Kessen is the first DVD PS2 title, and boy, what a difference a DVD-ROM makes. Kessen's fantastic cut-scenes showcase the difference between the visual capabilities of non-DVD and DVD formats.The graphics are awesome as well. In a triple barrage, three rows of gunmen draw and fire their guns. Not everyone does it at exactly the same time, and the number of men goes back as far as the eye can see. The smart choreography makes the battle seem much more real. In fact, you can actually see other soldiers fighting as the general's duel.
While all of the above makes for a very splashy presentation, it doesn't do much for the gameplay. Those who have found fault in the micromanagement found in past Koei strategy titles, will surely be disappointed with Kessen. It is often painful to see every single stat and try to improve them all in a set amount of time.
Kessen goes too far, in that every battalion has a morale level, called zeal, as well as a certain number of soldiers of different types. Each general has a different amount of loyalty to you, but it really doesn't affect game play as far as we could tell.
Before each battle, you go through the political stage. Here, you can persuade undecided generals or enemy generals to join you in battle, or not to fight at all. That's a cool aspect, but the game basically tells you outright who will join you and who won't.
The pace of the battles is extremely slow; the difficulty, however, is not. Many times you are given so many reinforcements that you just cannot lose; couple this with a 20-second cut scene with no obvious way to skip them and you start to get a game that can at times become a little annoying.
Although the potential is there, Kessen fails to meet its expectations and unlike other RTS games, there is hardly ever any cause for alarm if you are losing, and you will feel like there's not a lot you could do about it anyway if you were. --Todd Mowatt
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