In Ambition Mode, you will take control of one officer and try to unite the lands. This mode is pretty detailed, so I am just going to give you the basic rundown here. I do suggest checking the manual for much more detailed information on this mode. You will start off with a simple camp and, through battle, you will gain materials, recruit other officers to join your cause and gain fame. The catch is, you will have to engage in several battles in a row to fully reap the rewards. These battle are all timed, but you gain extra time doing things such as killing 100 enemies or taking out an enemy officer. Each battle will have different objectives, and some battles will be better for gaining certain rewards than others. The in-game screen will give you a difficulty rating of each battle and tell you what you will gain from it. You may even unlock the use of certain animals or other unique rewards. The more battles you can fight in a row without losing, the greater the reward, but note that you will not gain any health back in-between battles.
As you gain materials and fame, you will be able to construct different facilities at your camp. Some of these include a barracks, a tea house and a blacksmith. These will all offer you different services. For example, the blacksmith will sell and upgrade weapons, and the tea house will sell food that will give a stat boost for the next battle. To construct each different facility, will will need to meet a few requirements. This will sometimes require you to recruit a certain number of officers, or gain a certain level of fame. You can also upgrade these when you have the required amount of materials, boosting their effectiveness.
Free Mode will allow you to play any of the battles you have played in Story Mode with any officer you choose to play as. There are also some added objectives here to help you earn gems to upgrade your weapons through weapon fusion, making your officers even stronger. This mode and Ambition Mode are linked together by a few things, such as the ability to use animals or bodyguards. This gives you a lot of customization to play with for these battles.
The last mode I would like to talk about is Challenge Mode. In this mode, you can challenge five different courses which include Rampage, Bridge Melee, Speed Run, Arena and Inferno. Try to get the best score you can under the set conditions for each course. For example, in Rampage Mode you will be given a limited amount of time to try to get as many KOs as you can. Your level will be fixed, and you will not be able to use any of the skills you may have acquired for your officers. You will, however, be able to equip any weapons you chose.
Some of the other offerings here are an encyclopedia which will teach you about the Three Kingdoms, a gallery where you can view movies from the Story Mode, characters, weapons, check your overall game stats and much more. You can play Story Mode and Free Mode with online or offline co-op, and the Vita version features some ad hoc play. This also supports cross-saving between the Vita and PS4, which I found really nice.
At the end of the day, I had a lot of fun with this title. There are tons of different weapons, characters and battles to enjoy. The controls feel really nice and responsive, and who doesn’t like take out the stress of the day by hacking away 1000 or so enemies. Ambition Mode is a bit involved, but it is really fun to take a random general and build a base and watch your power grow. I spent about 30 hours to complete all of the Story Mode. I spent another 10 hours or so playing around with the other game modes, and barely scratched the surface. There is really a ton of content here, folks. Either version of the game you chose to play is a ton of fun, but the Vita version does have the aforementioned frame rate drops and the map is harder to read. Still, for the price tag of $59.99 on the PS4 or $39.99 on the Vita, if you enjoy a good hack ‘n’ slash game with tons of customization, a great story and loads of content, I don’t really see how you could go wrong here.
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Vita |   |
| PlayStation 4 |  |
Review copy was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
