I think it was during the summer of last year when I had only a good 10 to 20 PS2 games I came across a few hundred dollars from some of my savings bonds. Being young and not having to pay bills are anything of the sort, within seconds of getting the money I had decided on having an EB games shopping spree. On that day, I spent about $350 in EB, FYE and in my friends room. I had bought myself about 35 games, mostly PS2 seeing as I had very few games at the time. Naturally I wanted to get a lot of games so I stuck to a lot of cheaper used titles. One of the games I grabbed, just because I knew what it was and it looked cool, was Kessen. Being as it was made by the same people who made Dynasty Warriors, I thought it was going to be almost the same kind of game. Boy was I wrong! I hadn't had to much experience with tactical war strategy games like this so Kessen was hard to get into. Big epic battles from the feudal era of Japan does sound pretty damn crazy, and that's exactly what Kessen is.
A Most Epic War
Kessen's events are real battles that took place around the year 1600 in Japan. Hideyoshi Toyotomi, once a homeless Japanese boy, has now become the complete ruler over Japan. After a failed campaign trying to spread Japanese rule all across Asia, Toyotomi dies. A partner of his, Ieyasu Tokugawa defects from the Toyotomi family after Hideyoshi's death in order to try and seize control over Japan. He rages war against the members of the Toyotomi family as he tried to get what Hideyoshi had, for himself. Kessen is the story of Tokugawa and other Japanese generals from the east side and the west side who try to seize control over all of Japan during that period.
Your Destiny Is To Become Supreme Ruler Of Japan
Kessen is a real time war strategy game, a type of game not seen to often. Now when I say real time strategy you may think something of the sort of war craft or command & conquer. While they are all strategy games, Kessen is real time in a different way.
When you start a new game you are treated to some nice opening videos explaining the story of what exactly was happening in Japan at that time. You must play through the story as the east side (Tokugawa) of Japan at first as these are the true events. But when you finish the campaign as Tokugawa, you can play through again as the west side, which may go through a series of different generals as the story progresses. Each side you play through has six missions to go along to complete the game. The missions aren’t really long and can easily be beaten in maybe 20 to 30 minutes by going straight towards the enemy leader. To add some replay value, losing certain missions will take down a different route in the story for some different levels. Most missions have a couple of different ways to gain victory. The standard way is just to defeat the enemies’ leader general but some other missions may be just to get to a certain point on the map. All you ever really have to do is just destroy their general so alternative objects don’t really matter.
The battles take place on a different sized map each mission. Usually the map is just a big square but sometimes it will be a rectangular shaped map usually for escape missions. When it starts your given directions on objectives and shown all your units for the mission. It than shows you the enemy units who usually lay at the opposite end of the map. There are no hexagons in which you move your pieces on, in Kessen you can move your troops all over. You click on each of your officers and tell them where to go, who to attack or to simply stay put. Your units will collide with the enemy and the battle starts. Unless you zoom in the only thing you will see is the hordes of men collide. Zooming in on a battle allows you to watch up to like 100 soldiers fight on the battlefield. They will just whack each other for awhile and eventually some of them start to fall. The unit losses when all its men are wiped out. Each unit has special maneuvers that can use but require a certain amount of zeal to use. These maneuvers are often the turning point in the fight. If your enemy is at a distance hit them with a barrage from your rifles or blast them with a cannonade. Charge through the enemy army thinning their ranks at the cost of some of your men. Or why not have a drum call to increase the units’ morale.
Each general uses different types of troops. Some use archers, others have cavalry and some use riflemen, or ninjas or your basic foot soldiers. Each type of troop has another type that it’s effective against and vice-versa. Before each battle you might be given the opportunity to make decisive battle plans for the next mission. This is where you can decide which generals come with you and what kind of troops each general gets. You can layout a battlefield plan for each general giving specific directions on what you want them to do. You can have them go straight at the enemy or even take a path that you create to an enemy unit. Order some units to stick together or maybe you want a unit to make a fortress to up its defense. Any battle plan you make during this menu can be canceled in battle with telling that unit to attack something or move its position. You don’t have to make big plans for your units if you don’t want, but if you want to be a good leader you can take your time to plot out an excellent plan that will please your generals. I was usually too impatient to make big plans.
Kessen seemed pretty hard to understand at first, but I was dumb and now I realize that there isn’t a whole lot to really understand about the game. If you’ve never really played a strategy game than this will be a new experience for you but it shouldn’t take long to know what your doing. I guess the hardest thing for me was just to learn what the menus and all the buttons do, I took me awhile to figure them out. The instruction manual doesn’t help either. It has little information about the game besides what the special moves do. Instead its filled with history of what happened before, during and after the storyline of the game. The creator is really into the story and I even think its cool, but filling the entire booklet out with the story and little info on how to play the game? Ridiculous.
Graphics
Kessen was a launch game for the PS2 so you shouldn’t expect much at all in the way of graphics. The game can only handle about 100 soldiers on the screen at once unlike its succeddors. The men on the battlefield all look the same but they do have some pretty detailed suits. And some even ride horses! The battle fields themselves where lightly detailed, just some grasslands with some trees and dirt patches scattered. The cinematics however were a different case. Even though Kessen is a five year old game, I still find the cinematics impressive. They are swift and very life like. They usually appear after every mission and at certain points throughout the levels. They tell the story of the relationship of the generals and are done in epic proportion. Each general has an expremely detailed level of design. Their suits are works of art and every general has some big symbol piece thing on top of their helmet. The videos are still some of the best I’ve seen in a game to date.
Epic Warefare Soundtrack
Kessen had a great soundtrack to go with the great cinemas. The music sounds all like from the era of Japan this was set in. There isn’t a lot of different themes to battle to but the repitition didn’t get to me. The music still made me feel the epic warefare feel that got me into the game. Then there is the voice acting of Kessen, another gem. The voices are done with passion and help get you into the game and it’s story. Sadly theres no subtitles so your going to have to listen. But what you have to listen to is good stuff. There is no pauses in the words as your general shouts to his troops some battle encouragement. Some cinemas have a narrator telling the story instead of one of the characters. The narrator tells the story good and while he can be hard to follow, playing through a second time you have the concept.
A New Ruler Of Japan!
If you want to try something new (even though it’s a five year old game) and a strategy war game may be your thing, Kessen is something to look into. And at only $5, how can you go wrong?
Release: November 13th, 2000
Developer: Koei
Console: Playstation 2
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
1 Player
AUCTION DESCRIPTION: KESSEN III Brand new and factory sealed. If you wish to play this game on a PS3, please check Sony's website for compatibility is...More at eBay
KESSEN is Koei?s strategy game for the PlayStation 2 that delves into Japan?s history to tell an exciting tale. The game begins with the story of comp...More at GameQuest Direct. com
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