Kessen III

THE BAD:
Sometime hard to control various armies and still some translation problems.

SUMMARY:
Kessen III is the like it says, the 3rd of a not so well known strategy series from Koei (more famously known for the Dynasty Warriors series). In the past Kessen has been overshadowed by the fast action hack n' slash Dynasty Warriors series but now it has a fighting chance with Kessen III.

Kessen III starts you off as Nubunaga Oda (History fans will know this name), an ambitious warlord of a province in medieval Japan. Nobunaga has a dream to unify the lands and end the chaos under his rule and thus begins his quest. That's the basic story here and is actually very interesting with stories of love, humor, betrayal and all that good stuff with plenty of action to back it up.

Game play however is where this game really shines with a new engine allowing faster combat and new skills to use in combat. You control multiple armies but unlike the past Kessen games it is now much faster a lot like Dynasty Warriors, so no more of that boring slow paced combat. In fact one of the skills you can use allows your officer to go against a part of the army in a controlled version of basic Dynasty Warriors combat, slashing numerous soldiers with special attacks and such which is always fun.

Certain things like Magic are a bit absent in this game and you no longer have to rely on special timing to get the most damage against your opponent like in Kessen II. This time you just use the skill and it does it's damage, where as in the previous you had to go into a sub battle mode and position your officer to deliver the most damage to your opponent. The are only a few skills in this that take certain timing as they affect a large area so you could attack multiple armies with one attack.

Aside from skill your basic attack functions have changed. You can do basic attacks that are actually the attacks of your entire army. And special attacks based on the troop type you are using, for example a calvary squad could rush through enemies causing a lot of damage by simply holding the triangle button down for a certain amount of time and releasing it at a good moment. But if your defenseless while charging so be sure to do it at a good time.

Not only the fighting but customizing your army has improved a lot. You can now assign certain skills for officers to learn (some of which learn better then others) and equipments for the officers leading them. However you can only use a limited amount of officers in battles (depending on the battle) which is a big change from the large scale wars of previous Kessen games. However because of the fast paced action and constant rotation between armies this is almost necessary.

Other little things like music, difficulty and extras are all good in this game. You can now choose what battles to fight in this all of which affect the outcome of the game and the characters you get, adding some good replay value. Many of which are difficult to a point, after each battle you get a grade as high as S. Depending on the grade you get you will get extra items at the end of the battle (2 for S and 1 for A) and the option to replay if you didn't do well. So in order to get S ranks on all it will take a lot of practice.

All in all this game was very enjoyable. Me being a fan of the earlier ones I was a bit worried about the sudden change being a strategy purest but was very much satisfied with the game after playing it. Lot's of action with enough strategy to satisfy hardcore fans of the series. I recommend this to any fan of the series, Koei games or strategy fans in general.