Review: Devil Kings (PS2)

When is Dynasty Warriors not Dynasty Warriors? When it's Devil Kings of course! To say that Capcom's latest pays homage to Koei's series of games is something of an understatement: Devil Kings liberally 'borrows' the key features of Dynasty Warriors and makes them its own. However, considering the production team behind the Behemoth that is Resident Evil 4 are responsible for this title, Gamestyle has high hopes for Capcom's take on the battlefield slash 'em up.

Set in a faux-feudal Japanese era, full of deliberate anachronisms such as characters wielding shotguns, Devil Kings' settings isn't a million miles away from Onimusha. The game's main "conquest" mode places you in charge of one of six Generals (with a further six unlockable) hell-bent on conquering the surrounding lands. Starting with a meagre one or two territories you can attack and hopefully subjugate any neighbouring general's territory until eventually the World is yours. The game also features variable difficulty and a quick battle mode, but that's it – no multiplayer shenanigans here and Devil Kings feels rather insubstantial as a package.

Once you've chosen your general and kitted them out, you're dropped onto the battlefield. And what battlefields they are. Ranging from verdant plains to snowy wastes, they all look beautiful; pools of water shimmer in the sun and trees waft lazily in the breeze. Nothing is flat either, the terrain undulates wonderfully with a variety of hills and valleys to make your way across. There's plenty of (non-interactive) scenery that helps to add to the illusion that you might actually be on some faraway battlefield. Throw the actual characters onto the battlefield and things get better still – the level of detail and animation employed throughout the game is very good, with the Generals themselves looking superb. There's no slowdown either, no matter how busy things get on screen. But it seems that, as always, there is a price to pay for all this graphical loveliness and that price is some of the worst pop-up Gamestyle has seen in recent years. Scenery and even enemies frequently appear at the very last moment, which is extremely annoying to say the least.

By now you might be wondering what the gameplay entails: the answer to which is not much. You must lead your chosen general across the battlefield, slaughtering all in your path, until you get to the opposing general (read: end of level boss), who also needs to be bumped off. There are occasional sub-missions, such as protecting your officers or preventing your lines from being breached, but these also induce you to do little more than kill lots of opposing soldiers.

When fighting the mindless grunts that come streaming towards you, you need to chain as many hits together a possible to earn more experience. This isn't a difficult task, particularly as Capcom have seen fit to dish out a meagre two buttons for attack, and you'll soon find that the novelty of stringing 200 or more hits together wears off. Fill up your "fury" gauge by using your "primer" attack and you'll get access to a couple of special moves to throw into the mix, providing you've earned enough experience to unlock them. Alternatively, you can go ballistic and use all your fury in one go for a few seconds of bedlam. A block is provided but, to be honest, unless you play in an extremely conservative fashion, you probably won't be needing it, and the moves that can be blocked are limited in number. Capcom boasts that each of the 12 generals "has their own unique fighting styles" - a laughable claim given that, whichever general you play as, the mechanics of the game don't change and you still just need to press square. A lot.

It won't take long for you to tire of the monotony of combat - the enemy AI is practically non-existent - so you might look to commanding your own soldiers to provide some excitement; but sadly Capcom have decide that a General wouldn't want to command their own forces and thus this option is not included. In an event, your own soldiers prove to be as stupid as the enemy - they'll either stand there or, if any enemy is near by, rush over and wave their weapons in their general direction. AI-controlled battles can last for as long as it's taken you to clear the rest of the battlefield.

Battles against opposing generals are the only area in which you'll be required to display any skill, although they can also be cut short if you've been saving up your fury for the final battle. There are no save points anywhere on the maps, so it's easily possible to be cut down by the Enemy General until you can gauge the best way to fight them, requiring you to repeat the monotonous and repetitive slog through the enemy minions in order to fight the General again. Given some battlefields can take the best part of an hour to clear in their entirety on the harder difficulty setting, this was almost enough to make Gamestyle walk away from Devil Kings.

Capcom have included some nice touches; the camera works very well and is far better than anything on offer in the Dynasty Warriors series (although at times the option to pan out would have been appreciated). The music and sound effects are also top notch. Experience and items earned in one campaign can also be carried over so it's possible to hone your favourite general into an unstoppable fighting machine with time and experience.

But, when the bulk of the gameplay experience consists largely of little more than pressing the square button repeatedly for large chunks of each level, all the great visuals, sounds or added bells and whistles can't make up for the tedium. Gamestyle concedes that Devil Kings is fun in short bursts, when nothing more cerebral than wanton slaughter is on the agenda, but what's on offer here is just too repetitive to maintain interest over a prolonged period.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Andy Lucas