Kessen

Probably the best game in the PS2 launch date line-up by a good margin, because its goal is completely achieved: give you a marginally over-the-top, cinematic experience about the Sengoku history arch.

The problem is that it does what it wants to do WAY too perfectly: basically being an autopilot RTS game. While the first two missions you kinda feel the pressure of a warborn conflict and your officers seem to take a beating, going through the rest of the missions resolves itself. You have a strategy planned beforehand, but your officers planned it for you, so you don't even need to move things unless you really want to give some of your personality to the battlefield. That kinda destroys the strategy portion, but encourages you to keep watching the historic events unfold.

And by those cinematic aspects, it's actually a fun game; a very light-headed RTS game though. I appreciate how sober the style is, even if the helmets are ridiculous, the long-present sexualization is present and the dialog has no chance of being remotely implied; everything's thrown to you. And while I don't care for Sengoku, I do care when a game makes me feel I'm inside the battlefield, and I certainly felt that with Kessen.

I'll finish it (I got pretty far), but I've read how little replay value it has apart from watching the same things again, just from the Toyotomi perspective. And I don't give that much of a fuck for japanese history, but I had a good time, so I'll definitedly visit Kessen next week.

Oh, yeah it's true; it's a slow burner. Definitely not the kind of game you'll beat deliciously in a sitting.