Raccoon Inc. vs. Koei Corp.

Good evening.

The editorial board here at Raccoon Inc. would like to address a hot button issue that has come to our attention over the past little while.  We take issues such as these very seriously and will be treating them with the gravity and judicial fairness that they deserve.

But seriously, what the hell are they doing over there at Koei?!  (I'm leaving Tecmo out of this, by the way.  No need for them to get caught in the crossfire.)  Have they lost their minds?  Honestly!  There seems to be this slow, gradual transformation going on from a respectable, diverse strategy gaming company to this utterly asinine nonesense that they're becoming.  It's amazing! 

Now, first off they go from a company that forces you to think in order to play their games to one where you pop in the disc and turn off your brain and mash the square button until you're you've won.  That's pretty low, but since others are going down that road as well, it may be forgivable.  What is not, however, is this.  Slide!

This is a portrait of Zhang He, a famous general during the later Han Dynasty.  Looks pretty good, huh.  A dude with a spear, armour, arrows flying at him.  A cool old action scene.  So far, so good, right?  Slide!

This is a portrait from one of Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms games.  Not too shabby.  Looks respectable.  Again, so far, so good.  At this point, it starts to get ugly.  Real ugly.  Inexplicably ugly.  Slide.

Yes, those are high heels.  For some inexplicable reason, the Dynasty Warriors series has taken this fine, noble warrior, this general, and made him into this.  Yikes!  Worse still is this version of the guy in Dynasty Warriors Strike Force.  Slide...

Are you serious?!  Look.  I'm all for butterfly related androgyny...

...but come on!  This is a fighting game for crying out loud!  These people are fighters and warriors and generals.  You know what?  That's like taking

and turning it into

and while I have no problem with

the fact remains that

is not

and nor should it be asked to be so.  That is what cheeses me off.

But, you know, maybe I'm just being unfair and I'm taking one character out of context and blowing it way out of proportion.  To that I say fine.  We'll pick another.  Let's try this, then.  Guo Jia.

Here's a good historical depiction of him.  Good good.

Here's another good, non-Koei portrait of the man.  Looks cool so far.  Kinda almost looks like a Chinese Hugo Weaving. 

Here's a depiction from a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game.  Looks good to me.  Now on to the new Guo Jia character in Dynasty Warriors 7: Extreme Legends.

Nice.

You know, apologists have told me that the reason why they effeminize these characters is because this is not only what is attractive, but this is what sells in East Asia.  To this I reply, really?  Raccoon Inc. has a different sort of take on this.

Back in the day, on the NES, SNES, and Genesis, Koei led laughed all the way to the back as the big boss of strategy gaming on the console system with games like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, Genghis Khan II, Nobunaga's Ambition II, Gemfire, Liberty or Death, Gemfire, and so on.  They diversified in other directions like Aerobiz, Uncharted Waters, and Inindo, as well.  They were innovative and engaging.  All was well!

Then two things happened.  First, people complained.  All this heavy-handed, menu based strategy was a drag, man.  People wanted to see if the formula could be spiced up a bit.  So, they decided trying to make Romance of the Three Kingdoms into a button mashing action game, and by cracky it worked.  People loved it!  So, they took the formula and ran with it.  And ran and ran and ran and ran.

Meanwhile, something else happened.  Menu based strategy games migrated whole hog over to the PC and into the tent of this company seen here.

Serious strategy games know this company pretty well by now.  Essentially what they did is out-Koei Koei.  Paradox is even releasing games which are direct takes on older Koei games.  Hearts of Iron are akin to the old Pacific Theater of Operations games, Sengoku is a take on Nobunaga's Ambition, the King Arthur games sure do look a lot like a modern Gemfire, East India Company and Uncharted Waters share a lot of the same DNA, and Europa Universalis does everything that Liberty or Death did and much more.  No Koei?  No problem. 

In the meantime, however, as Koei flees from the wreckage of its strategy heritage, one thing is clear: there is a race for the basement going on here.  Seeing the success of, oh, I dunno, Zynga games led to the development of velvet rope nonsense like Dynasty Warriors Online, Romance of the Three Kingdoms Online, and Uncharted Waters Online.  Plus, I think that it is this Zynga madness that has really led the descent from this

to this.

But wait!  There's more!  So, we have the Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Warriors Orochi, and Gundam Warriors.  Let's see...  What's missing?  Oh!  I know!  One Piece Warriors!  What a great idea, cause, like, people outside Japan will totally understand this!  Oh no no no no no.  No wait.  This is way cooler!  Best idea ever!  Cause, you know, it's a little known fact that Oda Nobunaga's success was due largely his phenomenal Pokémon training ability.  The Siege of Nagashima was finally won when Nobunaga sent out his Charizard and torched the place.  It was super effective.

Well, I dunno.  I just feel like these clowns kinda had the rug pulled out from under them so instead of making games with a more broad appeal, they're just making games for Japanese gamers and to hell with the rest of the world.  The games that look interesting we'll leave in Japanese, and the games that are incomprehensively Japanese we're going to translate for the whole world to get pissed off at.  Do you know what the editorial board here at the offices of Raccoon Inc. considers this?