(no subject)

WO blather: I'm at that point in the game (as I often am in the Warrior games) where I don't know what to do. I'm a little less than half way through the levels, but I've already unlocked a crap ton of characters. All characters get their full move sets by level 20. So whenever I unlock someone cool, I'll be all, "I have to try them!" and I go back to start leveling them up. But that's not really efficient.

I mean, I'm wondering, should I just press on with my best guys (which right now might be from the pool of Zhou Tai, Zhang Liao, Xu Huang, Ma Chao and Musashi, though Ayane and Ryu Hayabusa are almost up there), unlock everyone AND then go back and start leveling people up? But like I said, when I end up unlocking people I do like, I don't want to wait before I start playing them. Like I can't wait to try out Achilles, and I'd be too egg-cited to start playing out Xiahou Dun, Kojiro, Lu Bu, Keiji, Honda, and I'm sure there are other favorite characters I'm forgetting.

Anyways, as I think I've mentioned before, I tend to prefer the SW style movesets to the DW ones because they're just more exciting and dynamic. They do port over the EX-attacks from DW7, so the DW movesets don't seem as pathetic compared to SW this time around. However, the fact that their musuo's work differently throws me off sometimes. DW is simple enough, just hit circle, they do their musou attack, and you're done. SW though, you hold circle down to attack until the meter runs out. Which I guess is useful for characters like Nagamasa, Ginchiyo and Toshiie who have "standing still" musous where they just strike a bunch of times either all around (or directly in front, but they can pivot in place), so once you kill a crowd around you you can move to another crowd. (though your meter is usually not long enough to move that far away and still be able to attack) But yeah, I end up losing precious milliseconds of attack sometimes forgetting to hold the button down after starting it.

Heh, the non DW/SW characters get even more confusing in that respect, because the Ninja Gaiden folks have SW-style movesets, though Hayabusa has an SW style musou, while Ayane has a DW style musou. She also has luscious melons, as Yoshitsune Minamoto notices when you first meet her, with him being distracted and them and all. Hmm, the merged stage with Hayabusa is a modern city, though the one with Ayane is a beach resort, which I guess is a Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball reference? Ooh, I wonder if any of her alternate costumes are some of the skimpy bikinis from that?

I'm still disappointed they didn't go all out and include more of the Warriors of Troy and Bladestorm folks besides Achilles and Joan of Arc. But like I said, there's a crap ton of characters already. And the Troy characters don't stand out too much from each other design wise, just more guys in Greek style armor, so I suppose having just Achilles is fine. Too bad Agamemnon isn't a character, so I could be all xv('Brother of Menelaus!') whenever he showed up. But I digress, I guess the inclusion of Achilles also makes things more even, because before the three big bad-asses where Lu Bu, Tadakatsu, and Keiji. But this way, you have the greatest warrior of China (Lu Bu), Greece (Achilles), and Japan (Honda). Of course, story wise though, its Keiji, Lu Bu, and Achilles who fight for Orochi's armies, Tadakatsu is still a good guy.

But Bladestorm had a lot of interesting character designs. Though unlike Troy, Bladestorm was more a strategy game, so all the movesets would have to be created for these characters. And I suppose of all those characters, Joan of Arc is the most famous. I mean, looking at the character list of that game, the only names that pop out at me are John Talbot and the Black Prince. And they couldn't really do Edward anyways, because his outfit in Bladestorm is basically just like Nobunaga Oda's, just with less feathers.