Review: Warriors Legends of Troy

Note: This review will be published later this spring in the Warwick Boar

As a Classics student the story of the Trojan War is an important academic subject and I often wondered, sat at the back of lectures on the Iliad, what it would be like as a game. So with the arrival of Warriors: Legends of Troy I was eager to see those thoughts fulfilled at last. LoT is Koei Canada’s attempt to sell the Warriors series to the American and European markets. In Japan it has topped the charts for a decade, and at the time of writing this review Dynasty Warriors 7 is sat in the no.1 spot. But in the West the series is panned by both critics and regular gamers. So can LoT change the image of the series and recruit new fans? The answer is probably no. The game’s ‘Westernisation’ extends no further than drawing from our literary tradition and making the game more like God of War by focusing on combos and killing moves rather than grand-strategy and flashy lights. Nevertheless, it is a valiant attempt that this reviewer cannot praise enough. LoT has a lot going for it even if Warriors fans shun it and reviewers pile on it the same criticisms as they do with its Japanese cousins.

The core gameplay is simple enough, your hero kills wave after wave of enemies in endless miniature skirmishes. Occasionally you will have to save some villagers, sneak past a patrol or siege a town, but these all involve button mashing too; thankfully the enemies are clever and hubris in your mashing will get you killed. The combat is somewhat complex, parrying, finishing moves and combos are all there, but they simply aren't enough given the amount of slaughter required and to do it all with such tactical detail is a strain on the brain and the fingers. The combat is less repetitive than other Koei games and picking up an object on the battlefield and lobbing it at a retreating enemy will always be satisfying; but for some the pleasure will be lost in the incessant tapping of buttons. The fighting is redeemed through boss battles against other heroes or against the Olympian gods, the latter may be an incongruence at times but it is in my opinion a fantastic adaptation of the divine conflicts in the Iliad.

The plot of LoT is well executed, it draws from mythology and whilst taking great liberties with ancient sources the changes it makes are welcome re-imaginings. Famous events like the fight between Achilles and Hector are placed against more obscure stories like the madness of Ajax or the capture of Lyrnessus and threaded together well by a Homeric narrator. Each level is only playable by a specific character and the story constantly switches sides meaning the player learns the motivations of each hero, and is often the one who gets to kill them off. The eight playable characters vary in personality and fighting style, but some are better developed than others as the story’s loyalty to legend requires some characters to die much earlier than others.

The look of this ancient world is not groundbreaking, but has a wonderful style. The story is told through vase paintings and sizable cut-scenes, only let down by some bad lip-synching. The game environments are realistic but unimpressive, they look authentic and suck you in, but rarely will you stop to admire the scenery.  The combat and characters are well animated despite occasional shadow glitches. The ambient sound and music are strong points of the games audio, with fantastic battle noises and a rich orchestral soundtrack that audibly draws from ancient music, this is to be expected of Warriors games and the standard hasn’t slipped.  However, like the pervious Warriors titles, LoT has questionable voice acting that is sometimes deadpan and lacking in emotion and the traditional Greek pronunciations (eg. Haides, Achilleus), whilst welcome to a classicist like me, are out of place among rest of the spoken language.

Despite having twenty-one levels, LoT will appear short to any fans of the Warriors series, although there is plenty to do as the challenge mode and item collecting will add some replay time, this only if the player hasn’t tired of the gameplay. The character-specific levels allow for great storytelling, but give the player no freedom to replay them with whomever they choose, a core feature of other Warriors titles. LoT need something else to become a great game, be it larger battles to make the game more like a brutal war and less like a bucolic punch-up, or a greater variety of levels with new and innovative challenges. There is plenty of legend left for Koei Canada to draw upon, and they have done well so far; all that’s needed now is a little more ambition and imagination.

Final Score

3/5