Thoughts on Warriors All-Stars

[DragonFlames]

So after @Shadow Mir told me that Christophorus from Nights of Azure (the character you see in my profile picture) was playable in this Koei Tecmo-internal crossover game, I just knew I had to give it a try (yes, I bought this game just because it featured a character from a game I liked, sue me). And now that I'm playing it and now that I've checked some of the reviews, I thought I would throw in my own two cents about it. Note that this isn't a review, just my thoughts on the game.

I saw that the reception for this game was all around a resounding "meh" and even the greatest defender of Dynasty Warriors Jim Sterling himself called it a lazy cash grab in one of his videos. And I don't find myself agreeing with that (though I won't dismiss his opinion, or anyone's for that matter, as wrong, either). I think this is the most fun I've ever had with a Warriors-style game. The gameplay is really fluid, mission types are pretty varied and the interactions between the characters from different games are really endearing and sometimes quite hilarious, too. At the same time, this is probably one of the weirdest and funniest games I've ever played just going off of the many funny team combinations you can make.
To elaborate, you can make a team of up to five people, one person you play as and four characters that provide support. During battle, you can use their Hero Skills for various effects such as boosting stats, healing or helping to dispatch some enemies.

Granted, going in, I only really knew three of the characters (Arnice and Christophorus from Nights of Azure, as well as William from Nioh) and one of them only through a video I watched about his home game (that being William), so I was pretty excited to see all those new faces I had no idea existed and I've even come to like most of them, with Sophie, Horo, Ryu Hayabusa, Nobunyaga Oda and Wang Yuanji (who is pronounced "Ou Genki" in the in-game VO for some weird reason) being notable favourites of mine. And I don't even mind the original characters, even though people at large seem to be put off by them being "furries", which I can understand, because at first, it was a little odd, but I've gotten used to it because the three main people you get to accompany are all pretty well thought out characters. Special shout-out to precious cinnamon roll Tamaki, who is also a badass on the battlefield and has also become one of my favourites gameplay-wise.
I can safely say that I am now interested in trying out some of the games the characters came from, Tokiden and Atelier in particular.

Though I do have some gripes with the game, too. That doesn't mean that the game is bad, just that there are some flaws. The story is very basic and basically exists as an excuse for all these different characters to interact in the same universe. Though I can't say that I dislike the story. I've only unlocked three endings so far (oh yeah, there's multiple endings, too) and through all three playthroughs, I was really invested in the characters of Shiki, Setsuna and Tamaki and their fates and felt like I wanted to help them and their world.
Other, more glaring flaws include the fact that enemy captains and heroes are temporarily invincible whenever they use their Hero Skills, so whenever they use them, it takes longer to kill them (duh!), which is especially stressful when you're on a timed mission. And then there's Oka and Naotora Ii who become straight up invincible when they use their Hero Skills against you, though you can use these same skills if you put them in your party. That doesn't change the fact that they're pretty annoying to fight.
Another thing that bugged me is that some parts of some maps are entirely empty, so you have periods where you just traverse the battlefield to your next objective and nothing happens. At least the mission log isn't as slow as FE Warriors, I guess?
There is also no Free Mode or Adventure Mode, which doesn't bother me personally, but it still needs to be pointed out.

Overall, I really like this game and would recommend it to anyone who likes Warriors-style games.
What do you think? Did you like this game? Hate it? Who is your favourite character to play as (for me, it's a tie between Arnice, Christophorus, Wang Yuanji and Sophie)?

Side Note: If this is the wrong section for this topic, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Edited July 27, 2018 by DragonFlames

[YotsuMaboroshi]

37 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

 Wang Yuanji (who is pronounced "Ou Genki" in the in-game VO for some weird reason)

IIRC, this has to do with the differences in pronunciation for Japanese and Chinese characters.  They use the same characters, but JP prounounces it 'Ou Genki' while CN pronounces it 'Wang Yuanji'.  English localization for Dynasty Warriors actually uses the CN pronunciation of the names, instead of JP like the rest of the script, to better match the original source material (Romance of the Three Kingdoms is originally Chinese).  It's the same reason 'Son Goku' can be derived from 'Sun Wukong':  Son Goku is the JP reading of the characters while Sun Wukong is the CN reading.

On Warriors All-Stars, I thought it was a fairly fun game, but a bit lackluster as far as musou games go.  The gameplay itself is fine, but there's a lack of things to do outside of the story mode, and the number of playable characters can seem disappointing given that it came out after WO3 (and a lot of people at the time of release thought this was a replacement for the WO series).  The OC 'hate' is mostly just the same reason the FEW OCs are hated:  it's a cross-over game where the story focus is on OCs rather than the characters people already know and care about.

[Etrurian emperor]

I was immediately pretty sour on the game. Decreasing the focus on the two main Koei series to focus on some lesser known titles was a pretty promising idea. But only having three characters for Samurai Warriors takes that philosophy way to far. Its made worse that the three SW additions are exclusively made up of bad characters. We got the bland poster boy, the hyper agressive and unreasonable tsundere and some weird moe blob. 

Cat Nobunaga looks really awesome though. 

Edited July 27, 2018 by Etrurian emperor

[DragonFlames]

11 hours ago, YotsuMaboroshi said:

IIRC, this has to do with the differences in pronunciation for Japanese and Chinese characters.  They use the same characters, but JP prounounces it 'Ou Genki' while CN pronounces it 'Wang Yuanji'.  English localization for Dynasty Warriors actually uses the CN pronunciation of the names, instead of JP like the rest of the script, to better match the original source material (Romance of the Three Kingdoms is originally Chinese).  It's the same reason 'Son Goku' can be derived from 'Sun Wukong':  Son Goku is the JP reading of the characters while Sun Wukong is the CN reading.

Interesting. I had no idea that was the case. Thank you!

11 hours ago, YotsuMaboroshi said:

On Warriors All-Stars, I thought it was a fairly fun game, but a bit lackluster as far as musou games go.  The gameplay itself is fine, but there's a lack of things to do outside of the story mode, and the number of playable characters can seem disappointing given that it came out after WO3 (and a lot of people at the time of release thought this was a replacement for the WO series).  The OC 'hate' is mostly just the same reason the FEW OCs are hated:  it's a cross-over game where the story focus is on OCs rather than the characters people already know and care about.

I can definitely see where people are coming from with that. I haven't played the Warriors Orochi games (which I assume is the series you meant with WO), so I went in pretty much unbiased in that regard (the only Warriors game I've played before Hyrule Warriors Legends was Samurai Warriors on the Wii at a friend's house). I'm personally fine with the number of playable characters, given how my inner completionist wants to max out their Regard with every other character...

11 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I was immediately pretty sour on the game. Decreasing the focus on the two main Koei series to focus on some lesser known titles was a pretty promising idea. But only having three characters for Samurai Warriors takes that philosophy way to far. Its made worse that the three SW additions are exclusively made up of bad characters. We got the bland poster boy, the hyper agressive and unreasonable tsundere and some weird moe blob. 

Cat Nobunaga looks really awesome though. 

Understandable. I personally wished the original Nobunaga Oda would be in the game too, if only to see the hilarity of him interacting with his cat version.

Also, I want a sequel with characters from Nights of Azure 2, like Ruenheid or even Malvasia.

Edited July 28, 2018 by DragonFlames

[Jedi]

It's a solid game, but the lack of any Uncharted Waters is kind of irritating. I do like some DoA & Ninja Gaiden focus though. 

If you like a quirky cast maybe you could try Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi, Japanese only but it's soooooooooooo fun. Not made by Koei though, it's Capcom.

[Etrurian emperor]

4 hours ago, Jedi said:

It's a solid game, but the lack of any Uncharted Waters is kind of irritating. I do like some DoA & Ninja Gaiden focus though. 

If you like a quirky cast maybe you could try Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi, Japanese only but it's soooooooooooo fun. Not made by Koei though, it's Capcom.

Alternatively Sengoku Basara 3 could also work since that one actually got a western release. It could get a big repetitive from time to time but I remember really liking it. 

Basara always was a rather pitiable franchise when it came to the west. Their first attempt they botched by trying really hard to pretend it wasn't about Samurai, the second one wasn't released because their first attempt went so poorly, and then we got a confused third game that pretended the first Western Basara didn't exist and was a sequel to the events of the unreleased second game. And then when the third game unsurprisingly didn't became a big hit in the west Capcon pretty much game up. Its a really big shame because some of their ideas and characters are much more interesting than their Koei counterparts. Henpecked chainsaw wielding Muneshige and posh James Bond villain Yoshitsugu were really quite awesome. 

[Jedi]

9 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Alternatively Sengoku Basara 3 could also work since that one actually got a western release. It could get a big repetitive from time to time but I remember really liking it. 

Basara always was a rather pitiable franchise when it came to the west. Their first attempt they botched by trying really hard to pretend it wasn't about Samurai, the second one wasn't released because their first attempt went so poorly, and then we got a confused third game that pretended the first Western Basara didn't exist and was a sequel to the events of the unreleased second game. And then when the third game unsurprisingly didn't became a big hit in the west Capcon pretty much game up. Its a really big shame because some of their ideas and characters are much more interesting than their Koei counterparts. Henpecked chainsaw wielding Muneshige and posh James Bond villain Yoshitsugu were really quite awesome. 

My main thing against Basara 3 is that it has a very small cast for no reason and it's update with more playable stuff never got released westside.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Jedi