Kessen III revolves around the young Japanese samurai Nobunaga Oda in his rise to power, as he tries to unite all of Japan during the 16th century. While the heritage of the story promises for an excellent experience, Kessen III’s voice-acting and confusing story-line sequences makes it difficult to follow, as Oda is someone who spreads his own wrath of power against all of those who oppose him. The game’s storyline is presented in some inspiring cut-scenes that effectively progress the story and allows gamers to be immersed into the eventful story that is Kessen III.
Previous Kessen titles have always focused on large scale battles, in which hundreds of warriors would clash against one another while players could swap between leaders in the mist of the battle. However, this time round Kessen III offers a completely new mix of gameplay. Gamers can now command a number of leaders that can be assigned to various styles of troops – infantry with spears, cavalry, riflemen, archers and it wouldn’t be Japanese without ninjas – with each their own merits and disadvantages during the battle’s terrain placements and the player’s tactical approaches.
One thing that Kessen III stress is how the gamer approaches each and every battle. While the early battles are easy to knock off without any true strategy in your approach, the later battles can become absolutely mind-pulling as you’ll try to find a certain group style that’ll be able to counter your enemies attacks. And this alone is what makes Kessen III an exciting and refreshing game for strategy fans. At the beginning of each battle gamers will be shown to a map of the battlefield. In this you’ll be able to assign several troop types onto the field to be either commanding troops or the secondary troops that follow the orders and direction the commanding group does – in a sense they’re back up. While these back up troops can be moved individually if desired once on the battle field, they will follow all orders that are made for the controlling group.
One allied hero leads each group of troops, and if one of these heroes gets hammered or flees completely from the previous battle it’ll affect how they, and their troops, will perform in the upcoming battles. So it’s important that gamers play attention to their hero’s condition and abilities before each battles, as this could be where the battle can be won – just by having the correct troop styles and power to defeat your enemy.
Only if all Samurai women of the 16th century looked this beautiful
Each of these heroes featured in the game have their very own special attacks that can often work to your advantage during battles. Gamers can purchase a number of special power scripts to assign to their leaders that will enabled each hero to learn new powers to enforce destruction onto the battlefield. These can range from simple moral boosters all the way down to the leader calling down a barrage of water onto the enemy. As much as we would all like, these special moves cannot always be triggered as we please. Each special move has it’s own number of SP (special points) that it consumes, depending on it’s power. Each leader only has a limited amount of SP to work with, so it’s vital that gamers use these moves only when absolutely necessary. Thankfully, these points can be regained during successful battles. The more enemy troops the leader’s controlling group takes out, the quicker your SP revives.
While it may seem like a bit of a cheat to be able to use these moves, enemy leaders also have similar special moves that can overpower your entire force. It’s usually best that the gamers assign the correct powers to the best-suited leader. For example if you have a weaker leader, who can’t control too many troops, it’s important for that leader to have healing powers as well as ranged troops that act as support for the more powerful commanders who are best suited in the heart of the battles. Trying to understand the best suited troop style and assignment of powers can often be a confusing and daunting process, since if you make a wrong decision it may just lead to your death in your next battle. More often than not gamers will find themselves having a much more in-depth look into the strategy of the game rather than just jumping into the heart of the battles. Gamers can often find themselves spending hours just trying to find the best way to flank their enemies, which troop style is more effective against the other and exactly what power would be suited for which leader all on the pre-battle map. And while this may sound boring to some, you couldn’t be more wrong. As this thrilling aspect of each battle depending on each and every decision you make is what makes Kessen III that much more exciting and compelling, since every decision you make decides whether or not you’ll win each battle. Most battles are won by simply encountering the enemy head-on, while using range attack support to eat away at their troop numbers. Once a unit's troop numbers are depleted, the unit is defeated. This goes for both enemy and allied units.
Charge!
While in the actual battle gamers will control only one group of their allied troops. This can be the secondary troops or the commanding troops, although it’s probably smarter on most occasions to control the controlling groups. During these battles gamers can bring up a quick overhead view of the entire map showing all of their controlling troops. This allows gamers to quickly browse through their troops and their situation in terms of number of troops remaining in the group and their current position. At any given time, in this map, gamers can change troops from being secondary groups into leading groups, as well as assigning where and how these groups should go to a certain position.
Aside from special skills, other RPG elements include the ability to earn new weapons, armour and experience points. Depending on which skills were used and how successful the battle was, officers earn an amount of experience points. New items can also be found on the battlefield, and you can equip them at your headquarters between battles. Equipping your officers with the best weapons and earning increasingly powerful troops plays an important role in your success on the battlefield.
Each level featured in the game is varied in terms of structure compared to the next. There will be levels that will feature huge mountain trails that troops must work through, while there will be others that are played on open fields. Like most things in this game, the environment plays a huge factor when deciding on what troops to bring into the battle. Your horses may have difficultly trying to make their way through wood areas, while your infantry troops will have difficulty trying to walk Across/through Rivers and lakes. Each level is vibrant with amazing views of detail of the lush environment. While there are some texture problems on occasions, the majority of the time these levels look spectacular and will often create an excellent atmosphere for battles.
Visually, Kessen III looks and runs like a very decent title. The troops on the screen are all detailed, and well animated during the combat sequences. Some of the special moves are often quite attractive also. The game’s cut-scenes show nice detailed character models and textures that show the developers true dedication to Kessen III. However, during the thick of battles, things can become cluttered and honestly, rather annoying. The in-game camera angles are incredibly frustrating to control, as it becomes a daunting task in trying to keep the camera focused on your troops during their movement. The animation during the in-game cut-scenes are accurate, but the minority of the character’s body language is clearly over-the-top and has the tendency to pull you out of the atmosphere of the game.
A typical 16th century Japanese castle
While the body language of the characters is often over-exaggerated, the English voice acting isn’t much better. The majority of the lines are just plain emotionless, while others just feel completely fake. Thankfully, the rest of the audio side of the game is made up through the rather immersing soundtrack.
One particular problem with Kessen III is its AI control. Since gamers can’t always control all their troops at any given time, this leaves their troops into the hands of the computer-controlled AI. While the computer has a tendency of common sense on the battlefield, the same can’t be said when these troops interact in battle. In a matter of moments your entire group of troops can be wiped out due to the poor expertise of the computer controlled AI, since it fails to ever use tactics or special powers during the battles, which are two key aspects of victory.
Yes, there are a few problems with Kessen III met along the way, but all in all it’s a game that has come up out of nowhere and has surprised the lot of us. The game offers a fantastic hybrid of strategy and action that makes this game absolutely exciting to play at each and every turn. The maps are huge, the environments are well detailed and the amount of depth found within the game’s gameplay is outstanding. Unfortunately though, Kessen III cannot be forgiven for the incredibly frustrating AI and camera angles that truly destroy the game’s atmosphere constantly.
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