PasokonDeacon
"On the other hand, however, there are people who still only use stone. How do they catch game and defend themselves from outsiders? Using only their strong jumping power and stone spheres. They use those skillfully to defend themselves. Here, we introduce two such people. It seems their names are Mario and Luigi. Will they ever learn about sophisticated culture?" These wry words from the game's manual point to the absurdity of Mario Bros., but also the predicament that Hudson Soft's version of the game found itself in. Spread over so many Japanese PC platforms in October 1984, it's a seemingly simplistic variation on the arcade original in a time of rapidly evolving competition from developers at Namco and elsewhere. What more can a few overburdened programmers crank it out before the window of success for this type of game disappears?
Punch Ball Mario Bros. is fun enough despite its platform limitations and unwillingness to go farther with its deviations from the source material; it's also a benchmark for the systems it got ported across. Hudson knew how to get the most from their partnership with Nintendo, bringing conversions like this everywhere it made sense. The weaker but cheaper PC-6001? Yep. The graphically powerful but expensive Sharp X1? Why of course! And it's fascinating to see how much the coders wrought from less powerful PC hardware vs. the best of the bunch, too. I was expecting major sprite and color clash going into the PC-6001mkII version, yet it felt hardly less clean and responsive to play than the Sharp PC varieties. (Considering the X1 has its own sprite-ing hardware, its stiff performance had me underwhelmed.) I expected Hudson to struggle with the FM-7's poor keyboard I/O, however, and that bore true.
See, there's a problem afflicting so many FM-7 games, at least the ones reliant on predictable inputs: the system doesn't fully poll keyboard inputs. This means you can tap anywhere on the numpad (or "tenkey") to move a direction and the game will act as if you're holding that down. But while that first input's still active, no further repeats of it are counted; this doesn't enable a soft autofire, basically. FM-7 keyboard play manages to wedge itself into the worst of both worlds, and I find action games for the system less pleasant for it. The only way to mitigate this is building up muscle memory, tapping a neutral key (ex. "5" on numpad) to reset your movement or switch to another constant action. This habit does help with other versions of Punch Ball Mario Bros., thankfully, since returning to neutral means conserving momentum and, thus, narrowly avoiding critters, fireballs, and other hazards. Sure, the other NEC and Sharp PCs don't suffer anything like the FM-7, but it's ultimately helpful to internalize these controls and work around the lag.
Judging ground and air momentum matters even more here than in Nintendo's game because your main trap-em-up mechanic is throwing a ball, not bumping enemies from below. It's a neat lil' twist on Mario Bros., incentivizing more tactical movement to line up shots and then recover your weapon afterward. The ever-present pipe in the middle provides a route back to the top-center of the action; dropping the stone below resets it atop the POW block. Since the space key fires at neutral and lets you jump when running, the player has to act more deliberately than ever. Your ability to fight at the ground level adds a feeling of empowerment missing in the arcade game, turning this into an action-platforming hybrid without any use for hammers or other power-ups. Where Miyamoto and co. saw their design as leaving players exposed to threats depending on the level layer they're on, Hudson figured their PC audience would be familiar enough with that paradigm to want something different…something aggressive. I could chew right through this game with extra practice, playing faster than the original generally allows.
Compared with Mario Bros. Special, this later port hews closer to what Nintendo must have expected from their new bedfellows, yet the game design comes out subtly different in a manner reflecting different hardware. Punch Ball Mario Bros. doesn't need to employ the myriad gimmicks of its cousin because it's already diverged from the jumping-first model. That's a problem because, as satisfying as it can be to chuck dodgeballs at turtles, the combat never gets any deeper or more explosive. In trying to find the balance between speed, quantity, and quality for their Famicom-to-PC schedule, Hudson ended up compromising most on ambition. Someone's going to accuse me of being unfair, given the obvious additions and reductions in these PC versions, but I just feel like the developers could have gone farther. Awkward co-op via a shared keyboard means these releases needed a lot to distinguish themselves from a trip to the local cabinet, as demonstrated by the excesses of Donkey Kong 3 and Super Mario Bros. Special. Everyone at the company knew that the future wasn't strict arcade adaptations, but remakes like what Nuts & Milk received when it jumped from PC to Famicom.
I won't hold that quality of spareness too hard against Punch Ball Mario Bros.. It's disappointing how slight in new content and mix-ups this version has, yet it still plays well within its constraints. Switching from bumpin' to ballin' no doubt circumvented the rendering and physics problems of the former on these PCs, and it's a small miracle that the end product looks and sounds this consistently everywhere you can run it. Producing this many multiplatform ports is never easy, even back in the bedroom coding era, so it's cool to witness Hudson working their magic in that regard. Most importantly, I think it's telling that Mario fans poo-poo the mid-'80s J-PC ports while conveniently ignoring this one to fixate on SMB1's misfire instead. PC users of the time had seen considerably worse efforts, even from Nintendo's original PC porting partner Westside. The Famicom had undeniable sprite-ing and scrolling advantages over contemporary PCs and Hudson still proved you could bring similar experiences to those machines largely intact. Arcade perfect wasn't the name of the day, but it's surprising and awesome when talented coders got close. Perhaps the worst I can say about this game is that no amount of fidelity would have elevated Mario Bros. beyond the system exclusives and genre revolutions to come.
Punch Ball Mario Bros. is fun enough despite its platform limitations and unwillingness to go farther with its deviations from the source material; it's also a benchmark for the systems it got ported across. Hudson knew how to get the most from their partnership with Nintendo, bringing conversions like this everywhere it made sense. The weaker but cheaper PC-6001? Yep. The graphically powerful but expensive Sharp X1? Why of course! And it's fascinating to see how much the coders wrought from less powerful PC hardware vs. the best of the bunch, too. I was expecting major sprite and color clash going into the PC-6001mkII version, yet it felt hardly less clean and responsive to play than the Sharp PC varieties. (Considering the X1 has its own sprite-ing hardware, its stiff performance had me underwhelmed.) I expected Hudson to struggle with the FM-7's poor keyboard I/O, however, and that bore true.
See, there's a problem afflicting so many FM-7 games, at least the ones reliant on predictable inputs: the system doesn't fully poll keyboard inputs. This means you can tap anywhere on the numpad (or "tenkey") to move a direction and the game will act as if you're holding that down. But while that first input's still active, no further repeats of it are counted; this doesn't enable a soft autofire, basically. FM-7 keyboard play manages to wedge itself into the worst of both worlds, and I find action games for the system less pleasant for it. The only way to mitigate this is building up muscle memory, tapping a neutral key (ex. "5" on numpad) to reset your movement or switch to another constant action. This habit does help with other versions of Punch Ball Mario Bros., thankfully, since returning to neutral means conserving momentum and, thus, narrowly avoiding critters, fireballs, and other hazards. Sure, the other NEC and Sharp PCs don't suffer anything like the FM-7, but it's ultimately helpful to internalize these controls and work around the lag.
Judging ground and air momentum matters even more here than in Nintendo's game because your main trap-em-up mechanic is throwing a ball, not bumping enemies from below. It's a neat lil' twist on Mario Bros., incentivizing more tactical movement to line up shots and then recover your weapon afterward. The ever-present pipe in the middle provides a route back to the top-center of the action; dropping the stone below resets it atop the POW block. Since the space key fires at neutral and lets you jump when running, the player has to act more deliberately than ever. Your ability to fight at the ground level adds a feeling of empowerment missing in the arcade game, turning this into an action-platforming hybrid without any use for hammers or other power-ups. Where Miyamoto and co. saw their design as leaving players exposed to threats depending on the level layer they're on, Hudson figured their PC audience would be familiar enough with that paradigm to want something different…something aggressive. I could chew right through this game with extra practice, playing faster than the original generally allows.
Compared with Mario Bros. Special, this later port hews closer to what Nintendo must have expected from their new bedfellows, yet the game design comes out subtly different in a manner reflecting different hardware. Punch Ball Mario Bros. doesn't need to employ the myriad gimmicks of its cousin because it's already diverged from the jumping-first model. That's a problem because, as satisfying as it can be to chuck dodgeballs at turtles, the combat never gets any deeper or more explosive. In trying to find the balance between speed, quantity, and quality for their Famicom-to-PC schedule, Hudson ended up compromising most on ambition. Someone's going to accuse me of being unfair, given the obvious additions and reductions in these PC versions, but I just feel like the developers could have gone farther. Awkward co-op via a shared keyboard means these releases needed a lot to distinguish themselves from a trip to the local cabinet, as demonstrated by the excesses of Donkey Kong 3 and Super Mario Bros. Special. Everyone at the company knew that the future wasn't strict arcade adaptations, but remakes like what Nuts & Milk received when it jumped from PC to Famicom.
I won't hold that quality of spareness too hard against Punch Ball Mario Bros.. It's disappointing how slight in new content and mix-ups this version has, yet it still plays well within its constraints. Switching from bumpin' to ballin' no doubt circumvented the rendering and physics problems of the former on these PCs, and it's a small miracle that the end product looks and sounds this consistently everywhere you can run it. Producing this many multiplatform ports is never easy, even back in the bedroom coding era, so it's cool to witness Hudson working their magic in that regard. Most importantly, I think it's telling that Mario fans poo-poo the mid-'80s J-PC ports while conveniently ignoring this one to fixate on SMB1's misfire instead. PC users of the time had seen considerably worse efforts, even from Nintendo's original PC porting partner Westside. The Famicom had undeniable sprite-ing and scrolling advantages over contemporary PCs and Hudson still proved you could bring similar experiences to those machines largely intact. Arcade perfect wasn't the name of the day, but it's surprising and awesome when talented coders got close. Perhaps the worst I can say about this game is that no amount of fidelity would have elevated Mario Bros. beyond the system exclusives and genre revolutions to come.
2015
Citizens! Look around! Can you hear that fearsome sound? It’s that corpse of a game done dirty, killed off by the 3DS' closing! Enjoy the meme, that so-called Code Name S.T.E.A.M.~! (Load up your drive to fight back the reductive menace) What a dream~, why hate on Code Name S.T.E.A.M.~?! United they stand with every Valkyria, XCOM, and—[record scratch] erm, just those two and Fire Emblem mainly.
| Trouble Brewing |
I speak of Intelligent Systems’ 3DS character strategy experiment that debuted alongside Splatoon yet couldn’t have had a worse fate. It came a long way from rocky origins and launch reception, yet now so few are interested. At best, physical copies go on sale at different stores, retailing far cheaper than any other evergreen Nintendo titles I know. Then people pay attention, or remark that the game deserved its bomba-stic fate. With the death of the 3DS eShop and any pull the system had outside its fans and retro enthusiast press, there's an increasing risk of this becoming a mere footnote, something misunderstood back in 2015 and only a bit less so now.
Code Name S.T.E.A.M. deserves better, both because it plays well and because it’s a great example of the developers' ambitions, even as the Awakening/Fates gravy train steamrolled all in its path. We’re talking about an alternate late-1800s steampunk Earth where Lincoln’s alive, everything looks like pulp fiction, and public-domain American literature heroes work together to defeat Lovecraftian horrors before everyone’s dead. Yes, the premise sounds as bonkers as it gets, including a multi-stage trip to Oz and invading Antarctica with the likes of Tom Sawyer and Tiger Lily in your crew. Compare this to the florid, but often predictable, heightened medieval exteriors of most Fire Emblem worlds. Int-Sys gets extra mileage from fresh settings like late-Victorian London, the bowels of Miskatonic University, and what might as well be the Schwarzwelt from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.
This wargame’s more puzzle than adventure, but it feels like both. Due to challenges like relying on units’ sightlines and exploring every nuance of each map to progress, I had to really apply myself in ways I'd expect mainly from a classic Jagged Alliance title. Here’s a game where replaying missions becomes more comfortable and advantageous because nearly every character and strategy can become viable. Want to turtle through long maps, abusing overwatch during the enemy phase while moving across every inch? How about rampaging through on the first try, surviving close calls and leaving collectibles untouched for a replay? It all works! The final set of maps epitomize what’s great about this mix. Elevation conflicts, alien baddies acting in cycles, sightline control, and clutch aiming for weak points are all so satisfying to juggle. Intimidating, also, since your lack of a top-down view, or any map really, enforces a fog of war linked to your guys' individual and combined vision. (Those who hold this decision against Int-Sys when it's clearly a way to solve the age-old problems associated with FoW in Fire Emblem's paradigm will always amuse me!)
I have to admit the game’s pacing isn’t all there, same with do-or-die motivation to complete it (and I only completed this a few years after buying it full price…). The problem almost everyone had around launch—enemy phase speed, which got patched up not nearly quick enough to cool down the anti-hype—didn’t help at all. I think waiting around to see enemies move, take position, and wreck my last move keeps my interest, but it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Beyond that, it’s hard to get in the mood for maps featuring constant reinforcements or intimidating boss encounters. Adding the ABE mini-game at story intervals makes a bit of difference, though, as do the shorter, more puzzle-slanted maps. Code Name S.T.E.A.M. strikes a good balance of map types, mission designs, and introducing new element when needed. Maybe they could have tightened up the mecha mini-game's controls and given it a lot more substance, though.
S.T.EA.M.’s strengths take a bit to properly describe, likely the reason why this will remain a cult classic. The game’s frustrating but rarely unfair, presenting a ton of maps where you find new ways to abuse your party’s advantages. It’s got excellent replayability thanks to later character introductions (meaning new ways to replay earlier maps) and extra modes like Merciless or multiplayer. Eschewing traditional strategy game tropes, like an overhead map or the inability to extend visibility and movement for a unit, gives this game a strong identity. Peeking around corners, hoping to not aggro a counterattack or worse, means there's almost always some healthy morsels of tension to feed on. And the presentation’s quite excellent: catchy progressive rock, the comic-book story sequences, and a short but very memorable eldritch-invasion steampunk story works so well for me. (Shout-out to the voice acting! I loathe Adam Baldwin’s involvement, but everyone fits their roles perfectly, especially James Urbaniak as Randolph Carter.)
| Deadly Dance |
Here’s a list of awesome things you can do in Code Name S.T.E.A.M.:
•Launch bomb aliens onto mines (using John Henry or another explosives user) to create a domino effect of explosions that tears through spawners and enemy lines
•Stun literally every enemy, then have a scout fighter pick them off thanks to extra damage on stunned foes
•Jump from wall to tower to behind the enemy’s weak point using Lion, picking up Gears and plenty of extra steam packs along the way for maximum damage in a round
•Explode enemy squads from afar with penguin droids; waste them with specials like Queeqeeg’s harpoon
•In general, do ridiculous stunts with North American literary legends (plus Abraham Lincoln) that are super silly yet serious—you might call this camp, even
| Intersection: Me vs. You |
I highly recommend trying this bad boy out if you want something like Intelligent Systems’ 3DS puzzlers, wrapped into a wargame premise that’s rather unlike the games it’s frequently compared to. Yes, you have interception fire and squad-level combat like in XCOM or Valkyria Chronicles, but this game emphasizes exploring very precisely-designed environments with stakes changing a lot of the time. Reinforcements, too, are a big No to players who tried or wanted to try this, but I think they’re more manageable here than usual because of your skill pool. Knowledge of character skills, shot-to-hitbox detection, and the foibles of managing your steam gauge makes for a satisfying feedback loop.
Quick note: play this on a New 3DS for maximum enjoyment. That system gives you a 3x enemy phase speed toggle for situations where you really need to skip enemy actions or replay a mission. I used an OG 3DS + Circle Pad Pro to get analog camera movement, so consider that if you want to minimize stylus or face button use. Consult a guide when necessary to find all the Gears so you can get different steam boilers early on. Getting better equipment up through mid-game helps a lot later on while pushing you to understand each map in depth.
In oh so many ways, Code Name S.T.E.A.M. was Int-Sys' attempt to prove they could bring their wargame design chops outside the Fire Emblem mold, synthesizing many well-appreciated aspects of other big-name character tactics games into a unique whole. Woeful release-period impressions. and a lack of retrospective coverage from outlets that ought to have one or two writers interested, basically sunk this title's reputation and left it unable to resurface. It's hardly the fault of some conspiracy of journalists or FE fanboys as some will resort to suggesting. Nor is this (or any) Nintendo software exempt from incisive critique, as I can understand where the detractors are coming from WRT no map, slow between-turn waits, and an emphasis on puzzle solving over constantly improvising to hobble through the campaign. Yet I'm hopeful that this and other 3DS-era experiments like Rusty's Real Deal Baseball can eventually attain some prominence and reevaluation in the system's library, an era of tumult and risk-taking uncommon for the publisher.
(In case you couldn't tell, I wrote this review a few years before joining Backloggd, hence the somewhat different style. Alas, ResetEra wasn't too interested in *Code Name S.T.E.A.M. at the time, and anyone wanting to give it a go now might as well visit a certain website rhyming with "ache chop" to get a digital copy for Citra or their homebrewed 3DS. Thankfully the game runs and plays like a dream in emulation, as this detailed r/FireEmblem poster can testify. I'm sure a replay would reveal some bullshit to me, but also various things I couldn't appreciate at the time.)
| Trouble Brewing |
I speak of Intelligent Systems’ 3DS character strategy experiment that debuted alongside Splatoon yet couldn’t have had a worse fate. It came a long way from rocky origins and launch reception, yet now so few are interested. At best, physical copies go on sale at different stores, retailing far cheaper than any other evergreen Nintendo titles I know. Then people pay attention, or remark that the game deserved its bomba-stic fate. With the death of the 3DS eShop and any pull the system had outside its fans and retro enthusiast press, there's an increasing risk of this becoming a mere footnote, something misunderstood back in 2015 and only a bit less so now.
Code Name S.T.E.A.M. deserves better, both because it plays well and because it’s a great example of the developers' ambitions, even as the Awakening/Fates gravy train steamrolled all in its path. We’re talking about an alternate late-1800s steampunk Earth where Lincoln’s alive, everything looks like pulp fiction, and public-domain American literature heroes work together to defeat Lovecraftian horrors before everyone’s dead. Yes, the premise sounds as bonkers as it gets, including a multi-stage trip to Oz and invading Antarctica with the likes of Tom Sawyer and Tiger Lily in your crew. Compare this to the florid, but often predictable, heightened medieval exteriors of most Fire Emblem worlds. Int-Sys gets extra mileage from fresh settings like late-Victorian London, the bowels of Miskatonic University, and what might as well be the Schwarzwelt from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.
This wargame’s more puzzle than adventure, but it feels like both. Due to challenges like relying on units’ sightlines and exploring every nuance of each map to progress, I had to really apply myself in ways I'd expect mainly from a classic Jagged Alliance title. Here’s a game where replaying missions becomes more comfortable and advantageous because nearly every character and strategy can become viable. Want to turtle through long maps, abusing overwatch during the enemy phase while moving across every inch? How about rampaging through on the first try, surviving close calls and leaving collectibles untouched for a replay? It all works! The final set of maps epitomize what’s great about this mix. Elevation conflicts, alien baddies acting in cycles, sightline control, and clutch aiming for weak points are all so satisfying to juggle. Intimidating, also, since your lack of a top-down view, or any map really, enforces a fog of war linked to your guys' individual and combined vision. (Those who hold this decision against Int-Sys when it's clearly a way to solve the age-old problems associated with FoW in Fire Emblem's paradigm will always amuse me!)
I have to admit the game’s pacing isn’t all there, same with do-or-die motivation to complete it (and I only completed this a few years after buying it full price…). The problem almost everyone had around launch—enemy phase speed, which got patched up not nearly quick enough to cool down the anti-hype—didn’t help at all. I think waiting around to see enemies move, take position, and wreck my last move keeps my interest, but it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Beyond that, it’s hard to get in the mood for maps featuring constant reinforcements or intimidating boss encounters. Adding the ABE mini-game at story intervals makes a bit of difference, though, as do the shorter, more puzzle-slanted maps. Code Name S.T.E.A.M. strikes a good balance of map types, mission designs, and introducing new element when needed. Maybe they could have tightened up the mecha mini-game's controls and given it a lot more substance, though.
S.T.EA.M.’s strengths take a bit to properly describe, likely the reason why this will remain a cult classic. The game’s frustrating but rarely unfair, presenting a ton of maps where you find new ways to abuse your party’s advantages. It’s got excellent replayability thanks to later character introductions (meaning new ways to replay earlier maps) and extra modes like Merciless or multiplayer. Eschewing traditional strategy game tropes, like an overhead map or the inability to extend visibility and movement for a unit, gives this game a strong identity. Peeking around corners, hoping to not aggro a counterattack or worse, means there's almost always some healthy morsels of tension to feed on. And the presentation’s quite excellent: catchy progressive rock, the comic-book story sequences, and a short but very memorable eldritch-invasion steampunk story works so well for me. (Shout-out to the voice acting! I loathe Adam Baldwin’s involvement, but everyone fits their roles perfectly, especially James Urbaniak as Randolph Carter.)
| Deadly Dance |
Here’s a list of awesome things you can do in Code Name S.T.E.A.M.:
•Launch bomb aliens onto mines (using John Henry or another explosives user) to create a domino effect of explosions that tears through spawners and enemy lines
•Stun literally every enemy, then have a scout fighter pick them off thanks to extra damage on stunned foes
•Jump from wall to tower to behind the enemy’s weak point using Lion, picking up Gears and plenty of extra steam packs along the way for maximum damage in a round
•Explode enemy squads from afar with penguin droids; waste them with specials like Queeqeeg’s harpoon
•In general, do ridiculous stunts with North American literary legends (plus Abraham Lincoln) that are super silly yet serious—you might call this camp, even
| Intersection: Me vs. You |
I highly recommend trying this bad boy out if you want something like Intelligent Systems’ 3DS puzzlers, wrapped into a wargame premise that’s rather unlike the games it’s frequently compared to. Yes, you have interception fire and squad-level combat like in XCOM or Valkyria Chronicles, but this game emphasizes exploring very precisely-designed environments with stakes changing a lot of the time. Reinforcements, too, are a big No to players who tried or wanted to try this, but I think they’re more manageable here than usual because of your skill pool. Knowledge of character skills, shot-to-hitbox detection, and the foibles of managing your steam gauge makes for a satisfying feedback loop.
Quick note: play this on a New 3DS for maximum enjoyment. That system gives you a 3x enemy phase speed toggle for situations where you really need to skip enemy actions or replay a mission. I used an OG 3DS + Circle Pad Pro to get analog camera movement, so consider that if you want to minimize stylus or face button use. Consult a guide when necessary to find all the Gears so you can get different steam boilers early on. Getting better equipment up through mid-game helps a lot later on while pushing you to understand each map in depth.
In oh so many ways, Code Name S.T.E.A.M. was Int-Sys' attempt to prove they could bring their wargame design chops outside the Fire Emblem mold, synthesizing many well-appreciated aspects of other big-name character tactics games into a unique whole. Woeful release-period impressions. and a lack of retrospective coverage from outlets that ought to have one or two writers interested, basically sunk this title's reputation and left it unable to resurface. It's hardly the fault of some conspiracy of journalists or FE fanboys as some will resort to suggesting. Nor is this (or any) Nintendo software exempt from incisive critique, as I can understand where the detractors are coming from WRT no map, slow between-turn waits, and an emphasis on puzzle solving over constantly improvising to hobble through the campaign. Yet I'm hopeful that this and other 3DS-era experiments like Rusty's Real Deal Baseball can eventually attain some prominence and reevaluation in the system's library, an era of tumult and risk-taking uncommon for the publisher.
(In case you couldn't tell, I wrote this review a few years before joining Backloggd, hence the somewhat different style. Alas, ResetEra wasn't too interested in *Code Name S.T.E.A.M. at the time, and anyone wanting to give it a go now might as well visit a certain website rhyming with "ache chop" to get a digital copy for Citra or their homebrewed 3DS. Thankfully the game runs and plays like a dream in emulation, as this detailed r/FireEmblem poster can testify. I'm sure a replay would reveal some bullshit to me, but also various things I couldn't appreciate at the time.)
1997
Humanity sleeps in the machine. It gurgles for breath, suffocating beneath smoke and gunfire within the netherworld. I grip the joystick with hands like claws; the sweat feels wrong, like oil on water. Heads-up display signals flare all around my vision as I wrench the exoskeletal warrior through warehouses, space stations, and forlorn caverns. When the foes aren't robots, they're pilots just as feckless and desperate as I. The job is king—morals are optional. Captains of industry march us inexorably towards doom, and I'm just trying to keep my head down, chin up against the rising tide. The harder I fight, the deeper I explore, the more I sense the great chain of being start to fray.
Armored Core…that pit of vitality lying within the most veteran of mercenaries, and an apt title for the series to follow King's Field. From Software staff would tell us they bungled their way into developing this game to begin with, but it's appropriate they'd shift from one dark fantasy to another. Both series deal in obscure, arcane worlds, just with divergent approaches to non-linearity and game complexity. They started life as 3D tech demos before unfolding into realms of mystery and danger hitherto unseen on consoles—the kind of innovative experience Sony hoped would set their PlayStation apart from the competition. And for all the nitpicks and missed potential I can (and will) bring up, it's impressive how effectively this studio captured the one-man-army appeal of mecha media versus other developers' outings at the time. From a simple animation test to one of the studio's core franchises, it's a hell of a leap. [1]
| From this point on, you are…a Raven… |
Mecha action games on the PlayStation weren't in short supply before Armored Core (AC) arrived, though I'd forgive you for believing that. The earliest examples—Metal Jacket, Robo Pit, and Extreme Power—all featured some amount of mech customization and variety in scenarios, but always with caveats. None of them had the storytelling emphasis that From Soft's game introduced. At most, Extreme Power let players choose which missions to attempt first, acquiring points to buy new parts if successful. But that still lacked elements like e-mail chains and running a deficit after overusing ammo and/or failing missions. Robo Pit introduced the extensive parts system within a 3D versus fighter context, and Metal Jacket focused on simpler open-field battles a la MechWarrior. (Though the latter remains maybe the biggest influence on so many mecha games to come, it didn't receive a PS1 port until the same year as Armored Core.)
If anything, I see a lot of commonality between the first AC and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, the latter releasing in 1996 with some notability. Combining the series' heavy geopolitical tone and intrigue with a game loop and structure akin to Assault Suit Valken, Squaresoft's game reviewed well and prefigured the genre hybrids they'd produce for Sony's machine. Critically, they also reworked the parts-as-equipment framework from Front Mission, balancing it with arcade-style pacing and more wiggle room for players wanting to test drive multiple builds. The trouble with mecha xRPGs, then and now, is motivating constant character creation (aka editing your mecha) in order to complete stages, ideally while avoiding damage and long-term costs that could ruin a playthrough. I have no way of knowing if the original AC devs were familiar with Gun Hazard and how it elegantly solves these issues via its mix of complex story, set-pieces, and missions designed to reward creativity.
It's hard enough to make a sci-future this dreadful so enchanting and replayable. Armored Core's semi-linear plot and trickle feed of environmental worldbuilding go far in reifying the player's ascension to ace pilot, a new hero of chaos. People are right to point out the jarring, confrontational "initiation" battle, a middle finger to trends of tutorialization beginning in the mid-'90s. Surviving this teaches one to never fully trust the world they're thrust into, be it the obtuse mecha controls or the machinations of agents, corporations, and other Ravens contracting and challenging you. The fun comes from accepting these additive layers of masochism, a reflection of the decaying worldview which From Soft presents without irony or pomp and circumstance. It's on the player to investigate and understand their predicament. Future series entries add fleeting moments of cooperation and optimism to mitigate the grim bits, but the tone here's consistently muted and adverse. Absent are the triumphant flourishes of Gundam or even VOTOMS, replaced by an engaging but ever-present indifference to the erasure of people and elevation of proxy warfare.
| You have the right…the duty to find out. |
Opening missions in this game settle into a formula of scout, destroy, rinse and repeat, followed by a shopping spree. It's never quite as comfortable as you'd hope; browsing for a new radar attachment after gunning down protesters feels ever so morbid. Nor are you interacting with fellow Ravens during the majority of a playthrough, instead fighting or helping a select few through happenstance. Armored Core keeps players at arm's length from the consequences they wreak upon the world, often chiding them through AI monologues and tetchy e-mail chains. This odd pacing and story presentation lets From Soft transition between unusual missions and plot beats without breaking a sweat. The further you work for Chrome or Murakumo to the other's downfall, the murkier the mystery gets, with ulterior motives of anonymous agents pressuring you into service.
Thankfully there's a decently balanced in-game economy to support the amount of experiments and risk-taking the campaign requires, though not without problems. Buying and selling are 1-to-1 on cash return; you'll never enter the red just through shopping. Instead, the way most players wreck their run is by abusing ammo-based weapons and continuing after failing missions with mech damage. Save scumming isn't a thing Armored Core looks down on, but it will go out of its way to promote ammo-less tactics with energy swords and simply dodging past optional foes. Around halfway through the game, it arguably becomes more important to scour levels for hidden parts instead of relying on the diminishing returns from Raven's Nest inventory. I wish this first entry had done better at keeping the market relevant, but it wasn't to be.
My go-to build throughout the story was an agile, energy-focused quadrupedal range specialist dressed to the nines with secret parts. (If the game let me use the Karasawa with these legs, oh boy would I have been unstoppable!) Sure, there's a lot of fun one can have with beefy machine guns and missile options, but getting the most cash out of missions requires plasma rifles and mastery of lightsaber stabbing to play efficiently. While Project Phantasma struggled to balance the economy back towards non-energy offense, it wouldn't be until Master of Arena that the series largely evened out the trade-offs between common mecha archetypes. For instance, tank-tread mecha in this first game are actually damn powerful due to a lack of movement tricks for the bipeds, but it all falls apart when it's time for platforming or quickly escaping. Bipeds often get the class-favorite treatment in this genre, yet struggle to wield a variety of parts and weapons to handle most challenges this game throws at you later on. That leaves quad-legs builds as the most flexible and resilient option at higher levels of play, a flawed but interesting subversion of what's usually seen in mecha anime and manga. (Ed: Yes, I'm aware reverse joint legs exist. No, I don't use them in a game that punishes jumping all the time. Later AC games handle it better.)
With all these incentives combined, the pressure to learn the classic Armored Core control scheme and physics becomes bearable, if still overbearing. I've come from other tank-y mecha games like Gungriffon, so the adjustment period wasn't too bad for me, but I get why many newcomers stick with analog-patched versions of the earlier entries. Memorizing the timings for boosting before landing to minimize lag, or how to effectively pitch the lock-on reticule and snap back to center, matters more than anything in the first couple of hours. Then add on tricks for circle strafing back away from enemies, often while firing guns or launching missiles, and the combat evolves from awkward plodding into a dance of destruction. And there's no arena mode here to let you practice these techniques in a consistent, scaling environment. A veteran Raven or horse of robots can descend upon you in any of the mid-game/late-game missions, requiring quick reactions and establishing a zone of control (or retreat). It's sink or swim in the truest sense. Past the teething phase, it's easy to return to this control scheme and feel one with the AC, even after years have passed. I won't doubt that full dual-stick analog controls will work even better and enable a longer skill progression, but I adapted to the famous claw-grip style quicker than expected.
| "Pledge allegiance to no one!" |
Any problems significant enough to keep Armored Core below a 4-out-of-5 rating or higher must be deep-rooted in the game's loop and structure; that's sadly true for the level and encounter design here. I'm far from opposed to dungeon crawling in my semi-linear mecha action-RPGs, at least when there's room enough to blast around duels (plus verticality to reduce the claustrophobia). Still, a few too many stages in this debut feel like holdover concepts from King's Field II instead of properly scaled settings to wrangle a mech through. The difference between enjoying "Kill 'Struggle' Leader" and dreading "Destroy Base Computer" boils down to whether or not the story framing is compelling enough to justify zooming through non-descript (though nicely textured) hallways for most of their runtime. Occasionally the designers get clever with metal-corroding gas, inconveniently placed explosives, and other traps to keep the spelunking varied; I had a hoot tearing through the insectoid lairs like I was playing an antique musou game! But later series installments improved these confined missions with more arena-like rooms and affordances to players who make it far in and then can't win due to a sub-optimal build.
If I had to speculate, wide open-ended maps are less common here simply due to hardware constraints, be it rendering ACs and other actors in any abundance (regardless of level-of-detail scaling) or the enemy AI struggling with pathfinding in combat on a broader scale. It's a shame regardless since bombarding installations across water ("Reclaim Oil Facility"), going en guarde with a berserker atop a skyscraper ("Destroy Plus Escapee"), and rampaging down public avenues ("Attack Urban Center") offer some of the best thrills in Armored Core. Objective variety and complexity never reaches especially high regardless of mission category, so just getting to rip up groups of MTs, droids, and ACs goes a long way. Defending a cargo train in the desert starts off humble, then escalates to defeating a full-bore Human Plus combatant interceding on the situation. A series of undersea tunnels and chambers, well-defended and secretly primed to implode, threaten to bury you while avenues of escape close off. A select few dungeon crawls also open up in unexpected ways, particularly those set on space stations where vertical engagements come into play. I didn't think mecha and sewer levels could work, but here I am grinning as I pursue Struggle operatives down waterways or methodically undo their bombs within a rat's maze of air treatment tunnels.
Armored Core rarely has bad missions so much as disappointing or overachieving ones, which makes the finale so uniquely odd. By this point, the entropic cycle ensnaring Chrome, Murakumo, Struggle, and adjacent organizations has caused untold devastation across the earth. Now even the Raven's Nest falls, revealed as the illusory sham of governance it always was. Even bit players in the narrative pitch in, waxing over e-mail about the futility of these conflicts and what's really driving it all behind the scenes. So, with all this build-up and conspiracy baiting, I had high hopes for the last hour, wishing for an epic battle and world-shattering revelations to boot. Sure, I got the latter (if in a minimal, trope-adherent form), but instead of satisfying gladiatorial action, I had to ascend the fucking cubes. Everyone's got a horror story about "Destroy Floating Mines", it seems, and I'm just glad to have survived this much awkward, drawn-out platforming using my quad-leg AC. Squaring off against Nine-Ball afterward isn't quite enough to compensate either, not unless you can have an even pitched fight against this iconic rival and win the first couple of attempts. (The penultimate chambers also reflect poorly on the camera's ability to track fast-moving combatants, even if it makes for an exciting sequence.) I can still appreciate how From Soft didn't explicate too much at the end, instead trying to confound players with interesting questions and non sequiturs in the level design itself. It's all a big joke and we get to grimace through it.
| Shape Memory Alloys |
In conclusion, it's a good thing From Soft nailed all their game loop, distinctive mechanics, and interweaving systems here. The original Armored Core is unfortunately limited with how it challenges players, both in level design and mission pacing. Not having an arena to lean on makes completing the missions with maximum efficiency more of a priority, which can lead to excess retries and scrimping on investments in hopes of affording something better later vs. smoother upgrades in the short term. (I do appreciate how only fighting other ranked ACs within missions makes the Ravens' dynamic more hostile and contradictory, but the game does so little to expand on that angle.) These problems sting less knowing that, as a prototype of adventures to come, this game still accomplishes so much with so little.
Not many series strive to reach a profile this high while teasing players with details out of reach and mysteries about its development unanswered. Anyone invested in the wider world Armored Core hints at, from the shadowy groups running these underground beehive cities to the horrors hiding behind Human Plus, has to read through "data books" (artbooks) and track down magazine previews for scraps. We're only now getting English translations of the artbooks and related articles, all of which are coloring the fringes of the AC universe while only letting trace amounts of humanity through the barrier [2]. And as far as these games are concerned, pilots' backstories and white papers on neural augmentation procedures amount to nothing. Heroes and villains drop in and out of history like mayflies—only shocks to the system register on the scale From Soft's using. We're just along for the ride.
It feels like there's still so much else to analyze here: how the studio crowbar-ed their King's Field engine into handling these pyrotechnics, the peculiarities of Human Plus endings as difficulty modifiers, let alone the timely yet appropriate electronica soundtrack. A lot of PS1 releases from this period struggle to make the best use of their developers' skills, assets, and remaining CD space. I wouldn't say Armored Core succeeds at the latter, using only a few FMV sequences at key points in the story, but it's a remarkably lean and appealing game relative to its own premise. Replays come naturally thanks to multiple Human Plus tiers and the freedom to play all missions upon completing the story (plus making new saves to transfer into Project Phantasma). The controls here, though lacking in finesse, carry forward into a good chunk of the later games, with concepts like boost canceling staying relevant even after the switch to analog. Contrast this maturity with all the pratfalls From Soft made during their King's Field days. They'd learned how to not just lead in with a better start, but retain their creative momentum on budgets larger and smaller with each sequel.
Armored Core represents a coming-of-age for the PlayStation as it entered the midpoint of its lifespan, setting a bar other mid-sized studios could aspire to. Its rough edges hardly mar what I'd call one of my favorite experiences in the system's library so far. Maybe I'm going easier on this one due to my enthusiasm for the genre and the myriad themes this game explores, from cyberpunk dystopia to the malleability of history in the post-modern. It could just be that the core game's so, uh, solid after all this time. I chose not to rely on Human Plus for my first playthrough and that might have helped. No matter how you approach the series today, it's awesome to see it debut this confidently, and plenty of players must have thought so too. The Armored Core series became From Soft's backbone for a decade before the Souls-likes came to replace it, and what AC achieved for mecha games (and ARPGs in general) can't be overstated.
| Bibliography |
[1] Alex “blackoak,” trans. “Armored Core – 1997 Developer Interview - Shmuplations.Com.” PlayStation Magazine. 1997. Shmuplations. https://shmuplations.com/armoredcore/.
[2] Reddit. “Translations of Pages 103 to 105 from the Book Armored Core Official Data Book.” Accessed January 14, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/armoredcore/comments/x940dj/translations_of_pages_103_to_105_from_the_book/.
Armored Core…that pit of vitality lying within the most veteran of mercenaries, and an apt title for the series to follow King's Field. From Software staff would tell us they bungled their way into developing this game to begin with, but it's appropriate they'd shift from one dark fantasy to another. Both series deal in obscure, arcane worlds, just with divergent approaches to non-linearity and game complexity. They started life as 3D tech demos before unfolding into realms of mystery and danger hitherto unseen on consoles—the kind of innovative experience Sony hoped would set their PlayStation apart from the competition. And for all the nitpicks and missed potential I can (and will) bring up, it's impressive how effectively this studio captured the one-man-army appeal of mecha media versus other developers' outings at the time. From a simple animation test to one of the studio's core franchises, it's a hell of a leap. [1]
| From this point on, you are…a Raven… |
Mecha action games on the PlayStation weren't in short supply before Armored Core (AC) arrived, though I'd forgive you for believing that. The earliest examples—Metal Jacket, Robo Pit, and Extreme Power—all featured some amount of mech customization and variety in scenarios, but always with caveats. None of them had the storytelling emphasis that From Soft's game introduced. At most, Extreme Power let players choose which missions to attempt first, acquiring points to buy new parts if successful. But that still lacked elements like e-mail chains and running a deficit after overusing ammo and/or failing missions. Robo Pit introduced the extensive parts system within a 3D versus fighter context, and Metal Jacket focused on simpler open-field battles a la MechWarrior. (Though the latter remains maybe the biggest influence on so many mecha games to come, it didn't receive a PS1 port until the same year as Armored Core.)
If anything, I see a lot of commonality between the first AC and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, the latter releasing in 1996 with some notability. Combining the series' heavy geopolitical tone and intrigue with a game loop and structure akin to Assault Suit Valken, Squaresoft's game reviewed well and prefigured the genre hybrids they'd produce for Sony's machine. Critically, they also reworked the parts-as-equipment framework from Front Mission, balancing it with arcade-style pacing and more wiggle room for players wanting to test drive multiple builds. The trouble with mecha xRPGs, then and now, is motivating constant character creation (aka editing your mecha) in order to complete stages, ideally while avoiding damage and long-term costs that could ruin a playthrough. I have no way of knowing if the original AC devs were familiar with Gun Hazard and how it elegantly solves these issues via its mix of complex story, set-pieces, and missions designed to reward creativity.
It's hard enough to make a sci-future this dreadful so enchanting and replayable. Armored Core's semi-linear plot and trickle feed of environmental worldbuilding go far in reifying the player's ascension to ace pilot, a new hero of chaos. People are right to point out the jarring, confrontational "initiation" battle, a middle finger to trends of tutorialization beginning in the mid-'90s. Surviving this teaches one to never fully trust the world they're thrust into, be it the obtuse mecha controls or the machinations of agents, corporations, and other Ravens contracting and challenging you. The fun comes from accepting these additive layers of masochism, a reflection of the decaying worldview which From Soft presents without irony or pomp and circumstance. It's on the player to investigate and understand their predicament. Future series entries add fleeting moments of cooperation and optimism to mitigate the grim bits, but the tone here's consistently muted and adverse. Absent are the triumphant flourishes of Gundam or even VOTOMS, replaced by an engaging but ever-present indifference to the erasure of people and elevation of proxy warfare.
| You have the right…the duty to find out. |
Opening missions in this game settle into a formula of scout, destroy, rinse and repeat, followed by a shopping spree. It's never quite as comfortable as you'd hope; browsing for a new radar attachment after gunning down protesters feels ever so morbid. Nor are you interacting with fellow Ravens during the majority of a playthrough, instead fighting or helping a select few through happenstance. Armored Core keeps players at arm's length from the consequences they wreak upon the world, often chiding them through AI monologues and tetchy e-mail chains. This odd pacing and story presentation lets From Soft transition between unusual missions and plot beats without breaking a sweat. The further you work for Chrome or Murakumo to the other's downfall, the murkier the mystery gets, with ulterior motives of anonymous agents pressuring you into service.
Thankfully there's a decently balanced in-game economy to support the amount of experiments and risk-taking the campaign requires, though not without problems. Buying and selling are 1-to-1 on cash return; you'll never enter the red just through shopping. Instead, the way most players wreck their run is by abusing ammo-based weapons and continuing after failing missions with mech damage. Save scumming isn't a thing Armored Core looks down on, but it will go out of its way to promote ammo-less tactics with energy swords and simply dodging past optional foes. Around halfway through the game, it arguably becomes more important to scour levels for hidden parts instead of relying on the diminishing returns from Raven's Nest inventory. I wish this first entry had done better at keeping the market relevant, but it wasn't to be.
My go-to build throughout the story was an agile, energy-focused quadrupedal range specialist dressed to the nines with secret parts. (If the game let me use the Karasawa with these legs, oh boy would I have been unstoppable!) Sure, there's a lot of fun one can have with beefy machine guns and missile options, but getting the most cash out of missions requires plasma rifles and mastery of lightsaber stabbing to play efficiently. While Project Phantasma struggled to balance the economy back towards non-energy offense, it wouldn't be until Master of Arena that the series largely evened out the trade-offs between common mecha archetypes. For instance, tank-tread mecha in this first game are actually damn powerful due to a lack of movement tricks for the bipeds, but it all falls apart when it's time for platforming or quickly escaping. Bipeds often get the class-favorite treatment in this genre, yet struggle to wield a variety of parts and weapons to handle most challenges this game throws at you later on. That leaves quad-legs builds as the most flexible and resilient option at higher levels of play, a flawed but interesting subversion of what's usually seen in mecha anime and manga. (Ed: Yes, I'm aware reverse joint legs exist. No, I don't use them in a game that punishes jumping all the time. Later AC games handle it better.)
With all these incentives combined, the pressure to learn the classic Armored Core control scheme and physics becomes bearable, if still overbearing. I've come from other tank-y mecha games like Gungriffon, so the adjustment period wasn't too bad for me, but I get why many newcomers stick with analog-patched versions of the earlier entries. Memorizing the timings for boosting before landing to minimize lag, or how to effectively pitch the lock-on reticule and snap back to center, matters more than anything in the first couple of hours. Then add on tricks for circle strafing back away from enemies, often while firing guns or launching missiles, and the combat evolves from awkward plodding into a dance of destruction. And there's no arena mode here to let you practice these techniques in a consistent, scaling environment. A veteran Raven or horse of robots can descend upon you in any of the mid-game/late-game missions, requiring quick reactions and establishing a zone of control (or retreat). It's sink or swim in the truest sense. Past the teething phase, it's easy to return to this control scheme and feel one with the AC, even after years have passed. I won't doubt that full dual-stick analog controls will work even better and enable a longer skill progression, but I adapted to the famous claw-grip style quicker than expected.
| "Pledge allegiance to no one!" |
Any problems significant enough to keep Armored Core below a 4-out-of-5 rating or higher must be deep-rooted in the game's loop and structure; that's sadly true for the level and encounter design here. I'm far from opposed to dungeon crawling in my semi-linear mecha action-RPGs, at least when there's room enough to blast around duels (plus verticality to reduce the claustrophobia). Still, a few too many stages in this debut feel like holdover concepts from King's Field II instead of properly scaled settings to wrangle a mech through. The difference between enjoying "Kill 'Struggle' Leader" and dreading "Destroy Base Computer" boils down to whether or not the story framing is compelling enough to justify zooming through non-descript (though nicely textured) hallways for most of their runtime. Occasionally the designers get clever with metal-corroding gas, inconveniently placed explosives, and other traps to keep the spelunking varied; I had a hoot tearing through the insectoid lairs like I was playing an antique musou game! But later series installments improved these confined missions with more arena-like rooms and affordances to players who make it far in and then can't win due to a sub-optimal build.
If I had to speculate, wide open-ended maps are less common here simply due to hardware constraints, be it rendering ACs and other actors in any abundance (regardless of level-of-detail scaling) or the enemy AI struggling with pathfinding in combat on a broader scale. It's a shame regardless since bombarding installations across water ("Reclaim Oil Facility"), going en guarde with a berserker atop a skyscraper ("Destroy Plus Escapee"), and rampaging down public avenues ("Attack Urban Center") offer some of the best thrills in Armored Core. Objective variety and complexity never reaches especially high regardless of mission category, so just getting to rip up groups of MTs, droids, and ACs goes a long way. Defending a cargo train in the desert starts off humble, then escalates to defeating a full-bore Human Plus combatant interceding on the situation. A series of undersea tunnels and chambers, well-defended and secretly primed to implode, threaten to bury you while avenues of escape close off. A select few dungeon crawls also open up in unexpected ways, particularly those set on space stations where vertical engagements come into play. I didn't think mecha and sewer levels could work, but here I am grinning as I pursue Struggle operatives down waterways or methodically undo their bombs within a rat's maze of air treatment tunnels.
Armored Core rarely has bad missions so much as disappointing or overachieving ones, which makes the finale so uniquely odd. By this point, the entropic cycle ensnaring Chrome, Murakumo, Struggle, and adjacent organizations has caused untold devastation across the earth. Now even the Raven's Nest falls, revealed as the illusory sham of governance it always was. Even bit players in the narrative pitch in, waxing over e-mail about the futility of these conflicts and what's really driving it all behind the scenes. So, with all this build-up and conspiracy baiting, I had high hopes for the last hour, wishing for an epic battle and world-shattering revelations to boot. Sure, I got the latter (if in a minimal, trope-adherent form), but instead of satisfying gladiatorial action, I had to ascend the fucking cubes. Everyone's got a horror story about "Destroy Floating Mines", it seems, and I'm just glad to have survived this much awkward, drawn-out platforming using my quad-leg AC. Squaring off against Nine-Ball afterward isn't quite enough to compensate either, not unless you can have an even pitched fight against this iconic rival and win the first couple of attempts. (The penultimate chambers also reflect poorly on the camera's ability to track fast-moving combatants, even if it makes for an exciting sequence.) I can still appreciate how From Soft didn't explicate too much at the end, instead trying to confound players with interesting questions and non sequiturs in the level design itself. It's all a big joke and we get to grimace through it.
| Shape Memory Alloys |
In conclusion, it's a good thing From Soft nailed all their game loop, distinctive mechanics, and interweaving systems here. The original Armored Core is unfortunately limited with how it challenges players, both in level design and mission pacing. Not having an arena to lean on makes completing the missions with maximum efficiency more of a priority, which can lead to excess retries and scrimping on investments in hopes of affording something better later vs. smoother upgrades in the short term. (I do appreciate how only fighting other ranked ACs within missions makes the Ravens' dynamic more hostile and contradictory, but the game does so little to expand on that angle.) These problems sting less knowing that, as a prototype of adventures to come, this game still accomplishes so much with so little.
Not many series strive to reach a profile this high while teasing players with details out of reach and mysteries about its development unanswered. Anyone invested in the wider world Armored Core hints at, from the shadowy groups running these underground beehive cities to the horrors hiding behind Human Plus, has to read through "data books" (artbooks) and track down magazine previews for scraps. We're only now getting English translations of the artbooks and related articles, all of which are coloring the fringes of the AC universe while only letting trace amounts of humanity through the barrier [2]. And as far as these games are concerned, pilots' backstories and white papers on neural augmentation procedures amount to nothing. Heroes and villains drop in and out of history like mayflies—only shocks to the system register on the scale From Soft's using. We're just along for the ride.
It feels like there's still so much else to analyze here: how the studio crowbar-ed their King's Field engine into handling these pyrotechnics, the peculiarities of Human Plus endings as difficulty modifiers, let alone the timely yet appropriate electronica soundtrack. A lot of PS1 releases from this period struggle to make the best use of their developers' skills, assets, and remaining CD space. I wouldn't say Armored Core succeeds at the latter, using only a few FMV sequences at key points in the story, but it's a remarkably lean and appealing game relative to its own premise. Replays come naturally thanks to multiple Human Plus tiers and the freedom to play all missions upon completing the story (plus making new saves to transfer into Project Phantasma). The controls here, though lacking in finesse, carry forward into a good chunk of the later games, with concepts like boost canceling staying relevant even after the switch to analog. Contrast this maturity with all the pratfalls From Soft made during their King's Field days. They'd learned how to not just lead in with a better start, but retain their creative momentum on budgets larger and smaller with each sequel.
Armored Core represents a coming-of-age for the PlayStation as it entered the midpoint of its lifespan, setting a bar other mid-sized studios could aspire to. Its rough edges hardly mar what I'd call one of my favorite experiences in the system's library so far. Maybe I'm going easier on this one due to my enthusiasm for the genre and the myriad themes this game explores, from cyberpunk dystopia to the malleability of history in the post-modern. It could just be that the core game's so, uh, solid after all this time. I chose not to rely on Human Plus for my first playthrough and that might have helped. No matter how you approach the series today, it's awesome to see it debut this confidently, and plenty of players must have thought so too. The Armored Core series became From Soft's backbone for a decade before the Souls-likes came to replace it, and what AC achieved for mecha games (and ARPGs in general) can't be overstated.
| Bibliography |
[1] Alex “blackoak,” trans. “Armored Core – 1997 Developer Interview - Shmuplations.Com.” PlayStation Magazine. 1997. Shmuplations. https://shmuplations.com/armoredcore/.
[2] Reddit. “Translations of Pages 103 to 105 from the Book Armored Core Official Data Book.” Accessed January 14, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/armoredcore/comments/x940dj/translations_of_pages_103_to_105_from_the_book/.
2000
The Original Sworn Brother Simulator: hours upon hours of chaos, hordes upon hordes of hapless soldiers as blood sacrifice for the honor, glory, and jealous one-upmanship of the Three Kingdoms' ruthless, sexually repressed macho men. Sure, I've heard of the Peach Garden Oath…but how about that whole Shu roster looking like the future winners of Eurovision Asia? Or the way Lu Bu and Zhang Liao glance at each other while riding out to stop Cao Cao? And why do I gotta keep pounding on these guys to get meat buns and stat upgrades outta them?! I take back last month's comments about *Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII—this one's the real Bromance. It also just happens to be a major turning point for Koei, a "safe" brand that ventured out of its RPG, sim, and strategy comfort zones to finally break into the mid-range action market. The big cuddly bear of Japan's game industry started laying down the fight; few knew where musou would go.
I had my reservations going into my Normal skill playthrough of Dynasty Warriors 2, having heard about its jank, slim content, and overall difficulty—these fears were validated, but I'm liking it more after trying part of it again on Hard. Faithfully covering the Three Kingdoms in any action game up to this point meant focusing on the set-piece battles and character stereotypes derived from Luo Guanzhong's classic novel, something which Koei's then youngest division Omega Force (OF) had to translate into mainstream 3D polygon game terms. It's natural that they'd combine the arcade beat 'em up with a light strategy layer. What's special about Shin Sangokumusou are the ways in which it recycles the original Dynasty Warrior, an average versus fighter reborn as the unlikely usurper of trends in beat 'em up design started by Dynamite Deka and SpikeOut. This game ultimately saw much success for OF, its talented staff led by Akihiro Suzuki and Kenichi Ogasawara, and an odd first impression for PS2 adopters expecting something more substantial. These days players tend to view DW2 strictly as a curiosity, and hardly without reason. I just think there's a bit more going on here.
| Yellow Storm |
Romance of the Three Kingdoms looms high in East Asian cultural history, hence all the different ways it's been retold across comics, film, music, and games. (Arguably only Water Margin aka All Men Are Brothers supersedes it in influence—see every shonen manga ever.) In the video game realm, Capcom was first to take a more action-oriented approach to portraying the Three Kingdoms conflict, first with a dramatic post-Dragon Quest series called Tenchi wo Karau (Destiny of the Emperor), and then the pre-Final Fight belt-scroller Dynasty Wars in 1989. By contrast, Koei's grand strategy treatment, initially restricted to Japanese home computers, traded out flash for in-depth systems, letting players role-play as provincial rulers far away from the battlefield. How could these divergent angles meet to make a flashy but accurate, strategic but skillful rendition of the saga?
Omega Force started as Koei's fourth internal division (hence "force", which reads in Japanese as "fourth"), and it saw Suzuki and Ogasawara attempting to solve the aforementioned problem. Though decently regarded in 1997, Dynasty Warriors didn't become the phenomenon they hoped, crowded out by other weapons-based fighters like Soul Edge and Battle Arena Toshinden. (Still better than the results for Destrega…) The team would find more success with WinBack, proving they could bring innovations to 3D third-person action and engage with arcade stylings without trend-chasing. While Suzuki and other veterans from the early-'90s brought their historic knowledge and development experience to the group, Ogasawara represented the new batch of Koei recruits ready to build something console players could uniquely enjoy, rather than PlayStation owners seemingly getting the scraps of PC releases. He saw his colleagues playing RTS games during lunch breaks and was inspired to make a prototype of the archetypal musou game, with single fighters now accompanied by tiered ranks of followers all tied into a morale system which players manipulate to win the larger battle. [1]
It had already taken a nascent Omega Force around a year and a half to make just their first game…once they got their hands on PS2 development kits, there was no time to lose if they wanted the sequel out around launch! (The main team under Koei head Yoichi Erikawa were already wrapping up Kessen for that crucial March 4th, 2000 launch date.) So it goes that Dynasty Warriors 2 narrowly became one of the the system's first 25 releases and proceeded to sell very well. New adopters quickly got a taste of the opening level, a congested assault on the Yellow Turban Rebellion which brought the ailing Han Dynasty to its knees and decorated the careers of many warriors old and young. Pounding heavy metal music, loud and chunky martial arts ambiance, and a tight balance between difficulty and power fantasy all came together despite the odds. It'd be just a year until Koei & OF promptly hurried a sequel to market, knowing they had a new franchise in the making. Critics were impressed that the company had produced anything so unlike their typical history software, feeling more like the work of arcade-based developers rather than home-oriented ones [2].
| Killing Time |
Dynasty Warriors 2 gives you 28 generals from the Wei, Wu, and Shu forces (plus "rogue" players like Lu Bu) to play across 8 battles, with most characters sharing similar story mode progression. Not everyone's available from the start, unlocking as you play with fighters from all sides or achieve feats like earning a thousand kills at Hu Lao Gate. This amount of content hardly seems light until you realize just how many fighters share the same movesets. In musou/fighting game jargon, these are clones with only secondary differences like stat assignment and different hitboxes. Each character's got health, attack, defense, and "musou" stats affecting their abilities in combat, and each variety of character can combo their square attacks up to four moves, or follow that regular combo with a charge move (ex. a "charge 3" (C3) = 3 □ + ∆).
Fighting itself is something Dynasty Warriors 3 and its successors would greatly improve, though I find it fine in this early form. Chaining moves doesn't take a whole lot of practice, or even that much mashing once you've internalized the animation timings for attacks. Actually hitting foes can sometimes be fickle with certain weapons, but that's usually just an issue when trying to C1 (juggle) a gate captain or general. Swap guys often, though, and it'll quickly become clear how busted certain combos of moveset and weapons can become. Let's put aside Lu Bu and talk about Dian Wei. His big axe should slow everything way down, yet he runs about the same speed as most other guys (poor Xu Zhu) and has a broken AF C3 where the axe becomes a veritable boomerang. When a fighter's only flaw is this AoE move not always working as it should (the axe can't fly behind the camera frustum and hit enemies), Now That's What I Call Imbalancing! The gulf in performance between crowd-control gods and the weaker units like Zhuge Liange wouldn't be this pronounced in the series for some time.
Archery and mounted combat are also introduced in this installment, albeit with issues that would plague them up until the later PS2 games. The former involves stopping still and holding R1, transitioning to a slow and clunky first-person view where you can periodically string single arrow shots, regular or charged. In practice, bow play gets the most use against guard tower turrets and bosses you shouldn't approach until low on health (again, Lu Bu). It's too inflexible and awkward to use for anything else vs. closing in. Meanwhile, cavalry charges go haywire half the time you try. Enemies will gladly jump to knock you off, with varying success due to hitbox weirdness. Running into large groups will often provoke your steed into rearing up and losing momentum, which can lead to someone dismounting you. And killing enemies via trampling doesn't net you kills, because only weapons kill people apparently! This sucks for characters like Xiahou Yuan and Ma Chao, masters of archery and equestrian respectively, who don't get to shine despite debuting in this game. At least jumping is still useful for level traversal, even if there's a surprising amount of invisible walls preventing you from hopping onto stairs from the side, among other things…
Grinding's a dirty word in the musou fandom, insofar as no one quite agrees on how much padded-out gameplay exists in these titles. Dynasty Warriors 2 easily earns the accusation. Ho boy can this one become a grind if you're unaccustomed to a couple of things. For starters, the game's mostly designed for players to take a character between their Musou Mode playthrough and Free Mode runs—usually from Easy or Normal difficulty depending on playstyle—before being able to try Hard mode comfortably. This becomes a trend throughout the PS2 games, though they've solved the pacing issues by Dynasty Warriors 5 with mechanics like out-of-battle weapon tuning. So that's fine, it's just more kickass brawling action, right? Maybe, but there's a pernicious little thing that officers major and minor love to do: repeatedly heal up before they die. Every non-generic officer (plus the gate captains) gets a limited but scaling supply of dim-sums and other power-ups, used randomly but frequently when recovering from knockdown. The closer they get to dying, the more likely they use an item! This uses the typical combo flow against players, rather than to their benefit, and can throw a lot of people off. I don't like this system in practice, despite how it cleverly encourages cheesy tactics like weak arrows or refusing to finish combos. It's something I haven't missed going into later games, but there's the seed of a clever idea here.
I'm happy to say the animation quality and kinaesthetics haven't aged much at all, notably when using the game's special musou attacks. Should you get stuck on the other end of a brutal assault, a timely musou can change the outcome in just several seconds. Sword wielders slash through the crowd before launching everyone around them with a single swipe; ax and club battlers pummel unlucky soldiers into a pulp with plenty of knockback; and those cultured fan users basically unleash black magic in a flash. The spectacle's always exhilarating, as is the freedom these specials give players when dueling the nastier opponents. While this game has a subtle auto-lock tendency, influencing your character to hone in on a single enemy at a time, it's much less restrictive than how Omega Force implemented this in the following two games. Dynasty Warriors 2 cares more about making each link of hits satisfying to pull off than keeping the player down for the AI's sake. It becomes tempting to leap around, sucker-punching guys from the air just to watch them fall to the floor as you prepare a deadly finisher. When all else fails, one can always guard attacks by holding the camera face button (L1), which works as stiff but reliable as ever.
Put it all together and the magic starts to happen. Charismatic leaders advance across plains, canyons, farmlands, and fortresses with retinues in tow, with enough numbers to make this world feel alive and bustling. The iconic moments are all here: crunchy impacts as combo finishers send troops flying, crashing into each other like ragdolls; rivals appear from the fog of war to challenge you, either to win and end the match or fall and herald your victory; gates open as officers retreat, traps are sprung right upon your allies' feet, and the cadence of battle hits climax. It's hard to explain how this game, with its aforementioned core flaws and priorities, manages to enthrall me so much. Sure, I could whinge about the genre's perceived repetition or this game clearly being a prototype of things to come, but OF really understood how these games can and should be paced. I can have fun going full 1v1000 with OP fighters like Lu Bu and Dian Wei, but also get a kick out of managing upsets with sub-optimal choices like Sun Shang Xiang or Jiang Wei—the "what if?" attraction of future titles clearly existed this far back. Role-playing beat 'em ups weren't new, but this variation sure was.
| Divine Wind |
Musou games live or die based on their game loop, and strong combat doesn't mean as much without a similarly worthwhile campaign that challenges players, maintains variety, and delivers that sense of martial adventure. Again, here's where Dynasty Warriors 2 shows its budget and design limits, as Omega Force needed to spend precious resources on getting all those scores of units to render at the expense of level design. It arguably wouldn't be until Dynasty Warriors 5 that Koei found an ideal ratio of asset and SFX complexity to level density and novelty. What we do have in DW2 is quite good regardless, as shown in the multi-layered, ambush-laden attack on Zhang Jiao's peasant rebels. Allied and enemy forces always start from their own forts and hidey-holes, accompanied by reinforcement points leading off the map. Most mission goals revolve around defeating the main enemy commander, but raising your side's morale (let alone deflating the enemy's) often becomes most important of all.
There's a common line of debate about old vs. new Dynasty Warriors (and musou in general) about how important or relevant it should be to fight within your army, rather than steamrolling ahead with nary a consequence. I tend to prefer the former myself, something which this game promotes by having very aggressive AI on Normal and Hard difficulties. Later games make the 1v1000 meme real largely by empowering player characters and dumbing down AI fighters, but almost all the PS2-era musou titles preferred to have peons and corporals interrupt your combos or even use special attacks to weigh you down. It's truly dangerous to wander away from friends and get surrounded; I've lost a couple times while playing Yi Ling and Wu Zhang Plains on Hard this way. Getting juggled sure isn't as fun as juggling them yourselves! For lack of something more complex like holding/sieging bases or keeping supply lines established the further in you go, this mix of active AI (without gimped movesets) and limited on-map resources like health or save points hems the player in from trivializing campaigns.
Taking out officers and large groups of foes, preferably via long combo chains, yields item drops affecting either temporary stats (e.g. current health and arrow stock) or permanent ones. Some of these also pop up from busted crates or pots lying around settlements, but it's often viable to forage these from the killing fields as you go. Something I really like are the limited-time stat boosting power-ups which any musou fan will recognize: armor and attack buffs, drinks to restore your special meter, etc. Encouraging players to keep moving and plow forward, skipping from one skirmish to another while making optimal use of item drops…It Just Works™. Another thing enriching the gameplay is the battle UI, displaying informative chyrons whenever you hit an "X units defeated" milestone or when an ally/enemy unit's morale rises or declines. Information travels faster to our screens than could possibly have reached officers' eyes and ears all the way back in the past, and that's okay. It's yet one more decidedly unrealistic element which brings players into the stressed, frenzied state of mind that anyone fighting on these fronts would have had. There's always something going on, for better or worse, and late-game stages can really test one's endurance.
And even with its teething problems, Dynasty Warriors 2 makes good use of its large stages and flashy art direction to compensate for things outside of Omega Force's budget or expertise. I can list quite a few set-pieces and vistas that'll stick with me all throughout the series: the claustrophobic gauntlet at Hu Lao Gate, Zhang Fei's bridge standoff at Changban, the fire attack raging across Yi Ling, and the dread expanse of death at Wu Zhang… All these levels would eventually improve and expand over the years, with more events and intricate pathways to explore, but it's cool to experience them in this formative state. It's just a shame that textures are comically low-res and that the engine can't yet gracefully handle level-of-detail loading, leading to a lot of pop-in and disappearing combatants which adversely affects the game loop. Thankfully you're always able to see your fighter, one of many flamboyantly designed heroes balking at RoTK's conservative character design ethos. Even the most conservatively dressed fellas here look amazing, yet still believable enough (if ceremonial outfits count as wartime or official attire). The cast only gets more colorful and distinct from here on, referencing famous legends about individuals like Xiahou Dun or Gan Ning to embellish them.
| The Boundless Ground |
Maybe the best example I can give for Dynasty Warriors 2 remaining relevant today is its soundtrack. Omega Force's then novice musician MASA (aka Masayoshi Sasaki) banged out one of the most era-defining hard rock soundtracks in the PS2 library, all without having played a Koei game before. [3] From the opening march upon the Turbans, across the splattered red cliffs at Chi Bi, and at the bitter end of generation-spanning warfare, MASA's percussive guitars, synths, and rhythms attune every play session to the pulse of confrontation. The grunge and Y2K electronica of everyman PlayStation games in years preceding gave way to a gentler mix of genres with improving production values, even from inexperienced developers like him. These songs are so fun and memorable that Dynasty Warriors 3 imports almost all of them with slight rearrangements. Nor is the foley any slouch, either. Hit effects, hoof-steps, and rancorous environmental sounds pervade every inch of the game's missions, all without blaring over the tunes.
I've been giving this game a lot more praise, or at least apologizing for its shortcomings, compared to most opinions I read in the current year. It's a hard one to get into now because it's been so thoroughly obsoleted by its sequels, save for hacking potential (seriously, DW2 has some of the most absurd cheats and custom fan levels I've seen from a musou game). For new Warriors fans, I'd say there's a bit more here to experience than just a history piece. Oddities like cinematic kill cams, on-map save slot collectibles, and musou canceling (denying a unit's special with your own!) give this entry a more arcade-y feel than would become the norm. The sheer moxie of infantry doing anything to hitstun you outdoes the harder PS2-era games like DW 3 or DW 4. And while it's low on overall content, the unique level designs for stages like Yellow Turbans and Chi Bi keep me coming back. Bonus points for carrying a smaller filesize footprint than the following games, too! I guess that's what happens when you've got minimal voice acting and cutscenes (both of which are surprisingly less awkward than in Dynasty Warriors 3 for whatever reason).
Dynasty Warriors 2 set a standard for console-bound 3D beat 'em ups to follow. While SEGA and Capcom eked out some '90s arcade-style examples of the genre up until the HD transition, even the latter ended up creating Sengoku Basara to meet Koei's new cash cow on its own terms. The newfound emphasis on influencing a larger world at war, rich in unlockables and storied presentation, made for a compelling combination of elements that Omega Force did better than anyone for quite some time. Eventually there'd be competition from the likes of Ninety-Nine Nights, Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders, or the ill-fated Demon Chaos, but Dynasty Warriors ended up having to worry more about OF's own Samurai Warriors series more than anything. The musou genre lost its freshness fast, too, with criticism most often coming from jaded fans or critics perceiving stagnation within these core series. Yet it's still a hugely successful part of the AA+ gaming market today, and it's meaningful to trace these ups and downs back to their source. If you've bounced off DW2 in the past, maybe consider a retry; there's some very nice PCSX2 cheat codes to enhance graphics and playability if desired, too.
| Sources |
[1] 任天堂ホームページ. “社長が訊く『ニンテンドー3DS』ソフトメーカークリエーター 篇｜ニンテンドー3DS｜任天堂.” Nintendo Co., L. Accessed January 22, 2024. http://www.nintendo.co.jp/3ds/interview/creators/vol16/index2.html.
[2] “鈴木 亮浩 | 社員インタビュー | 新卒採用2017 | コーエーテクモ ホールディングス.” Koei Tecmo Holdings Co., Ltd., January 4, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160104172459/https://www.koeitecmo.co.jp/recruit/graduate/2017/member/vol-01/.
[3] “佐々木 優嘉 | 社員インタビュー | 新卒採用2017 | コーエーテクモ ホールディングス.” Koei Tecmo Holdings Co., Ltd., January 4, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160104172514/http://www.koeitecmo.co.jp/recruit/graduate/2017/member/vol-03.
I had my reservations going into my Normal skill playthrough of Dynasty Warriors 2, having heard about its jank, slim content, and overall difficulty—these fears were validated, but I'm liking it more after trying part of it again on Hard. Faithfully covering the Three Kingdoms in any action game up to this point meant focusing on the set-piece battles and character stereotypes derived from Luo Guanzhong's classic novel, something which Koei's then youngest division Omega Force (OF) had to translate into mainstream 3D polygon game terms. It's natural that they'd combine the arcade beat 'em up with a light strategy layer. What's special about Shin Sangokumusou are the ways in which it recycles the original Dynasty Warrior, an average versus fighter reborn as the unlikely usurper of trends in beat 'em up design started by Dynamite Deka and SpikeOut. This game ultimately saw much success for OF, its talented staff led by Akihiro Suzuki and Kenichi Ogasawara, and an odd first impression for PS2 adopters expecting something more substantial. These days players tend to view DW2 strictly as a curiosity, and hardly without reason. I just think there's a bit more going on here.
| Yellow Storm |
Romance of the Three Kingdoms looms high in East Asian cultural history, hence all the different ways it's been retold across comics, film, music, and games. (Arguably only Water Margin aka All Men Are Brothers supersedes it in influence—see every shonen manga ever.) In the video game realm, Capcom was first to take a more action-oriented approach to portraying the Three Kingdoms conflict, first with a dramatic post-Dragon Quest series called Tenchi wo Karau (Destiny of the Emperor), and then the pre-Final Fight belt-scroller Dynasty Wars in 1989. By contrast, Koei's grand strategy treatment, initially restricted to Japanese home computers, traded out flash for in-depth systems, letting players role-play as provincial rulers far away from the battlefield. How could these divergent angles meet to make a flashy but accurate, strategic but skillful rendition of the saga?
Omega Force started as Koei's fourth internal division (hence "force", which reads in Japanese as "fourth"), and it saw Suzuki and Ogasawara attempting to solve the aforementioned problem. Though decently regarded in 1997, Dynasty Warriors didn't become the phenomenon they hoped, crowded out by other weapons-based fighters like Soul Edge and Battle Arena Toshinden. (Still better than the results for Destrega…) The team would find more success with WinBack, proving they could bring innovations to 3D third-person action and engage with arcade stylings without trend-chasing. While Suzuki and other veterans from the early-'90s brought their historic knowledge and development experience to the group, Ogasawara represented the new batch of Koei recruits ready to build something console players could uniquely enjoy, rather than PlayStation owners seemingly getting the scraps of PC releases. He saw his colleagues playing RTS games during lunch breaks and was inspired to make a prototype of the archetypal musou game, with single fighters now accompanied by tiered ranks of followers all tied into a morale system which players manipulate to win the larger battle. [1]
It had already taken a nascent Omega Force around a year and a half to make just their first game…once they got their hands on PS2 development kits, there was no time to lose if they wanted the sequel out around launch! (The main team under Koei head Yoichi Erikawa were already wrapping up Kessen for that crucial March 4th, 2000 launch date.) So it goes that Dynasty Warriors 2 narrowly became one of the the system's first 25 releases and proceeded to sell very well. New adopters quickly got a taste of the opening level, a congested assault on the Yellow Turban Rebellion which brought the ailing Han Dynasty to its knees and decorated the careers of many warriors old and young. Pounding heavy metal music, loud and chunky martial arts ambiance, and a tight balance between difficulty and power fantasy all came together despite the odds. It'd be just a year until Koei & OF promptly hurried a sequel to market, knowing they had a new franchise in the making. Critics were impressed that the company had produced anything so unlike their typical history software, feeling more like the work of arcade-based developers rather than home-oriented ones [2].
| Killing Time |
Dynasty Warriors 2 gives you 28 generals from the Wei, Wu, and Shu forces (plus "rogue" players like Lu Bu) to play across 8 battles, with most characters sharing similar story mode progression. Not everyone's available from the start, unlocking as you play with fighters from all sides or achieve feats like earning a thousand kills at Hu Lao Gate. This amount of content hardly seems light until you realize just how many fighters share the same movesets. In musou/fighting game jargon, these are clones with only secondary differences like stat assignment and different hitboxes. Each character's got health, attack, defense, and "musou" stats affecting their abilities in combat, and each variety of character can combo their square attacks up to four moves, or follow that regular combo with a charge move (ex. a "charge 3" (C3) = 3 □ + ∆).
Fighting itself is something Dynasty Warriors 3 and its successors would greatly improve, though I find it fine in this early form. Chaining moves doesn't take a whole lot of practice, or even that much mashing once you've internalized the animation timings for attacks. Actually hitting foes can sometimes be fickle with certain weapons, but that's usually just an issue when trying to C1 (juggle) a gate captain or general. Swap guys often, though, and it'll quickly become clear how busted certain combos of moveset and weapons can become. Let's put aside Lu Bu and talk about Dian Wei. His big axe should slow everything way down, yet he runs about the same speed as most other guys (poor Xu Zhu) and has a broken AF C3 where the axe becomes a veritable boomerang. When a fighter's only flaw is this AoE move not always working as it should (the axe can't fly behind the camera frustum and hit enemies), Now That's What I Call Imbalancing! The gulf in performance between crowd-control gods and the weaker units like Zhuge Liange wouldn't be this pronounced in the series for some time.
Archery and mounted combat are also introduced in this installment, albeit with issues that would plague them up until the later PS2 games. The former involves stopping still and holding R1, transitioning to a slow and clunky first-person view where you can periodically string single arrow shots, regular or charged. In practice, bow play gets the most use against guard tower turrets and bosses you shouldn't approach until low on health (again, Lu Bu). It's too inflexible and awkward to use for anything else vs. closing in. Meanwhile, cavalry charges go haywire half the time you try. Enemies will gladly jump to knock you off, with varying success due to hitbox weirdness. Running into large groups will often provoke your steed into rearing up and losing momentum, which can lead to someone dismounting you. And killing enemies via trampling doesn't net you kills, because only weapons kill people apparently! This sucks for characters like Xiahou Yuan and Ma Chao, masters of archery and equestrian respectively, who don't get to shine despite debuting in this game. At least jumping is still useful for level traversal, even if there's a surprising amount of invisible walls preventing you from hopping onto stairs from the side, among other things…
Grinding's a dirty word in the musou fandom, insofar as no one quite agrees on how much padded-out gameplay exists in these titles. Dynasty Warriors 2 easily earns the accusation. Ho boy can this one become a grind if you're unaccustomed to a couple of things. For starters, the game's mostly designed for players to take a character between their Musou Mode playthrough and Free Mode runs—usually from Easy or Normal difficulty depending on playstyle—before being able to try Hard mode comfortably. This becomes a trend throughout the PS2 games, though they've solved the pacing issues by Dynasty Warriors 5 with mechanics like out-of-battle weapon tuning. So that's fine, it's just more kickass brawling action, right? Maybe, but there's a pernicious little thing that officers major and minor love to do: repeatedly heal up before they die. Every non-generic officer (plus the gate captains) gets a limited but scaling supply of dim-sums and other power-ups, used randomly but frequently when recovering from knockdown. The closer they get to dying, the more likely they use an item! This uses the typical combo flow against players, rather than to their benefit, and can throw a lot of people off. I don't like this system in practice, despite how it cleverly encourages cheesy tactics like weak arrows or refusing to finish combos. It's something I haven't missed going into later games, but there's the seed of a clever idea here.
I'm happy to say the animation quality and kinaesthetics haven't aged much at all, notably when using the game's special musou attacks. Should you get stuck on the other end of a brutal assault, a timely musou can change the outcome in just several seconds. Sword wielders slash through the crowd before launching everyone around them with a single swipe; ax and club battlers pummel unlucky soldiers into a pulp with plenty of knockback; and those cultured fan users basically unleash black magic in a flash. The spectacle's always exhilarating, as is the freedom these specials give players when dueling the nastier opponents. While this game has a subtle auto-lock tendency, influencing your character to hone in on a single enemy at a time, it's much less restrictive than how Omega Force implemented this in the following two games. Dynasty Warriors 2 cares more about making each link of hits satisfying to pull off than keeping the player down for the AI's sake. It becomes tempting to leap around, sucker-punching guys from the air just to watch them fall to the floor as you prepare a deadly finisher. When all else fails, one can always guard attacks by holding the camera face button (L1), which works as stiff but reliable as ever.
Put it all together and the magic starts to happen. Charismatic leaders advance across plains, canyons, farmlands, and fortresses with retinues in tow, with enough numbers to make this world feel alive and bustling. The iconic moments are all here: crunchy impacts as combo finishers send troops flying, crashing into each other like ragdolls; rivals appear from the fog of war to challenge you, either to win and end the match or fall and herald your victory; gates open as officers retreat, traps are sprung right upon your allies' feet, and the cadence of battle hits climax. It's hard to explain how this game, with its aforementioned core flaws and priorities, manages to enthrall me so much. Sure, I could whinge about the genre's perceived repetition or this game clearly being a prototype of things to come, but OF really understood how these games can and should be paced. I can have fun going full 1v1000 with OP fighters like Lu Bu and Dian Wei, but also get a kick out of managing upsets with sub-optimal choices like Sun Shang Xiang or Jiang Wei—the "what if?" attraction of future titles clearly existed this far back. Role-playing beat 'em ups weren't new, but this variation sure was.
| Divine Wind |
Musou games live or die based on their game loop, and strong combat doesn't mean as much without a similarly worthwhile campaign that challenges players, maintains variety, and delivers that sense of martial adventure. Again, here's where Dynasty Warriors 2 shows its budget and design limits, as Omega Force needed to spend precious resources on getting all those scores of units to render at the expense of level design. It arguably wouldn't be until Dynasty Warriors 5 that Koei found an ideal ratio of asset and SFX complexity to level density and novelty. What we do have in DW2 is quite good regardless, as shown in the multi-layered, ambush-laden attack on Zhang Jiao's peasant rebels. Allied and enemy forces always start from their own forts and hidey-holes, accompanied by reinforcement points leading off the map. Most mission goals revolve around defeating the main enemy commander, but raising your side's morale (let alone deflating the enemy's) often becomes most important of all.
There's a common line of debate about old vs. new Dynasty Warriors (and musou in general) about how important or relevant it should be to fight within your army, rather than steamrolling ahead with nary a consequence. I tend to prefer the former myself, something which this game promotes by having very aggressive AI on Normal and Hard difficulties. Later games make the 1v1000 meme real largely by empowering player characters and dumbing down AI fighters, but almost all the PS2-era musou titles preferred to have peons and corporals interrupt your combos or even use special attacks to weigh you down. It's truly dangerous to wander away from friends and get surrounded; I've lost a couple times while playing Yi Ling and Wu Zhang Plains on Hard this way. Getting juggled sure isn't as fun as juggling them yourselves! For lack of something more complex like holding/sieging bases or keeping supply lines established the further in you go, this mix of active AI (without gimped movesets) and limited on-map resources like health or save points hems the player in from trivializing campaigns.
Taking out officers and large groups of foes, preferably via long combo chains, yields item drops affecting either temporary stats (e.g. current health and arrow stock) or permanent ones. Some of these also pop up from busted crates or pots lying around settlements, but it's often viable to forage these from the killing fields as you go. Something I really like are the limited-time stat boosting power-ups which any musou fan will recognize: armor and attack buffs, drinks to restore your special meter, etc. Encouraging players to keep moving and plow forward, skipping from one skirmish to another while making optimal use of item drops…It Just Works™. Another thing enriching the gameplay is the battle UI, displaying informative chyrons whenever you hit an "X units defeated" milestone or when an ally/enemy unit's morale rises or declines. Information travels faster to our screens than could possibly have reached officers' eyes and ears all the way back in the past, and that's okay. It's yet one more decidedly unrealistic element which brings players into the stressed, frenzied state of mind that anyone fighting on these fronts would have had. There's always something going on, for better or worse, and late-game stages can really test one's endurance.
And even with its teething problems, Dynasty Warriors 2 makes good use of its large stages and flashy art direction to compensate for things outside of Omega Force's budget or expertise. I can list quite a few set-pieces and vistas that'll stick with me all throughout the series: the claustrophobic gauntlet at Hu Lao Gate, Zhang Fei's bridge standoff at Changban, the fire attack raging across Yi Ling, and the dread expanse of death at Wu Zhang… All these levels would eventually improve and expand over the years, with more events and intricate pathways to explore, but it's cool to experience them in this formative state. It's just a shame that textures are comically low-res and that the engine can't yet gracefully handle level-of-detail loading, leading to a lot of pop-in and disappearing combatants which adversely affects the game loop. Thankfully you're always able to see your fighter, one of many flamboyantly designed heroes balking at RoTK's conservative character design ethos. Even the most conservatively dressed fellas here look amazing, yet still believable enough (if ceremonial outfits count as wartime or official attire). The cast only gets more colorful and distinct from here on, referencing famous legends about individuals like Xiahou Dun or Gan Ning to embellish them.
| The Boundless Ground |
Maybe the best example I can give for Dynasty Warriors 2 remaining relevant today is its soundtrack. Omega Force's then novice musician MASA (aka Masayoshi Sasaki) banged out one of the most era-defining hard rock soundtracks in the PS2 library, all without having played a Koei game before. [3] From the opening march upon the Turbans, across the splattered red cliffs at Chi Bi, and at the bitter end of generation-spanning warfare, MASA's percussive guitars, synths, and rhythms attune every play session to the pulse of confrontation. The grunge and Y2K electronica of everyman PlayStation games in years preceding gave way to a gentler mix of genres with improving production values, even from inexperienced developers like him. These songs are so fun and memorable that Dynasty Warriors 3 imports almost all of them with slight rearrangements. Nor is the foley any slouch, either. Hit effects, hoof-steps, and rancorous environmental sounds pervade every inch of the game's missions, all without blaring over the tunes.
I've been giving this game a lot more praise, or at least apologizing for its shortcomings, compared to most opinions I read in the current year. It's a hard one to get into now because it's been so thoroughly obsoleted by its sequels, save for hacking potential (seriously, DW2 has some of the most absurd cheats and custom fan levels I've seen from a musou game). For new Warriors fans, I'd say there's a bit more here to experience than just a history piece. Oddities like cinematic kill cams, on-map save slot collectibles, and musou canceling (denying a unit's special with your own!) give this entry a more arcade-y feel than would become the norm. The sheer moxie of infantry doing anything to hitstun you outdoes the harder PS2-era games like DW 3 or DW 4. And while it's low on overall content, the unique level designs for stages like Yellow Turbans and Chi Bi keep me coming back. Bonus points for carrying a smaller filesize footprint than the following games, too! I guess that's what happens when you've got minimal voice acting and cutscenes (both of which are surprisingly less awkward than in Dynasty Warriors 3 for whatever reason).
Dynasty Warriors 2 set a standard for console-bound 3D beat 'em ups to follow. While SEGA and Capcom eked out some '90s arcade-style examples of the genre up until the HD transition, even the latter ended up creating Sengoku Basara to meet Koei's new cash cow on its own terms. The newfound emphasis on influencing a larger world at war, rich in unlockables and storied presentation, made for a compelling combination of elements that Omega Force did better than anyone for quite some time. Eventually there'd be competition from the likes of Ninety-Nine Nights, Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders, or the ill-fated Demon Chaos, but Dynasty Warriors ended up having to worry more about OF's own Samurai Warriors series more than anything. The musou genre lost its freshness fast, too, with criticism most often coming from jaded fans or critics perceiving stagnation within these core series. Yet it's still a hugely successful part of the AA+ gaming market today, and it's meaningful to trace these ups and downs back to their source. If you've bounced off DW2 in the past, maybe consider a retry; there's some very nice PCSX2 cheat codes to enhance graphics and playability if desired, too.
| Sources |
[1] 任天堂ホームページ. “社長が訊く『ニンテンドー3DS』ソフトメーカークリエーター 篇｜ニンテンドー3DS｜任天堂.” Nintendo Co., L. Accessed January 22, 2024. http://www.nintendo.co.jp/3ds/interview/creators/vol16/index2.html.
[2] “鈴木 亮浩 | 社員インタビュー | 新卒採用2017 | コーエーテクモ ホールディングス.” Koei Tecmo Holdings Co., Ltd., January 4, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160104172459/https://www.koeitecmo.co.jp/recruit/graduate/2017/member/vol-01/.
[3] “佐々木 優嘉 | 社員インタビュー | 新卒採用2017 | コーエーテクモ ホールディングス.” Koei Tecmo Holdings Co., Ltd., January 4, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160104172514/http://www.koeitecmo.co.jp/recruit/graduate/2017/member/vol-03.
1994
The neat thing about Doom's classic mod scene is how easily you can observe the evolution of game design over time, as well as a community's priorities and preferences; it becomes clear what ideas had lasting power, and which didn't. As Doomsday of UAC approaches its 30th anniversary this summer, this early fan level retains its iconic status despite how unkind time has been to it. The minute I exit a cleverly sculpted wreck of an 18-wheeler, greeted by an industrial park teeming with demons and "realistic" features, that's how I know I'm playing something special.
Doom modding in its nascent days amounted to either (a) poking around in hex editors, trying to create a cogent WAD file through trial and error, or (b) wrangling the initial batch of pre-Windows map editors which loved to crash and/or corrupt your hard work! It's a miracle that something as fun, well-paced, and innovative as this map from Leo Martin Lim came together at all. (The other miracle is that levels this old are still preserved in their original archived form, and we have Ty Halderman and his successors in charge of the /idgames FTP archive to thank for that.) All college kids who played some version of id Software's original Doom in its launch days had many ideas for mods, but so little experience and precedent to build from. Lim wasn't even the first to release anything beyond a series of sketchy boxes with monsters and weapons—Invasion…: Level 1 - Contamination beat it to the punch by about a month, replete with special effects and new assets like music and textures. But Doomsday of UAC proved that you could make a similarly cinematic experience using just the base game and a host of magic tricks exploiting Carmack's engine. It helps that this map has solid combat and exploration in its bones, too.
After crawling from the wreckage, you're pressured from all sides by a trickle of imps, pinkies, and shotgunners ready to pounce before you can assemble an arsenal. This prompts a mad dash through a midnight maze of boxes, trailers, and enemy groups one might want to use against each other. We're far from the clean, abstract but believably efficient spaces that Romero designed for Doom's Episode 1…nor is this anything like the trap-driven dungeon crawling one finds in Sandy Petersen's levels. Doomsday of UAC marked the beginnings of what FPS modding circles call "Doom-cute": heavily kit-bashed replicas of architecture and objects like cars, toilets, etc. using only the original game's resources. The tipped-over truck with a spinning wheel looks impressive already, nothing like what id's crew displayed in the shareware and payware episodes. It gets even more exciting when you realize it took a lot of sector geometry manipulation and a well-placed texture animation effect on certain lines for this to function at all! There's just enough breathing room to admire the scenery while gunning down monsters and collecting the necessary ammo and key cards to proceed.
I shan't spoil the rest of Lim's one and only wonder-mod since it relies on a clever twist or two, but just know there's some trickery afoot, creeping up on players as they head further into this corrupted corporate complex. Hidden usable doors guard access to visible yet seemingly unobtainable power-ups. A conference of powerful baddies lies deeper within the offices, guarded by hapless imitations of the salarypeople who once roamed here. Even the bathrooms and parking garage aren't safe! Considering that Lim and other authors also had to build around the Doom engine's strict limits in this pre-source port era, the level of detail and scope in Doomsday of UAC matches and sometimes outdoes OG Doom maps like Mt. Erebus. I don't know that it exceeds the best parts of id's game, particularly Computer Station or Containment Area, but the ingenuity on display here always brings a smile to my face. Best of all, there's never too much going in the player's favor, nor too little. Weapon and encounter balance feels spot on, the secrets are rewarding to find (nor essential to a fault), and the sequencing of incidental combat into traps and back rarely feels awkward.
Doomsday of UAC is still a 1994 FPS mod, though, warts and all. It's very easy to get through for a modern Doom fan, even those who have only played the official games. Texturing and level of detail is mostly sparse aside from the aforementioned set-pieces. The famous "crystal sector" room can just end up feeling gimmicky or frustrating if you haven't kept a backup save ready. Nor is the original Doom's bestiary and set of player options as ideal for these large open spaces as Doom II's equivalents. I've warmed up to the original's emphasis on cacodemons, rockets, and copious cannon fodder thanks to later WADs like Beginning of the End and Doom the Way id Did, but the general experience for early Doom mods can feel underwhelming if you've played anything much newer. The best moment arguably comes right before the end as you deal with an elaborate cyberdemon trap to nab the red skull key, which involves tangoing with barons of hell and lost souls in the process. This would have been an intimidating puzzle for players of that period, and I get a kick out of it now. But in the back of my mind, all I can think is how much crazier I'd redesign this into, using modern tools like Ultimate Doom Builder and such. At least the transition from "invaded office space" to hellscape remains evocative today.
Overall, I'd say Doomsday of UAC more than deserves its lauded spot in the history of DIY world-crafting and FPS fandom. It features prominently on Doomworld, both in its 10 Years of Doom feature, with its close rival Invasion…: Episode 1 unfortunately absent. [1] Lim's mod was further recognized fifteen years later via the site's Top 100 Most Memorable Maps retrospective, the only map predating Doom II's release to rank in the top 10! [2] And if that's the consensus from community veterans, so often locked in debate over what classic mods and maps truly influenced what, then who am I to downplay the quality and significance of this one? Running through the infested UAC corporate park has become a rite of passage for many players seeking entry into the depths of Doom modding madness. I won't deny it seems quaint and clouded by nostalgia nowadays, yet even Romero himself has highlighted this as an example of the game's impact on future developers, if not id Software themselves. [3] The early success of mods like this and Slaughter Until Death paved the way for id (and competing developers) to hire these amateur designers, or simply license community projects like TNT: Evilution for commercial release as shown with Final Doom. My heart goes out to the unsung pioneers like STONES.WAD; it's simply hard to compete with a milestone like this.
[1] Tropiano, Matthew, and Not Jabba. “Top 100 Memorable Maps 10-1.” Doomworld, December 9, 2018. https://www.doomworld.com/25years/top-100-memorable-maps/page10/.
[2] Watson, Mike, and Andrew Stine. “The Top 100 WADs Of All Time: 1994.” Doomworld, December 10, 2003. https://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/1994.php.
[3] John Romero (20 January 2015). "Devs Play Doom." YouTube. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
Doom modding in its nascent days amounted to either (a) poking around in hex editors, trying to create a cogent WAD file through trial and error, or (b) wrangling the initial batch of pre-Windows map editors which loved to crash and/or corrupt your hard work! It's a miracle that something as fun, well-paced, and innovative as this map from Leo Martin Lim came together at all. (The other miracle is that levels this old are still preserved in their original archived form, and we have Ty Halderman and his successors in charge of the /idgames FTP archive to thank for that.) All college kids who played some version of id Software's original Doom in its launch days had many ideas for mods, but so little experience and precedent to build from. Lim wasn't even the first to release anything beyond a series of sketchy boxes with monsters and weapons—Invasion…: Level 1 - Contamination beat it to the punch by about a month, replete with special effects and new assets like music and textures. But Doomsday of UAC proved that you could make a similarly cinematic experience using just the base game and a host of magic tricks exploiting Carmack's engine. It helps that this map has solid combat and exploration in its bones, too.
After crawling from the wreckage, you're pressured from all sides by a trickle of imps, pinkies, and shotgunners ready to pounce before you can assemble an arsenal. This prompts a mad dash through a midnight maze of boxes, trailers, and enemy groups one might want to use against each other. We're far from the clean, abstract but believably efficient spaces that Romero designed for Doom's Episode 1…nor is this anything like the trap-driven dungeon crawling one finds in Sandy Petersen's levels. Doomsday of UAC marked the beginnings of what FPS modding circles call "Doom-cute": heavily kit-bashed replicas of architecture and objects like cars, toilets, etc. using only the original game's resources. The tipped-over truck with a spinning wheel looks impressive already, nothing like what id's crew displayed in the shareware and payware episodes. It gets even more exciting when you realize it took a lot of sector geometry manipulation and a well-placed texture animation effect on certain lines for this to function at all! There's just enough breathing room to admire the scenery while gunning down monsters and collecting the necessary ammo and key cards to proceed.
I shan't spoil the rest of Lim's one and only wonder-mod since it relies on a clever twist or two, but just know there's some trickery afoot, creeping up on players as they head further into this corrupted corporate complex. Hidden usable doors guard access to visible yet seemingly unobtainable power-ups. A conference of powerful baddies lies deeper within the offices, guarded by hapless imitations of the salarypeople who once roamed here. Even the bathrooms and parking garage aren't safe! Considering that Lim and other authors also had to build around the Doom engine's strict limits in this pre-source port era, the level of detail and scope in Doomsday of UAC matches and sometimes outdoes OG Doom maps like Mt. Erebus. I don't know that it exceeds the best parts of id's game, particularly Computer Station or Containment Area, but the ingenuity on display here always brings a smile to my face. Best of all, there's never too much going in the player's favor, nor too little. Weapon and encounter balance feels spot on, the secrets are rewarding to find (nor essential to a fault), and the sequencing of incidental combat into traps and back rarely feels awkward.
Doomsday of UAC is still a 1994 FPS mod, though, warts and all. It's very easy to get through for a modern Doom fan, even those who have only played the official games. Texturing and level of detail is mostly sparse aside from the aforementioned set-pieces. The famous "crystal sector" room can just end up feeling gimmicky or frustrating if you haven't kept a backup save ready. Nor is the original Doom's bestiary and set of player options as ideal for these large open spaces as Doom II's equivalents. I've warmed up to the original's emphasis on cacodemons, rockets, and copious cannon fodder thanks to later WADs like Beginning of the End and Doom the Way id Did, but the general experience for early Doom mods can feel underwhelming if you've played anything much newer. The best moment arguably comes right before the end as you deal with an elaborate cyberdemon trap to nab the red skull key, which involves tangoing with barons of hell and lost souls in the process. This would have been an intimidating puzzle for players of that period, and I get a kick out of it now. But in the back of my mind, all I can think is how much crazier I'd redesign this into, using modern tools like Ultimate Doom Builder and such. At least the transition from "invaded office space" to hellscape remains evocative today.
Overall, I'd say Doomsday of UAC more than deserves its lauded spot in the history of DIY world-crafting and FPS fandom. It features prominently on Doomworld, both in its 10 Years of Doom feature, with its close rival Invasion…: Episode 1 unfortunately absent. [1] Lim's mod was further recognized fifteen years later via the site's Top 100 Most Memorable Maps retrospective, the only map predating Doom II's release to rank in the top 10! [2] And if that's the consensus from community veterans, so often locked in debate over what classic mods and maps truly influenced what, then who am I to downplay the quality and significance of this one? Running through the infested UAC corporate park has become a rite of passage for many players seeking entry into the depths of Doom modding madness. I won't deny it seems quaint and clouded by nostalgia nowadays, yet even Romero himself has highlighted this as an example of the game's impact on future developers, if not id Software themselves. [3] The early success of mods like this and Slaughter Until Death paved the way for id (and competing developers) to hire these amateur designers, or simply license community projects like TNT: Evilution for commercial release as shown with Final Doom. My heart goes out to the unsung pioneers like STONES.WAD; it's simply hard to compete with a milestone like this.
[1] Tropiano, Matthew, and Not Jabba. “Top 100 Memorable Maps 10-1.” Doomworld, December 9, 2018. https://www.doomworld.com/25years/top-100-memorable-maps/page10/.
[2] Watson, Mike, and Andrew Stine. “The Top 100 WADs Of All Time: 1994.” Doomworld, December 10, 2003. https://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/1994.php.
[3] John Romero (20 January 2015). "Devs Play Doom." YouTube. Retrieved 21 January 2015.