Let me clear this up straight away, I will be talking about the PS3 version. I'm in two minds about this game. First of all, as hard as it might be to believe (for some people at least), I am a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series since it's just something you can pick up, play for a bit without thinking too much, and relax for an hour or so by killing hundreds of soldiers. Plus, there's something awesome about the fact that the characters you control have some outrageous outfits, superhuman moves and that you can hack and slash you way through to victory. As it is, Strikeforce tries with some new elements, and I'm thankful for that, since it provides a nice twist to game play. The inclusion of airborne moves adds a whole new dimension (literally I guess), and is quite fun once you master it. However, it does get stale when pretty much every 'boss' fight requires these moves, there's just not enough variety. And that's just it, the game doesn't have enough variety to keep my interest up.
There's a lot of stuff to do here, yes, but it gets stale real fast. First, it's a port of the PSP system, and I understand the liberties taken for that, but I just wish they would take down the loading screens between each area, since we all know the PS3 is capable of so much more. It's not as bad as I thought (the loading is fairly short) but still not that desirable. The game boasts over 100 quests, or stages if you prefer that term, but there's only around four or five distinctive environments, yes, that means you'll be fighting in areas that looks the same as countless others. Sure, it might be at night time, or some small elements changed here and there, but by and large, it's really noticeable how little difference there are between many of the stages. Most of the stages require you to just beat a few guys to pass, I wouldn't mind this so much if the battle system was great.
I'm more used to the charge system used in the games before Dynasty Warriors 6 (although 7 goes back to this system), but Strikeforce doesn't use this system (it's based on Dynasty Warriors 6 which completely revamped the battle system). It's still similar, but the triangle button charges your attacks a bit differently and in my opinion, not as efficient. There's some strategic elements but it's barely noticeable. The inclusion of 'chi' skills, essentially power ups, was great, and I loved the additional powers it granted my character, which made the fighting much more fun. The AI is harder to beat, not because they are smarter, but because they have bigger health bars, which makes it really hard to get over 50 kills in a normal run unless you're really aiming for it (unlike the mainstream games where you can easily get over 300 kills without trying).
Airborne battle can be a bit hard and the lock on system can stuff up. The voice acting was bland though, and it seems to use the same phrases over and over again. Then there's the story, since Strikeforce is more fantasy now with the Fury modes (essentially Super Saiyan forms), I wished they could have been more creative and made a better story. Instead, it's the same old Three Kingdoms story which doesn't fit with some of the huge bosses (which aren't even fun to fight). There's pretty much like three cutscenes for each Kingdom (there are three main kingdoms, each of which have a separate story mode), and the majority of the story (I'm talking 90% here) is told by showing a (crude) map of China, with a voice over, very disappointing and a major letdown.
I had fun... for like the first ten hours or so, by then, it felt like I was chugging it along just to finish a story. I takes around 15 to 20 hours to finish one of the kingdom stories but I can't see myself finishing the other two when they share many of the same stages (and even with the stages unique to that story mode, it feels the same anyway). It's not a bad game, but it seriously needs a lot more variety in the stages component, otherwise, it's the same deal, you'll like it if you liked Dynasty Warriors, and yon won't if you don't like Dynasty Warriors. It's worth a shot though, at the very least, you'll have fun for around 10 hours, which is how long most game's story modes are nowadays anyway.
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