Genre: Action
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Koei Tecmo

Warriors shuffles back and forth between two modes: the menus, replete with ugly Flash-style designs hosting dreadful Adobe Illustrator-lookalike character portraits, and the in-game engine, which almost strikes a late-90s Quake 2 or Unreal-engine flavor, with loads of colored lighting across quite varied but geometrically simple stages-- compromises, yes, but they are tastefully executed, and help to maintain a manageable framerate even in split screen mode. In contrast to the basic terrain, the character models have substantial triangle counts, and are so smooth and appealing that they very nearly look like they are made out of plastic!

Orchestral rock-remixes of iconic "Fire Emblem" tunes can't ever be a bad thing, and indeed the game's many electric guitar-infused compositions strike some mood-setting chords and can get stuck in one's head after a play session. The trouble is that they can't be particularly good things either, so run-of-the-mill is orchestra work in today's video games; what happened to all of the jazz, disco, new wave, metal, or country fusion from the days of yore? Today's game music is a ridiculously conservative, uni-genre world sadly. Meanwhile, Warriors' voice actors are anime's equivalent of B-movie stars, floating from project to project, putting in shifts.

Warriors involves placing characters on a traditional, Fire Emblem-styled map, then using one character at a time to mow through hordes of enemies, capturing bases and spawn points, while working through that particular stage's emergent mission structure. Characters not under active control can be ordered around the map to attack certain opponents, like in a proper Fire Emblem title. The combat is fairly brain-dead simple, and on "normal" it's nearly impossible to actually die. And yet, the over-the-top animations are quite satisfying despite-- or perhaps because of-- the limited combo structure!

Fire Emblem: Warriors' frankly bizarre mix of conventional strategy-RPG conventions-- dynamic mission structures, base capturing, character permadeath-- mixed with contemporary, almost Ninja Gaiden-style slashing combat doesn't sound like a formula set up for success. And yet, it works: while there is nothing revolutionary about it, and the game's story is downright silly, racing around cool looking castles and volcanic ash fields in split-screen with a friend, using flashy combos to send interminable quantities of enemy soldiers hoisting through the air, then powering up characters through the violence-gotten loot gains, is quite a lot of fun.