Warriors of Fate or “Tenchi wo Warau II: Sekiheki no Tatakai” is another classic arcade co-op beat ’em up port by Capcom not much different from it’s predecessors; Final Fight, King of Dragons and Knights of the Round, but like all these games Warriors of Fate does something special that sets it apart from the others.
Set in ancient China, the not so important story follows the 5 unique playable character’s quest in saving an evil emperor from uniting China under one terrible banner. Needless to say this is done by beating up hundreds of henchmen jerks and their bosses.
UPDATE! NOW THE ARCADE VERSION IS AVAILABLE ON THE SWITCH ESHOP!

  The five characters seen above have all the moves you would expect from a game like this as in they can normal attack in a combo, they can jump, jump attack, panic attack in exchange for health, grab and throw. Normally this would be enough but Capcom gave us something special to play with and that is a unique special move for each character. By inputting half-circle attack your character does a special move that in most case does a big chunk of damage with huge range. These moves leave you open to attacks if you miss but the give brutal lethality animations should you kill with them. This is extremely fun and satisfying to do. In addition, all characters have a charge move and can ride a horse which unlocks a whole other moveset on it’s own so it’s safe to say that Warriors of Fate has robust gameplay.
Grabbing in this game also feels extra nice with some characters as you can jump mid grab with for a nasty air-slam and cause some real havoc just as satisfying as the lethality moves.

Being a PS1/Saturn port, Warriors of Fate can handle a lot more sprites on screen than the Super Nintendo or Sega CD so the enemy placement from the arcade is pretty much untouched to the untrained eye and both versions do this with no flicker and slowdown. So out of all these beat ’em ups previously mentioned Warriors of Fate might be the most accurate arcade port. This however does not mean it is the best or most fun game. Final Fight for the Sega CD is a fantastic port and if you know us at all you know how much we love the tactical gameplay of Knight of the Round despite having to settle for fewer enemies on screen.
Warriors of Fate looks fantastic so we cannot fault the game for that, but what makes the game feel inferior to Knight of the Round is the chaos that can happen on screen which replaces careful tactics with panic moves and spamming. By no means would I call Warriors of Fate a button masher, and there are of course tactics involved since we needed 3 tries to complete the game on normal difficulty mode. On the other hand this might even be the reason some would actually prefer this game over Knights of the Round… Who knows, this might just be our preference.
Next time we will test our skills in hard mode which might prove difficult, but that just shows how much replayability Warriors of Fate has.

The bosses are OK but they require little tactics unless you are trying to 1cc this game in the arcades or something, worse is that they are pretty unmemorable since they all kind of look like the same type of ancient Chinese warrior. The music in Warriors of Fate is also pretty unmemorable and perhaps generic which is a shame since many of these games’ music really sticks with you.

Overall Warriors of Fate is a very solid 2-player cop-op beat ’em up with a unique setting and an incredibly unique and robust move set for good variety. The challenge is just right and the number of characters and difficulty settings will bring you back for move. Beating up this many jerks at one time on screen on a console port feels great even though we think it hampers the game for those that crave deeper fighting mechanics. Graphics and character animations are fantastic and even get pretty brutal at times but unfortunately the music does not keep up with the great gameplay and graphics.

Gameplay: 9
Visuals: 9
Lasting appeal: 9
Music: 7
Is it fun?: 9

Overall 8,5 a very good game!

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