Warriors of Fate is an Excellent Beat’em Up

I’ve talked a lot about the Capcom Beat’em Up Bundle quite a bit when I was going over games on the SNES and Sega Genesis. Two of the games didn’t have console ports, so I haven’t reviewed them yet. I’m going to go over one of them this time.

Warriors of Fate is part of a series of beat’em up games based on the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. At some point, I’m going to have to look at all the games inspired by that novel. It has been hugely influential for several video game companies.

As I looked up information on this game, I came across a few things I didn’t know about. The first was the 1989 beat’em up from Capcom and the sequel to Destiny of an Emperor. It is cool to see stuff like this, and it is one of the reasons I love looking at these older games.

TLDR: A beautiful beat’em up that is very fun to play.

Narrative

Warriors of Fate is a version of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, if it had been tossed into a blender and poorly translated. The bad guys became Mongolians, I think. You’re supposed to be fighting against Cao Cao, but that was changed for some reason.

Most of these games don’t follow the novel, because they can’t. Usually, the games have you following Liu Bei, and he is made out to be the hero. The enemy is normally the Wei Kingdom, with the Wu Kingdom being a secondary enemy.

That is all here; it is just butchered by a strange translation. The Three Kingdoms theme is abandoned for a standard good vs. evil story. Many of the names have been changed to Mongolian versions of the Chinese names. I have no idea why this was done.

The story is fine. I would’ve liked it more if the Romance of the Three Kingdoms had been kept in, but that is just me. Warriors of Fate’s story gets the job done, and like many beat’em ups, you can ignore it to focus on punching enemies in the face.

Gameplay

Warriors of Fate is a standard beat’em up game from the 1990s. Your character has an attack and a jump button, and pressing these at the same time causes a super attack. There are healing items, weapons, and horses as well.

There are five playable characters in this game. They are based on characters from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but have had their names changed. It is kind of funny to see who they’re supposed to be. Here is a list of the characters:

• Guan Yu (Porter)
• Zhang Fei (Kassar)
• Zhao Yun (Subutai)
• Huang Zhong (Kadan)
• Wei Yan (Abaka)

These characters are based on four of the famous Five Tiger Generals. They served Liu Bei and would be the main characters in a series of RPGs Capcom released for the NES/Famicom. Wei Yan (Abaka) replaced Ma Chao for some unknown reason.

There are plenty of healing items for you to pick up, and you come across a lot of weapons during each stage. Horses occasionally appear, and I found them to be more of a hindrance than anything else. It is cool that they are in the game, but I tried to avoid them. Golden Axe did a better job incorporating animals you could ride than Warriors of Fate did.

The game is made up of nine stages, and each one ends with a boss fight. The final battle is anticlimactic. You fight what I believe is Lu Bu, and then have an easy fight with Cao Cao. It is a bit too easy for my liking, but I guess the developers wanted to give the player a break after fighting Lu Bu.

I like the gameplay a lot. It is everything I’ve come to expect from a beat’em up. This game has infinite continues. This is wonderful and let’s you power through the game. It is about an hour long, which is standard for this genre in the early 1990s.

Visuals

Warriors of Fate is a spectacular looking game. This is the arcade port, so the graphics are beautiful and the sprites are very detailed. I also love how colorful this game is.

This game has quite a few pallet swaps of the lesser enemies. This was standard for the time, making the game much more colorful than it would normally be. It looks like a Godfrey Ho movie where he would have ninjas wearing brightly colored outfits.

The bosses are huge and very detailed. They look awesome! Aside from their size, they look different from the other characters and it feels special when they show up.

Cutscenes advance the game’s plot. They look good for an arcade game, and I wish they were on the screen a little longer. The only one that looked off was Cao Cao. He is the same size as the player’s character and the regular enemies. It is a little disappointing to see the end boss like that.

This is a beautiful game. I love how it looks, the characters look good, and I like how colorful it is. I wonder how it might’ve looked if this game had been released on the SNES or Sega Genesis.

8/10.

Pros

• Great Gameplay
• Excellent Graphics
• Unlimited Continues

Cons

• Maybe too Easy
• Shorter than other beat’em ups
• Disappointing final boss

Conclusion

I had been looking for this game for a while. A while back I was researching games based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel, and I couldn’t remember the name of this game. I knew there was a beat’em up based on the novels before the Dynasty Warriors games made by Koei.

Warriors of Fate is part of Capcom’s Dynasty Wars series. They also made two RPGs based on a manga adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I played one a while ago, and it is one of my favorite RPGs. Knowing that there is a sequel to Destiny of an Emperor is great, and I wonder if there is a fan translation of it.

If you want to play this game, you can get it on the Capcom Beat’em Up Bundle or find the ROM online. It is more than worth it!

If you liked this post, please check out my other beat’em up reviews, such as King of Dragons and Knights of the Round.