The Heroic Legend of Arslan is an anime legend. It's been done and redone in various media since 1986 and now it has it's own game on current gen console Arslan: The Warriors of Legend! Coincidentally, it's done with a formula that's been done and redone. If you're looking for the latest Dynasty Warriors clone...look no further.
Gameplay
I swear the Dynasty Warriors engine has not changed since PS2, and that will be painfully apparent as you play. You'll find ledges six inches off the ground that you must jump to get off of or you'll run in place, bosses will hit their transformation stage and re-spawn in the middle of the map instantaneously, and despite the giant HUD in the upper right...you'll get lost. Oh there's also occasionally running missions that require timed jumps that will drive you up the wall. That said the developers, knowing the jumping mechanics sucked...typically allowed for a ladder to help you just move past the segment completely.
All the fun you can have with a Dynasty Warriors game remains! It's still, in my opinion, the best stress reliever you can play in gaming. You have plenty of characters, weapon choices, combos, and special attacks to keep yourself engrossed for a good while. They even have this Mardan Rush which gives you the ability to bulldoze hordes of enemies with massive cavalries and soldiers. If there was one complaint I could make (outside the typical DW complaints) the horse fighting made it feel like mowing grass. It's basically just ride in chop in a circle until they're all gone. The horse is useful, however, as a meat shield in boss battles! You can instantly call it to your side and when enemies hit it, it screws up their sequence leaving you an opening!
I'm going to get a bit critical here, but I'm not good at this type of game. I have trouble learning the combos, the card system to upgrade your character I all but ignored, and it still felt pretty easy. I even cranked the difficulty above Normal and the closest I came to dying was in the final boss battle of the first half of the story. The biggest challenge I experienced was killing enough enemies so that my allies would stop follow me to the finish line.
Arslan has online coop, free play, and a painfully long story mode. I say painful because each missions is broken up by beautiful cinematic ripped right from the show, but sometimes you just want to hit stuff and you can't skip them fast enough. If you're someone who doesn't know the story already you'll find yourself watching these cinematic scenes 5-6 minutes a piece before progressing onward to the next mission. Really drags the game down.
Sound and Graphics
All it's faults aside the game is beautiful. It looks true to the series during gameplay and in cinematics! Sure things clip, but damn they look good doing so. The game score was probably my favorite part of the whole game! Nothing like hearing some epic orchestral tracks while you cut down bad guys.
I do really REALLY wish they had an English dub option. This isn't me hating Japanese, it's just super hard to complete mission instructions when you're in a game as chaotic as this and have nothing but flashing subtitles to guide you through the mission.
Fun And Value
You don't buy this game for $60 unless you know what you're getting into. This is a Dynasty Warrior clone that does little to nothing to further the franchise. It looks gorgeous, but it's a game you've played before with different characters. You could drop $80 for this and all the additional DLC costumes, but you'd have to be a pretty big...possibly even super fan of Arslan to do so. Now say this game got knocked down to $30 down the road? Go nuts.
