Okay! I just tried the demo out on Switch and PS4. I skipped all the cutscenes because I'm getting it on PC and will be seeing them again anyway since my save won't carry over, so I don't have much to say on the story.
Performance:
Switch was... rough. In handheld, it looks pretty bad in terms of detail. It seemed to run okay (although I admittedly dropped out pretty quickly), but in terms of graphics it looked considerably worse than Age of Calamity in the few minutes I gave it. I threw it on the TV, but between the lower framerate and resolution, I decided to just download the PS4 version and jump ship. I was already pretty certain I was gonna do PC over Switch, but this confirmed it 100% for me. It's definitely not unplayable. I've played Musou games for hours on 3DS and Vita (and this is obviously much better than those), but when I have better options, it's just not worth it for what feels like a worse experience to me.
Running the demo on a PS4 Pro was leaps and bounds more impressive (as expected). I can't confirm this, but it appeared to be 60 fps because the motion was night and day from the Switch version. It's surely an earlier build, so while there were random stutters every 5 mins or so, I don't imagine they'll make it into the full version (and even more should be ironed out by the time we get the game in the west). Beyond those small hiccups, it ran very smoothly. There's some pretty noticeable aliasing (especially on grass!), which is a bit surprising since they're doing a new style and it was running on a PS4 Pro... but that's Omega Force for ya. I wonder if current gen systems in backwards compatibility mode will work some magic on the resolution to make it less apparent. Not a big deal, though. Overall, it looks and runs pretty well on the Pro.
Gameplay:
Very happy with this. As a Musou fan, I'm sold on day one. I still have some reservations regarding cloned movesets, but hopefully that won't feel too bad since the characters feel more different than in past titles. Adopting the skills from Pirate Warriors 4 was a great choice (and it feels even better since there are still musou attacks and an awakening mode on top of that). You map the skills to the four face buttons, and they're typically buffs or attacks from what I've seen. It also looks like they may each have three levels unless I've misunderstood looking at some menu icons. Being able to fill a big portion of the musou gauge when you need it or give yourself a health boost is nice, but I'd probably lean towards just having four special attacks.
I tried five characters (after beating the two levels in the demo, you can replay them and select four additional characters). Nobunaga was pretty basic, but as with Spirit of Sanada, I imagine being the main character with Akechi will mean they both end up with the biggest combos. I heard from the IGN preview that the third stage allows you to use different characters, so I'm less worried about getting sick of Nobunaga than I was before (I definitely got sick of Masayuki and Yukimura in Spirit of Sanada after 20 hours of mostly playing them). I liked Nou-hime more than expected, as she's not as weak against captains as I was thinking. Her Musou is really stylish, and her special skill that unleashes a barrage of arrows is very satisfying. Toshiie feels incredibly powerful; each swing of his spear has lots of oomph, and it sends enemies flying. My favorite characters were the more speed-oriented Ieyasu and Hideyoshi. Ieyasu has great horizontal range with all his attacks, and he starts with very long standard and hyper combos, which makes him feel versatile and dangerous despite his lower power. Hideyoshi is just incredibly fun. I'm pretty sure you can do an infinite combo by starting with a hyper combo, entering your normal combo string, canceling a charge attack with jump (launcher), doing your aerial string, using your rush skill, and then repeating. It's wild. Obviously based on Omega Force's work on Pirate Warriors 4, the characters with big air combos are fun as hell. I love that you can use jump to cancel any combo string (including hyper or charge attacks) to do a launcher attack and start your air combo; I don't think that'll ever get old.
Conclusion:
Quite satisfied with this one. I definitely wish it had a bigger rosters (with a better ratio of female characters...) and no clones, but if it has a sizable campaign and keeps me interested with the side modes, this'll have its hooks in me for a while. So far, it feels like a huge step up from Spirit of Sanada in a lot of ways, and I think it's gonna side step the biggest issue I had with that game, which was just how many missions I was forced to play only Masayuki and then only Yukimura for dozens of hours. It feels like while the roster is smaller, the utilization of its diverse cast will keep it feeling fresh for Musou veterans. I don't think it'll convince anyone who finds these games to be a grind against mindless drones, but lovers of the franchise should be happy.
www.gematsu.com
