Warriors Orochi
I’ve never really been a fan of Koei’s Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors beat-em up series, I’ve always found them unbelievably boring and totally unappealing. But with this latest Orochi title, I really hoped things would be different…Boy was I wrong!
Basically Warriors Orochi is just more of the same, you taking on infinite numbers of totally harmless enemies, killing some bosses, occasionally escorting a character to the exit point and…well that’s about it. Seriously, if you’re a big fan of the series you’ll love it, if you’re not, don’t get near it.
The story of Warriors Orochi is stupid to say the least, some Serpent God named Orochi was apparently getting bored out of his mind so he kidnaps all the best warriors from Chinese Three Kingdoms period and Japanese sengoku period and brings them together by creating a rift through time and space. Now he will test his strength against them to prove that he’s the man. Yeah, how dumb is that? I bet a retard could come up with a better storyline than this, there were so many activities this Orochi guy could have engaged in…what there were no more gods to challenge? And if he had really defeated them all, what kind of a challenge could a mere human be? Dude, play some chess or checkers with them, now that’s a challenge. Anyway the idea is the Chinese and Japanese heroes have to combine forces to defeat Orochi’s armies and finally rid the world of his tainted presence. But look on the bright side, it’s something different (I don’t know what came over the guys at Omega Force). The story mode features 4 different stories, one for each of the three Chinese warring kingdoms ( Wei, WU and Shu) and one for the Japanese warriors. Don’t get all excited though, although the officers are different, the missions are almost identical.
As far as the gameplay is concerned, if you’ve got a good opposable thumb you’re all set. All you need to do is just mash the square and triangle buttons until you finish your mission, the special attacks are optional, you don’t really need to use those to complete your missions. The only (let’s call them) improvements are the prebattle menu, where you can choose what officers will be involved in the fight and combine weapons picked up during missions into advanced super weapons, and the fact that during every battle you’ll take control of three officers, each with his own skills, and switch whichever suits your needs at a different time. Personally I didn’t find these new features very helpful, but again, it’s something new. All in all the gameplay is still very repetitive, with one particular irritating element, the horseback fighting. That animal really got to me, he moves so funny, he doesn’t help the least bit, enemies are harder to hit and bonus items are a lot more difficult to pick up. So take my advice, stay away from the horse.
As far as the graphics are concerned, no real improvement, but that hasn’t bothered me, I like it, because it’s flashy and colorful, still some of you, who are fond of graphical masterpieces, will probably be disappointed. The sound part is a catastrophe, couldn’t they have just put in some Chinese or Japanese music instead of some techno crap that just kills the mood? And the voice acting is probably the worst I’ve ever heard, I mean it’s like I’m watching a kids movie, and those lines…I don’t know who came up with them but they should be arrested. If I was Koei I would have gone with the Japanese voice acting and English subtitles.
Now, although you have 77 warriors to choose from, some of them are just too over the top. Take Wei officer Zhang He, I remember him from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series and he didn’t look at all like a transvestite. In Warriors Orochi, he talks like a girl, is dressed in an orange kimono (he’s Chinese) and he has some metal claws as weapons. Now I understand this is a fantasy game, but if that’s what they were going for, why didn’t they change the characters? But hey that’s just me, maybe you like it.
In conclusion, Warriors Orochi is a game I’d stay away from unlike you enjoy getting bored to death. Which apparently a lot of gamers do enjoy, since Warriors Orochi has received a user score of 8.6 on Gamespot. I don’t know what these guys are thinking.
