Warriors All-Stars, developed by Omega Force and published by Koei Tecmo, is a hack and slash game in the same vein as Koei Tecmo’s long-running Dynasty Warriors franchise. While in the same vein as the Dynasty Warriors franchise, Warriors All-Stars attempts to stand out by being a cross-over title as the game has you play as and interact with characters from various Koei Tecmo franchises. The characters available range from well-known characters such as Sophie from the Atelier series and Zhao Yun from the Dynasty Warriors series, to lesser-known characters such as Rio from the pachinko machines and anime that bears her name and Nobunyaga Oda a cat samurai from the Samurai Cats series.

In my opinion Warriors All-Stars is a mixed bag, the cross-over nature of the game allows for some great character interaction, but the gameplay while decent is forgettable and the game offers very little in the form of replay value unless you enjoy redoing the story mode to unlock the game’s multiple endings.

As I just pointed out the cross-over nature is Warriors All-Stars’ greatest attribute as it is fun seeing how characters from different franchises interact with one another. One example of this is the interactions between Sophie and Zhao Yun. Zhao sees Sophie as a child and wishes to protect her, but through the course of conversations Zhao sees that Sophie is more skilled than she appears, also Zhao seemingly likes Sophie’s cooking and alchemy skills.

As you recruit, fight with and interact with the various characters, otherwise known as heroes, you level up your regard/bond and doing so will unlock permanent boosts and a chance to go to the inn’s outdoor bath together.

The above-mentioned inn is located in the game’s hub-town where along with visiting the local inn you can have conversations with your fellow heroes, undertake quests that consist of gathering X number of items or performing X task, enhance and sell hero cards, and finally level up characters.

In regards to cards, these are special items that can only be equipped to a specific character, the cards, which have a ranking system allows you to give your heroes a wide array of enhancements, which range from auto recovery when knocked into the air to increased material drops. Cards can be gained by completing quests, missions or as loot from defeated enemies.

When it comes to levelling up characters in your hub-town, the game allows you to spend gold to level up characters to match the level of your highest level character. For example, if you have a level 21 hero you can level up any other hero up to level 21 with gold. If you don’t want to spend your gold on levelling your heroes you can level the old fashioned way, i.e. grinding.

Now let’s look at gameplay. As I said earlier the gameplay is decent but forgettable and the reason for this is its repetitive nature, because once you leave the hub town you go to the world map, select a main or side battle, fight and then select another battle.

In regards to how battles work, it is fairly straightforward. Before entering battle you select a leader, the character you control, and up to four heroes to fight alongside you. The goal of each battle is to complete a series of main mission tasks and win the battle. While in a battle you can also undertake several side-missions that appear as you advance through a battle, these side missions involve capturing specific enemy bases, helping out non-hero allies, defeating X number of enemies and defeating any enemy heroes that appear during a battle.

In terms of combat, the game is hack and slash, which means you have your normal and strong attacks, which you can combo together. Apart from standard attacks, you have a special attack, which is a massive area of effect attack that can only be used after you fill your special attack gauge. You also have rush star, which is an ability that slows down time for 20 seconds, as you defeat more and more enemies during the 20 second period you can gain additional time and once time runs out your character automatically gathers up all the loot that was dropped. You can also use your hero allies by way of hero skills, which are skills that you can trigger at any point during a battle and consist of either offensive or defensive skills, another ally skill is alliance strike, which allows you to take control of any or all the additional four allies for a limited amount of time, this means if you are struggling you can control up to five characters at once.

Battles also have a levelling system known as Bravery. Bravery is a battle specific levelling system that goes from 1-10 while levelling Bravery isn’t essential it does make encounters with enemy heroes and named targets far easier.

In the end, combat is a very straightforward experience that offers a limited level of difficulty. Skills such as rush star, hero skills and alliance strike are nice options to have in combat, but they aren’t essential unless you are playing on a higher difficulty or want to get through a battle as quickly as possible.

Moving away from gameplay, let’s look at the Warriors All-Stars’ story. The story involves an anthropomorphic dog princess called Tamaki summoning heroes from various worlds in an effort to save her world from destruction. The cause of the potential destruction is that the life-sustaining Sacred Spring has dried up. Upon enacting the summon the heroes are transported all over the world, with some going to Tamaki’s older brother, Shiki, and her cousin, Setsuna, both of which are fighting Tamaki for the throne. As you progress through the story there are several plot twists, but, unfortunately, these twists are very much in your face and as such you will most likely figure them out before the story reveals them.

Outside of the game’s story mode, there is, unfortunately, nothing else to do. The game offers no additional modes, which is a major disappointment as the lack of additional modes pretty much kills any replay value.

Before I reach my conclusion I want to bring up one major issue. The issue is that on several occasions the game would fail to auto-save or recognise manual saves, which led to hours of playtime being lost. Fortunately, as I got further into the game the auto-save and manual save features began to work more often, but I found myself in constant fear wondering if my save file still existed after I turned off the game.

Conclusion

Warriors All-Stars is a decent cross-over game as the interactions between the various characters are enjoyable to watch, but apart from this the game plays and feels like your standard hack and slash title.

SCORE: 7/10

Pros	Cons
+ Seeing how characters from different franchises interact with one another	– The game only contains a story mode
+ You can use gold to level teammates	– Issues with auto and manual saving
+ Decent hack and slash gameplay

 

Developer	Publisher	Genre	Rating	Platform	Release date
Omega Force	Koei Tecmo	Action	12+	PS4, PC	September 1, 2017

*A review code was provided by the game’s publisher.*
For more information on Warriors All-Stars, visit http://www.koeitecmoeurope.com/warriorsallstars/.