Publisher: Tecmo Koei
Developer: Koei Canada
Genre: Action/Hack and Slash
Price: $59.99
Verdict: A bland and often frustrating game with a disjointed story.
Pros: Moderately deep combat system.
Cons: Choppy story. Frustrating one-on-one battles. Dated inventory system.
Acquired via Publisher
Warriors: Legends of Troy. For Koei fans, this is what would happen if Dynasty Warriors and God of War had a baby. It has the boss battles and gore of a God of War game with all the button mashing that Dynasty Warriors fans love. Unfortunately, when two beautiful people get together they always seem to make an ugly baby.
Imagine a bunch of executives over at Tecmo Koei sitting around a table. For some reason people keep buying these Dynasty Warriors games and they would like to build upon this momentum. Rather than buckling down and taking some time improve the quality of that series, they think it would be a better idea to simply make more games exactly like it. Thus spawned the Samurai Warriors, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam and now Warriors: Legends of Troy series.
Don’t worry, though. Warriors: Legends of Troy will be their edgy, M-rated game with lots of blood! You know, just like that successful God of War. That’s why the back of the box says things like, “Bones break and flesh tears on battlefields soaked in blood.” Obviously the insane gore is what sells God of War. That and quick time events, so they threw some of those in too.
The story of Warriors: Legends of Troy follows various well known Greeks and Trojans as they scream a bunch and stab each other. The story jumps around with a different warrior being featured for each battle. In between battles, a narrator tries to tie things together while images of Greek hieroglyphics scroll by, but it’s so jumpy that you have to work hard to follow it. One minute you are playing one of two forces fighting over someone’s wife, the next you are an ax-wielding Amazon trying to rescue your sister.
Well, story isn’t important, so let’s forget about that for the moment. All you really need to know is that you play as the big hulking character in the middle of the screen. The one that is twice as big as everyone else. While in combat you can use either quick, focused, or stun attacks. Additionally there is a charged “Fury” attack where you yell to scare everybody and are particularly good at stabbing people for a while.
Add in the ability to block, dodge, and pick up other weapons and you actually have a fairly decent combat system. If an opponent’s back is turned or knocked off balance, you can use a focus attack to instant kill someone. This gives you more “Kleos,” which restores health after you leave combat and earn fury faster. This encourages you to be fancier while killing your foes. Sure, spamming quick and focused attacks will quickly dispatch 90% of your enemies. However you will get more Kleos if you stun and instant kill each foe individually.
After a battle, Kleos are used to purchase items. These items are unlocked for all characters (although they are managed separately) and do everything from unlocking combos to increasing the strength of a given attack type to making your allies fight better. These items are all different shapes and are arranged in your bag in a style similar to Diablo’s inventory management.
In addition to fighting the hordes of enemy warriors or the occasional special enemy, players engage in one-on-one duels with enemy heroes. While the rank and file fall quickly to your blade, heroes have life bars that span across the entire screen and have weapons that quickly eviscerate your own. Each one has their own unique attack routine and the point of the battle is figuring out how to block, dodge and strike while they are open. While it isn’t too hard to recognize and exploit their AI routines, it takes a lot to take them down and if they catch you off guard then you will quickly die and get to start the whole thing over again. They can leave you frustrated and you don’t feel particularly satisfied once you bring them down, a bad combination.
On top of this, there are boss battles, like when Apollo possess a statue of himself and tries to kill you. This is much like a one-on-one battle except he likes to spawn zombie warriors to help him, and once you take out his legs you get to attack his crawling body. This means that his life bar is twice as long and your sword has trouble cutting through stone. While you get all your life back at the start of phase two, if you die, you get to go all the way back to the beginning.
Long story short: AI subroutines predictable and easy to exploit, but the battles take too long and if you screw up just a little too much you get to start over. These aren’t fun and get very old very fast.
Let’s recap: The story is choppy and as soon as you get the hang of a character it switches on you. Basic combat is simple hack and slash, but encourages you to slow down rather then quickly cutting people down. There is an inventory system, but it’s outdated and not very interesting. To cap it all off, the duels and boss battles are about as fun as chewing glass.
Sounds great, right? On a positive note, the game performed well. I didn’t notice any graphical problems, and I didn’t stare at loading screens. Once you get into a rhythm, it can be fun playing an overpowered warrior who is brutally cutting people down. If you really like Greek mythology, are quite partial to hack and slash games and enjoy playing games like you do listening to an EvilCast episode (with a good buzz going), then you might enjoy the game. Might.
While it’s nice to see Koei trying to do something a little different from its other hack and slash games, this game needed a little more time in the oven. There are so many other great games you could be playing instead of this one.
GrE Grade: D
Popularity: 2% [?]
