It actually wasn’t long ago that I put a preview up for Strikeforce, but only a few days ago, I got the hands on experience with the game via the Japanese demo available from the Japanese Playstation store, around 205MB in size. Though my impressions of the game was a “same old, same old” kind of outlook, the game itself actually surprised me in both a good and bad way, but on the whole it is exactly what you would expect from KOEI...

          When I booted up the demo, my predictions were that I would get to grips with a few characters from the game whilst pummelling the living daylight out of a huge ceramic dragon. Wrong. Remember last time I had said that KOEI had completely lost their marbles? It appears not. When the title menu came up it only gave the options to either: “Continue”, “New Game” or to access “Options.” I expected to be at least acquainted with around three characters from each of the three kingdoms as in previous Warriors series demos, but I was over the moon to see every character available in the demo, apart from Lu Bu for obvious reasons.

          Once a character is chosen, you get to choose a name, as in type in your own name. I wasn’t sure why but afterwards your character appears in a small town littered with NPCs. It didn’t take long to recognise what the NPCs were selling; despite I have no working knowledge of the Japanese language. In the town space you can buy weapons, upgrade weapons, buy field items and trade gems which can be found on the battlefield. Once suited up you can head to the bottom of the town where a message board is erected. From here you can view available missions, and once accepted you can head straight on into the field of battle. It seems KOEI has taken a leaf of Capcom’s book here by using a very similar between-battles system, but if that’s what made Monster Hunter a success, it could do the same for Strikeforce.

         

As I mentioned earlier, you have to put in your own name which seemed a mystery to me, but when I bought up the Multiplayer menus, it started to make sense. Strikeforce offers only one type of multiplayer mode and that is supported only by ad hoc so far, but is also thankfully supported by ad hoc party too.

          To get an accurate summary of the game, I decided to play as three warriors from each kingdom to give an overview as to how things played out, the characters I chose were:

. Ma Chao, Pang Tong and Wei Yan of Shu

. Sima Yi, Xu Zhu and Cao Ren of Wei

. Huang Gai, Ling Tong and Taishi Ci of Wu.

          The actual gameplay incorporated in Strikeforce is surprisingly unlike that of Dynasty Warriors 5 or 6, but instead kind of combines the two and adds new elements. You have your normal attacks allocated to the square button and your heavy attacks mapped to the Triangle button. However, when I realised the play style was completely different, the game itself started to feel a bit loose until I discovered the power attacks. Clamping down on the L trigger will lock onto an enemy, and when holding down R and tapping or holding Triangle will unleash a power attack. It may get hard to adjust to at first, but soon you will be combining aerial and ground power attacks to unleash some devastating combos.

         

There are another few changes added included the removal of the K.O bar, instead you simply have a points bars which tallies points as you build combos. Also, for the first time in the series, you can wield two weapons. When in the town the weapons vendor will sell you any kind of weapon you are looking for, which you can then store as your primary or secondary weapon. When on the field, pressing circle will change your weapon in an instant, meaning you can chain together combos from both weapons. “Circle Button?” I hear you fans say, “But isn’t that the button that triggers musou mode?” Alas, in this game, musou doesn’t take on the conventional role of being a super-ultra-mega attack. Instead, pressing all of the action buttons at once will trigger the “Awakening mode” in which your character will transform into a god-like version of themselves. This sounds great, but to be honest, it just makes your attacks quicker and stronger. When your fed up, if you tap the action buttons again, THEN you will unleash a musou attack... It’s all very complicated stuff.

                   

The thing I looked forward to most in Strikeforce was taking on the huge bosses screened in the debut trailers of the game, how wrong I was. You don’t actually get to take on a huge stone dragon within the demo, instead you only get to mash your way through hordes of bandits and their overpowered leaders. The two missions you can take on when playing the demo consist of the same two main goals: kill the bandit leaders. It was really quite frustrating beings that I had expected huge beasts, but was made even more bland due to the fact that these peasants you fight can batter you to a pulp even when you are in “Awakening Mode.”

          I still haven’t completely made my mind up about the game, if KOEI somehow manage to get an infrastructure online mode included, it will make me buy it, but from what I have seen, the game isn’t performing to standards that I would have expected from a reformed KOEI. Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce is set to launch in mid march worldwide.