I spent quite a bit of time in December working on the first two parts of my ‘What makes a Musou?’ series. In these articles I have been trying to tie-down exactly what constitutes the Musou (‘Warriors’ series in the West) formula and why the franchise is adored by fans yet often cruelly misunderstood by the gaming media.
The first article I wrote was an introduction to the Musou formula followed by a look at the key element of Theme.
I was quite happy in January when UK Trade Industry Magazine MCV approached me for quotes to support a ‘FRANCHISE FOCUS’ piece they were working on to support the release of Dynasty Warriors 7. It’s really awesome that they would consider writing such as piece on the Musou series ^^, thanks x 1 million to them.
I managed to use a lot of the work I had already done for ‘What makes a Musou?’ on this blog to answer MCV’s questions and I think it resulted in a great article. (The MCV writer is much better than me – he managed to say everything much more concisely and make things much more interesting than I could ^^).
You can read the article below. Many thanks to MCV and I hope this will really help people understand the appeal of the Musou games better. Leady 247 ^^
Edit (11/02/11): If the scan is hard to read, there is an web version of the article here: http://www.mcvuk.com/features/858/Tecmos-ten-year-Dynasty
PS. If you are in any way interested in the UK and European games industry you should read MCV every week or even better get a subscription!
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Great article and I have to agree that the Musou/Warriors series is one of the most misunderstood and underrated gaming franchises/series.
I think alot of people just see the games as hack n’ slash and nothing much else. Wrong!
Hack n’s slash yes but there’s strategy, history, character developement. Lots of different stories in each series that make up the main story. Everybody gets attached to certain characters. It’s no secret that Sun Jian is my all time favourite. The more you play the more you grow to love them and other characters.
When I played Fist Of The North Star: Ken’s Rage, I was amazed. I knew nothing about it. I’d herad about the series but that was it. It was completely different to what I expected and so much fun.
The one thing all the games have is their addictive quality. You can’t just play one story and not the others, you have to play all the stories to get the big picture. See the story from all angles and different perspectives. Nobody is wrong, everybody is fighting for their beliefs and what they believe is right.
To think I came on to comment about the article!
Great stuff Mister Curly!!
Thanks for the great feedback. I agree with all your points. I really hope that more people can dip into a Musou game and sample all of the unique features – i really like the way there is charactr and story for everyone. I found that once I had found my fav character in 5 (which was SSX) my interest just grew out from there really. It’s like you said the more you play and the more connection you get with the game then the more you discover to like.
I think not everybody could get into Musou world, and we heard more bad comment about it such “repetitive”, “dumb games” and I’m happy that finally someone who loves the game, speak about it.
Thanks, I’m glad you like it. Afterall its you who taught me a lot abt Musou 🙂 love u
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