Game:

Warriors All-Stars (2017)

Duration: 12:12

159 views

6

Warriors games are niche, and somehow this one is a niche Warriors game. This one brings together many of Koei Tecmo's series beyond the more acclaimed Dynasty and Samurai Warriors series.

Nioh, Toukiden, Nights of Azure, Haruka: Beyond the Stream of Time, Rio (Pachinko), Atelier, and Deception are some of the game series included here. The game also features music from some other series, like a stage song from Rygar, and the Musou Rush music is from Star Force. The maps are also many places straight out of the characters' worlds, whether gritty or cartoonishly vivid. I wanted to show them more but there's only one map with an easy way to focus on combos.

Anyway, this game also has some unique gameplay concepts for a Warriors game. You choose a character and four partners, who will follow you through the map. They don't really do much but will sometimes use their moves, including Musou attacks, not much damage but they can disrupt crowds a lot, the soldier enemies in the game are quite vicious. Of course, they made making a combo video a feat when they kept deciding to smack enemies away... but they gave me some cool impromptu combos, too.

But the fun concepts are that you can call on them to use special active skills that recharge over time, which can be attacks or various buffs, or enemy debuffs. Some characters can even use special combined skills when in the same team.

And you can temporarily switch to any of them. They'll take your place, and the previous character will stick to your side (almost literally). While you control the new character, the previous will follow your inputs... so essentially you start controlling multiple characters at once. They just can't leave your side even if they do attacks that are supposed to move them. Then it gets pretty fun because you can do this up to three more times, to control a character and have four others at your side in formation. It's very cool, and can get fancy when you desync the characters.

Another neat feature is that when doing charge combos, every charge move starting from the fourth, if you press light attack at any point during it, your team members will freeze the enemy in place and then smash them away.

Many characters themselves have some very fun mechanics. Arnice summons servans with every charge move, and canceling with a dodge doesn't stop them from attacking. William can Ki Pulse after every charge move to increase his attack speed for the next attack string (so this can keep looping). Laegrinna places down a trap copy of every charge move you use, which can be triggered with charge 1. Samurai characters can do Spirit Charges and have Hyper Attacks.

This game exudes some serious charm to the point it's straight silly. The music and UI are really upbeat, shiny stars and stuff, but there's a whole game mechanic dedicated to having your party members cheer you on as a ridiculous amount of mook enemies spawn. It's pretty amusing especially when characters like Lu Bu are cheering you on.

Of course, the game's not perfect, its linear NG+-based progression is arguably a bad choice for a Warriors game, with route-based characters, and the Bravery mechanic was very controversial.

You start every battle at Bravery level 1, and it raises to 10 as you take out officers and rack up KOs and complete (randomized) submissions. It works like a damage multiplier of sorts, so fighting officers that have higher Bravery will take little damage, or may not even stagger to attacks. But I did enjoy this mechanic, it added a lot of merit to taking bases and doing other stuff than just running past everything.

Every enemy officer can use a fully invincible attack that also serves as a combo breaker... so it can be a bit annoying when even the generic enemies are constantly staggering you with these big aura attacks. Named characters will actually use the same skills that you can use when they're in your party... some are just as busted, too. Oka and Naotora Ii become invincible for like 20 seconds, and Wang Yuanji does an insanely broken attack (you'll probably die before you can react) and then starts regenerating HP for a long time at a high rate. So that's what the enemies felt...

Anyway, it's just such a fun and charming game. I'm really happy to get to play the Toukiden characters and William in a game like this, and it was really cool to learn about some of the more obscure characters and see them get some love.

Music:
Warriors All-Stars - Prototype Musou (Stars Mix)
Warriors All-Stars - Prototype Musou (Mix Guitar)
Warriors All-Stars - All In ! (Starlet Mix)
Warriors All-Stars - All In ! (Stars Mix)
Warriors All-Stars - All In ! (Stars Mix Guitar)
Mario Hoops: 3 on 3 - Jr. Street (CD)
Macross Delta - Ikenai Borderline (Instrumental)
Phantasy Star Online 2 - Neon Nights (Instrumental)
Phantasy Star Online 2 - Casino Lounge

Other Statistics