Repetive battles
The huge battlefields ensure you’ll be dashing about like a headless chicken back and forward to help out your troops, whilst slicing and dicing everything that comes across your path. The opposition are generally easy to dispose of on the lower skill settings but, with each group that you encounter you’ll need to beat the much stronger guard captains to gain territorial advantage and beat the heavily tooled leader in order to win the battle. The game is complete when either the time has run out, or you have killed the main leader of the opposition.
Click for larger imageIt’s fairly repetitive stuff. Pressing the buttons as fast as you can to take out 10 soldiers huddled together is fun for a short period but the enemy and friendly A.I are so unresponsive at times that it becomes monotonous. Many a time you’ll encounter a group of half a dozen archers or warriors who don’t respond until you’ve stood right in front of them and unleashed a sword through their midriffs. You’ll watch in disbelief as you descend with your troops into an oncoming legion, only for some of them to just stand motionless face to face with the enemy, as if they’re having a chat about the weather. Therefore the majority of the killing tends to come down to your own weapon skills. You can rack up a number of combos by combining a few moves to take out a dozen enemies at a time, and use special moves to send them sprawling to the ground, but the hack and slash style feels unrewarding for the most part – a few framerate problems don’t help the issue.
Click for larger imageBattling against the colourful and eccentric leaders of each of the enemy camps is far more of a challenge and possibly the most fun to be had out of the game. The leaders can counteract your special moves with some dazzling moves of their own, they are much stronger, and are the most advanced A.I in a battle.
The controls throughout the fighting sequences are consistent and responsive. Tap the Y button and follow it with the X button whist pointing your left thumbstick in any direction and your general will follow those manoeuvres with extreme precision, smashing his way through the barricade of bodies. The 360-degree response to the left thumbstick ensures that fighting always feels smooth and that you feel in control of every movement of your warlord.
