Dai Senryaku Exceed VII for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

I'm sure you've heard the expression "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." While that sense of perseverance is valuable, there comes a point where failure eclipses the effort being made, rendering the attempt moot. Dai Senryaku VII: Modern Military Tactics Exceed validates this example in more ways than one. The game was previously released on the Xbox in 2005 and although extremely deep in the strategy arena, hasn't improved on its presentational aspects, technical elements, or gameplay features in that time frame. The result is a title that, while appealing to the hardcore turn-based strategy fan, feels dated and significantly weaker than other military strategy titles around.



Regardless of which mode you decide to play, you'll have access to dozens of missions as well as a map editor that allows you to create your own battlefields. However, the nuts and bolts of the game will seem relatively familiar to anyone who's played a turn-based military title before, although the game comes with a huge tutorial for newcomers or players seeking to brush up their skills. For the most part, you take your squad of vehicles, infantry, aircraft and ships from your headquarters and advance them into battle, eliminating enemy forces and capturing key bases or cities to strengthen your supply lines. Sounds rather straightforward, doesn't it? Well, Dai Senryaku ratchets up the challenge of this traditional setup with the inclusion of more than 400 separate units split up amongst eight different countries in the game, each with their own individual weapon loadouts, abilities and traits that they can deploy in the field.



However, you can't simply go charging across the battlefield haphazardly. For one thing, enemies are cloaked in a fog of war, and without detecting these units with recon vehicles or other units, you can stumble into an ambush and be instantly attacked without a chance to respond. Another complication is that your units have a set "safe" and "unsafe" movement range (marked by green and red hexes, respectively). Continually pushing your units past their safe range is an effective way to cross large distances quickly, but it burns up precious fuel reserves, which can leave your units stranded and helpless. Obviously, you'll need to establish supply lines to keep your ammunition and fuel stores replenished, and protect these delicate units with your own troops to ensure they can keep your forces running.



Further complicating defense and attacks, players will have to focus upon the best weapon they can use when they engage an enemy in battle, as well as that enemy's specific elevation on the field of battle. Typically, each unit has one or more weapons available to them, which they can sometimes pick and choose between as they engage in battle. For example, an infantry squad might have a SAM missile to take out aircraft, an anti-tank rocket to attack vehicles and rifles to engage other soldiers. Obviously, you can't use anti-air against ground vehicles, and some tanks or other heavy units won't be able to use their cannons against ships or aerial opponents. As a result, many battles come down to evaluating whether or not your particular unit has better weapons capable of inflicting more damage on your opponent.



While it may take a few missions (including restarts and reloads) to get your head around all of the minutiae included in the game, players are fortunately supported with a healthy amount of info screens, details about the strength of weapons and their hit rates, and other vital statistics. However, even the large amount of information can't help overcome many of the tactical and gameplay miscues that Dai Senryaku VII stumbles into time and time again. For example, along with unit elevation, players are supposed to focus upon terrain hexes because of the potential defensive bonuses provided by these areas, such as forests, plains and hills. Technically, such environmental features makes it much harder to be targeted, providing a certain amount of cover. However, for some reason, these numbers seem arbitrary and rarely used within gameplay, reducing most battles to a dice roll and luck of the draw to determine combat effectiveness. Not only did I witness multiple battles where units with stronger weapons in the woods and the hills were wiped out by a weaker force in the plains below, these weaker troops often escaped without a single scratch on them. This makes absolutely no sense and flies against most military tactics. Attacking from a higher elevated position has always provided a stronger tactical advantage; Sun Tzu knew this fact without mechanized armor in the 6th centure BC.





Apart from the illogical nature of terrain battles, there is a significant issue with the production of units, or perhaps I should say the lack of unit production. For most missions in either the Campaign mode or the Mission mode, you're restricted from producing units to supplement your forces or replace lost troops. As a result, most battles quickly boil down to a war of attrition, one which can be extremely difficult to wage because of the minimal forces that you will sometimes have after weathering large assaults. What's more, it minimizes the effect of producing troops when you're given the chance to, because you will have gotten so used to eking out a war with such small resources that you might not even remember the option is available to you.



What's more, unlike most strategy titles where you care about the side you're fighting for, Dai Senryaku strips you of any particular allegiance to any side. While some of the stories are set in real countries, such as China or Japan, you aren't playing as that country, even if you're potentially using their military equipment. Even stranger, these countries fight under a completely different flag than that of their country, further distancing the player from any sense of connection with the game situations. In fact, players may find themselves simply moving around units without caring that the red or yellow army has attacked, because they're simply cannon fodder without any impact.



Even Multiplayer doesn't escape without issues, particularly because it suffers from the same tragic flaws that plagued the Xbox version. While you can test your skills against up to three additional players (human or computer), you're essentially shown exactly where your opponent's units are during every single turn. Unless you close your eyes or turn away from the screen, you'll know exactly where and what their units are, rendering the fog of war "useless". (Technically, your can still be "surprised" in the game, but you as a field commander won't be.) It would've been much better if the game included an online mode that masked this situation from other player, but unfortunately that isn't the case.



Now, I know that visuals on a hex-based strategy title aren't important because the strategy is key in a game like this, but the presentation of Dai Senryaku VII is atrocious. The base units that you move around the battlefield are blandly colored representations of units, and once you finally get into battle, the additions of generic textures don't really improve. Hexagons on the battlefield suffer from extremely bland texturing as well, and the details of cities, ports and other landmarks are laughable. But what really is horrendous is the interface for the game, which takes up at least a quarter of the screen with its menu bars and contextual information. Even worse, command bars and unit labels can obscure the view of some troops regardless of how you rotate or zoom the camera. Couple that with the same repetitive music loop and tame voice acting, and you have a truly uninspiring experience that brings the rest of the title down.

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