Warriors of Fate (Arcade)

While it would be a major simplification to say that Warriors of Fate is just Final Fight set in China’s Three Kingdoms period, it also has plenty of clear inspiration from Capcom’s earlier beat ’em up title. Enemies and characters borrow moves directly from that smash hit, and while drawing from Final Fight is pretty common in beat ’em up design, a game that plays similarly from the same company released three years later does make it pretty clear they were using Final Fight as a base and trying to concoct something different enough from it but still able to rely on what made the older title so great.

There was even more going on with the development of Warriors of Fate than just trying to add a new setting and new gimmicks to Final Fight’s design though. Warriors of Fate began as a Japanese game whose title translates to The Devouring of Heaven and Earth II: Battle of Red Cliffs, a name that is not only rather grandiose, but shows that this is the sequel to a previous game in a series. Not only that, but this original version of the game specifically is based on the manga Tenchi wo Kurau, which in turn is based on the popular Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. However, since American audiences would have no context for this manga and perhaps just as little context for the Chinese novel it’s based on, its story got retooled into something featuring original characters and countries. Now it is a story about defeating Akkila-Orkhan, the violent lord of the country of Shang-Lo who has set about conquering every country he can. A man named Kuan-Ti stands against this warlord though, sending his troops out to face him in battle and selecting five specific warriors to try and bring the battle to Akkila-Orkahn himself. Up to three players can pick a warrior to fight as, traveling across the country and between battles in the war to defeat important generals and Akkila-Orkhan with fists and weapons alike.

The five playable characters in Warriors of Fate not only have different weapons to face the enemy forces with, but all of them have fairly unique attacks. You can expect similar attack combos across most of the cast, but since some characters have a weapon with them by default, the attack combos can range from sword slashes to beating baddies up with your bare fists. The action produces the same results but is much flashier with the blades, but the fists still have a nice crunchy feel to them to ensure they’re not a step down from the weapon-wielders. While the five playable characters were based on real war generals in the Japanese version, the fighters in the United States are known as Portor, Kassar, Subutai, Abaka, and Kadan. Portor is definitely the place where it can almost feel exactly like you’re playing Final Fight, his wrestling based moves ported over from Mike Haggar unabashedly but rather satisfying to use considering you’re now using piledrivers on soldiers in armor. Kassar has some wrestling touches to his moves like a suplex but this fist-fighting monk prefers hammer blows and grappling over the piledriving and lariats of Portor. Subutai and Abaka are both sword users, the expected reach increase making them more effective even though their attacks aren’t as varied as the martial artists. Kadan probably comes out worst of the bunch. Rather than having the same visceral combat approach of cutting apart or beating up the baddies around you, Kadan uses a bow whose arrows fall to the ground very quickly, meaning he’s got the projectile advantage over the others but it doesn’t even go that far. He has some moves to use when up close, all characters having throws and jump attacks, but his basic fighting is going to be a lot of standing in place and letting loose arrows repeatedly.

All of them have a special move as well to make up for any faults in their style, a warrior able to repel and damage all enemies around them but paying some health for this move, but another nice touch is that any time you lose a life and reenter the battlefield, all foes will take some damage and be knocked down to give you some time to gather your bearings. This can be vital as Warriors of Fate enjoys filling the tilted plane its action takes place on. Since you need to defeat enemies to make progress, the game throws plenty in your path to keep you involved, but the numbers can get fairly high, especially considering almost every enemy type has some sort of projectile option. They can be throwing knives or bombs, hurling maces at you, or firing bows of their own that go farther than Kadan’s, so leaving an enemy alone can mean they’ll start firing at you from afar to get easy damage in. There are many fun enemy designs on offer such as the acrobatic women, the charging fat men, and plenty of regular soldiers to whale on to cement your power, but the battlefields can become a little crowded and your ability to fight certain foes intelligently is hampered by the need to balance so many attackers. Bosses can often have attacks that cover much of the screen and require pattern recognition and opportunistic strikes to overcome, but they are often accompanied by groups of baddies like the high-health grapplers and pole-arm wielders that means the fights are chaotic and you can’t just ignore the characters helping the boss. It is still enjoyable to face off with them because they challenge you to fight smarter and practice some degree of caution, but enemy designs needed more room to breathe to be fully appreciated.

There is still more going on in Warriors of Fate besides its enemies and bosses. Although some of your characters start off armed, there are weapons and healing food to be found around the battlefield. Long swords, axes, maces, and hammers are just a small selection of a rather impressive selection of killing implements, and they are much stronger than your regular hits. These limit your moves to mostly just swinging what you’re holding, but the blood spray effects and the power trip of using these for basically as long as you can hold onto them means some of the thicker enemy groups are dispensed with not just quickly, but with a good degree of enjoyably simple action. Throwing knives are pretty common as well, allowing you to turn enemy projectiles back on them, but the biggest change to how you fight will be if you manage to climb on top of a horse. The horse will often have your character switch to a polearm, and while on top of your mount, you can easily stab enemies from a distance and even hurl them around the battlefield. The horse is a little unwieldy and if there are too many foes on screen they can often surround you and deal easy damage since your speed is limited while on horseback, but used effectively, the horse is even stronger than the pick-up weapons. Basically, the horse is exciting and powerful if used correctly, meaning that even though at times it might leave you a sitting duck, it’s an interesting cost analysis on whether you want to use your more versatile character or the more powerful mount.

THE VERDICT: Warriors of Fate understands what makes a beat ’em up good, its characters having a variety of moves that mostly feel fun to use on enemies who come in different challenging forms. The weapons and horse riding give you moments of incredible power, but you still need to think about how to approach fights where you aren’t so well armed. The enemies do come in rather large groups though that sometimes make it hard to do anything too strategic and the bosses are undermined some by their hefty entourages, but there is definitely a lot of brawling action that nails simple fun or asks for some more involved fighting approaches. It’s not quite as good as the game it borrows heavily from, but Warriors of Fate is still an enjoyable new perspective on the ideas first found in Final Fight.

And so, I give Warriors of Fate for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. It’s perhaps a bit easy to overemphasize where Warriors of Fate isn’t quite as effective as Final Fight, but being a little less good than a great game still puts you in a very nice spot. This weapon-based beat ’em up has a good variety of enemies and mixes them together well, it just needed to be a bit more reserved in exactly how many appeared on screen at once. The bosses had some challenging designs and unique attacks, but having to deal with so many weaker foes during the battle means they again avoid great heights while still providing interesting battles all the same. Most of the playable characters have satisfying moves that aren’t too hard to pull off and the pick-up weapons give you a great sense of power despite limiting you in some ways, the horse the most interesting balance between strength and risk. The different areas of the fictional Chinese analogue are interesting backdrops too, so while a familiar eye can spot the Final Fight similarities, Warriors of Fate establishes itself as something well-realized rather than just relying on another game’s skeleton to support it.

The question you should ask about Warriors of Fate is not whether or not it’s good, it’s what games is it better or worse than. There are beat ’em ups that should receive your attention first like Final Fight, but there are others like the original Double Dragon it is much better than. It adds some small special touches to the brawler formula but not to the degree it rises above the ways it imitates other successful members of its genre. Essentially, it’s like eating a different type of cake. Its flavor is different and it might have something the other cakes don’t have, but you’re not getting anything wildly different, a fact that benefits it since it’s familiar yet still enjoyable. With some retooling and greater ambition, it’s possible Warriors of Fate could have been an interesting evolution of Capcom’s arcade beat ’em ups, but simply joining a strong selection of fun beat ’em ups instead is still a good fate for this brawler.