Kessen
Kessen, or “Decisive Battle,” is one of the coolest – although 
also the most Japanese – game that I’ve played on PS2 thus far.
 Resembling a turn-based strategy game like Outpost or Stars!,
 the game puts you in the position of commander of your troops
 in a Japanese feudal civil war. Kessen ends up being some sort
 of hybrid between a turn-based game, an RTS like Starcraft, and
 a feature film.

Heads up, here comes a history lesson. We’ve learned from people
 who speak Japanese better than we do that Kessen is based on 
the Battle of Sekigahara during Japan’s biggest civil war.
 Taking place in the 1600s, the battle determined the rule of 
Japan for the next 250 years.

Since it is intended for Japanese audiences, and is based on 
Japanese history, Kessen relies heavily on the Japanese 
language. In most cases, it would be a waste for English to 
try to decipher the language, but the guys over at GameFAQs have 
generously created a guide to the game to help us out. However,
 even with the guide, it’s still almost impossible to understand
 what’s going on beyond what you can figure out from watching
 the pictures. 

Speaking of pictures, Kessen definitely has the best character 
modeling and CG footage we’ve seen on PS2. The game could easily 
be mistaken for a live-action movie in some places; this really 
adds to the overall effect of the game. The in-game footage is 
equally impressive. Although the battle scenes can’t be directly
 controlled by the player, they are generated on-the-fly by the
 PS2 and have nearly infinite variations of soldiers, uniforms,
 and final outcomes. For example, if you attempt to take on a 
cannon brigade with a band of foot soldiers, you will have the
 privilege of watching your poor little men be slaughtered by 
the enemy cannons. Go at it with cavalry, and you’ll see a 
slightly more successful video of your horsemen getting toasted.

This is where the turn-based-like action comes in. Although the
 gameplay is interesting at first, the game quickly becomes less
 interesting when it literally plays itself throughout most of 
the battles. You have great control over where each wing of your
 army moves, who they fight, and the ultimate outcome of the
 battle, but once you actually get into the most important part,
 the fight scenes, you just get to watch your obedient little
 soldiers run around killing people, or, in some cases, being
 killed. Outcomes of each skirmish within the battles are 
affected by several variables, including the kind of units 
fighting (foot soldiers, cavalry, women with guns that fire blue 
and yellow powder…) and the amount of soldiers in each group. 
Thankfully, the soldier count is displayed in Arabic (English)
 numbers, so it is actually understandable. Of course, the skill 
in the game rests on negotiating with your opponents and friends
 to gain more powerful squadrons under your command, and making 
sure that you don’t send a group of 1,000 guys on horses into a 
storm of cannon fire. 

The weakness of this game lies in the map screen, from which you 
control all the goings-on of your battle in progress. The map 
screen sports the lowest quality graphics in the whole game, 
which is unfortunate, because you spend the majority of your 
waking hours staring at it. The troops on your screen look like 
blobs of blue and red, not like soldiers in formation. Likewise, 
the environments are somewhat polygonal and unrealistic.
 Something tells me that Koei could have used to rack up a few 
more hours working on the design for this integral part of the 
game. However, it still blows away most of the stuff we’ve seen
 on other systems to date. 

Despite the generally lame graphics on the map, this game 
quickly becomes addictive, even without being able to understand 
a word they are saying. Overall, Kessen is a great way to show
 off the power of the PS2 in its amazing cut-scene battles and
 flawless CG movies.