. The map doesn't give an overall feel for where all the units are, so it's more of "beat the unit closest to yours" until one or the other is defeated. In the midst of trying to give a unit an assignment a cut scene will happen that announces an important event in another location on the field. (I've had it do this to me five times in a row when trying to issue orders. I think *all* Koei games suffer from this problem). It's chaos folks, let me tell you.

The music is nice (or, I think it is, I was spending most of my time ignoring it). I'll say it's good because it doesn't distract from concentrating on the battle. The voice overs also aren't bad, though I do wish that they'd kept the original Japanese voices as well.

I only have three gripes about Kessen. The first is the lack of an over head map that tells both where units are and who they are. The second are the officers who refuse to carry out orders. I know that it happens in real life as well. But if it were real life I'd ride my horse over to them and smack them with my spear until they did as I told them to! The third is that the game is too short. 15 hours is a generous gestimate of how long it took me to complete both quests.

Kessen, like Kessen II, is a game I would recommend as a rental or a very cheap used game buy. Don't spend over $15 on this game, there isn't that much life in it.

Reviewed by Greenbeans on September 1st, 2002