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Wednesday 5 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
The second time around, I played with a friend, choosing the option to play cooperatively. This game is designed nicely for two people to play together. While the players are on the same side, there is still a feeling of competing with each other. The main reason for this is because there is a number in the corner of the screen keeping count of how many kills each player has gotten. Thus, each player contests to have a higher kill count than the other. Also, the game encourages more than one player by adding another bonus to the Mousou attack. If you and another player are near each other and both have full Mousou bars, then if you activate it at the same time, you both release a more powerful Mousou attack, doing tons more damage for a longer period of time. These were the main things that made two-player mode that much more fun for me.
The game is constantly feeding the player rewards as well. Some of them are small and simple rewards of glory, such as if you've killed a specific number of people (50, 100, 200, etc) or if you killed a named officer, the sound effect of a crowd cheering plays and an allied general will shout their congratulations. Others are bigger, where at the end of each level, experience is tallied up for how many people you got and officers you took down, which causes you to level and gives you more attacks for your combos. Your bodyguards can level up as well, allowing them more access to different weapons and making it so you can increase there number, from 2 up to 8. As you complete more levels, you can also unlock new characters; in fact, practically every two levels, two or three more people are made available to play. This constant positive feedback is definitely part of what makes this game so addicting.
The game also allows a fair amount of customization. Beyond being able to chose from dozens of different characters once you've unlocked them, you also get to chose what to equip your character with. These items have to be unlocked first as well, either by destroying boxes or through finding all named officers and killing them for loot, but once you have them, you have your fair amount of choices. You can choose several different orbs - which are weapon buffs - that can either do extra damage, freeze your enemy in place in a block of ice, and a lot more. You can choose what artifacts to where, which can increase your life, mousou bar, defense, jump height, speed, and so on. You can also chose what mount to start with, be it a horse or an elephant. Depending on what you equip often effects your style of play, thus it makes you feel like you have more control over the power of your character. I often change what I equip to my hero from level to level to see what the outcome is. Plus, I am encouraged to always explore each level thoroughly to see what new items I can discover.
DESIGN
While I have really enjoyed this game so far, I can tell it will eventually get repetitive. Though I can tweak my character quite a bit, that does not change the fact that every level is 90% the same exact thing from the last. You kill hordes of soldiers and a few all-powerful generals here and there. The goals vary a little, from killing the main baddy on the opposing side to protecting your own leader to defending an area for a certain amount of time. Also, there are a few random events here and there, like a triggered ambush or the boats your fighting on are set on fire. However, when you get right down to it, it's still just the same thing over and over again. The designers did a good job of packaging it, making it so it hooks the player in quickly, but it'll wear off eventually. It would have been nice if they had found a may to make each level feel a little more different from each other or make the events have more of an impact.
I don't think they handled the story-telling very well. Most of the narrative is handled with tiny text scrolling up the screen in between each level and a screen shot of some place or person. It's probably talking about which army is advancing on which, but I am not certain, because I don't bother to read it. I don't really feel drawn into reading it because it is handled in such an unappealing way. Like I said, the text is tiny, and there's a lot of it. It just does not flow well with the rest of the game, when you've just completed a tough level, slaying thousands of enemies, and then being forced to slow down to read. They do, however, have a few cutscenes to introduce characters here and there, but they are short and often don't make sense. It may be because of the fact that I did not read the text, but I also think the cutscenes themselves were just not scripted well. I will say that they were beautifully rendered however.
I do like how much thought they put into making each character fairly unique. With dozens to choose from, it's nice to see that each is not a repeat of one or another, even going so far as to have their own personalities. Each one looks entirely different from the other and you can unlock about 6 different costumes for each of them. They all have their own fighting styles, which is quite apparent and does not even depend on what weapon they have. For example, two men carry one hand swords, but fight entirely differently from each other, one swinging heavily and resheathing his weapon in between each attack while the other slices his gracefully through the air in an almost artistic manner. A different voice and different phrases are shouted by each character as well, giving each of them a distinct attitude. Each character belongs to a faction as well, so even choosing a certain character can give you a fairly unique gameplay for that specific character. True, the amount of flexibility is limited, for they all play the same maps. However, depending on the character you chose, it will start you off fighting for different armies and different objectives. You could play one character and have your goal be to kill a certain warlord, and then chose a completely different character afterwards and be given the goal to protect that vary same warlord.
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