Thank you Koei Tecmo for sending us this game to review!

Koei Tecmo has produced many great games with powerful and likable characters in them. Warriors All-Stars brings together characters from games like Atelier, Dead or Alive, Nights of Azure, Ninja Gaiden, Samurai Warriors, and others that we haven’t reviewed yet. In Warriors All-Stars many of the characters from the aforementioned series are summoned to a foreign world in a last ditch effort to save it.

Some of the first choices you’ll have to make will include selecting your party leader and game difficulty level. At first, there’s Beginner, Easy, Normal, and Hard. Once you complete the campaign, Choas difficulty becomes available. Depending on which character you select as the party leader one of three campaigns is launched. If certain conditions are met, a fourth campaign is unlocked.

There are three royals fighting for the crown and their destiny is to save the planet. Your character decides to help them out by seeking out other allies and claiming shrines for them. The story campaign is relatively short and can be completed in under 3 hours. In fact, there’s a Steam achievement available for doing so.

Despite the short campaign, there is still plenty to do. The overworld has battles that randomly appear that can help specifically boost your gold, experience, or player card drops. While your characters level up in battle, you can equip them with designated cards to increase their affinity and attack power. Party members also have an affinity meter that is boosted though several methods. You can increase your bond level by fighting alongside them, bathing with them (if they are the same gender), or completing quests they assign. By increasing their friendship, you can unlock special fighting moves.

If you have played other Hack ‘n Slash games from Koei Tecmo, you’ll feel right at home and will know what to do. Unfortunately, there’s not much variety in the battles, but they are still fun. Each battle has a main objective and several optional ones. Sometimes the battle conditions may change and alter the main goal. Challenge battles liven things up a bit by having enemies and allies become defeated after one hit!

Scattered across the map are enemy bases and they can be won over after defeating a specified number of grunt soldiers. Once they are dealt with, a base commander will appear and after he’s eliminated, the base will be yours. Some areas on the map will be inaccessible until you defeat the gatekeepers blocking your path. Important enemies like gatekeepers, captains, and bosses have titles over their head. If they are part of a mission objective, they will have an exclamation mark over them.

The bosses can pack a bit of a punch and you may have to resort to your character’s awakening skill to knock them on their butt. Your character can also invoke a rush mode where you can slice through numerous foes with more ferocity and speed than normal. The more foes you can conquer in the short amount of time, the happier your party members will be and they will cheer you on.

In my first story mode campaign, I played as the half demon, Arnice. In her awakened form, she shows off a lot of skin and is barely covered. Some of the player cards are pretty revealing, especially Plachta’s with a generous butt shot. Thankfully, the bathhouse scenes are tame with the characters shown wearing towels. A tavern is also in town and some of the patrons are noticeably drunk. The life-giving spring that this planet relies on requires a sacrifice to be made to it.

If you’re a fan of Koei Tecmo games, especially their Hack ‘n Slash Warriors games, then you’ll probably enjoy Warriors All-Stars. Like the previous entries, the visuals are great and all of the voice acting is done in Japanese. Despite the short length of the campaigns, there is a lot of replay value in this title. Even though this title sells for $60 it's still worth adding to your wishlist.