Chou Battle Houshin is an action game loosely based on the novel Fengshen Yanyi (16th century). The player takes the role of a hero who fights against the evil ex-emperor Kang and his magical army. The gameplay itself is simple: the player wades through enemy hordes and kills them all. There are eight playable characters which all have different advantages and disadvantages.

The combat is basically a combination of sword attacks, magical attacks and combo attacks. During the course of the game, the player can find magical runes which give him additional magical abilities and power-ups, e.g. health and mana refreshments or temporary and permanent improvements to the attacking and defending statistics. In fact, some of these runes have to be earned by completing the story mode multiple times - the player can use the same character for this and gets to retain their abilities and statistics. Mana also replenishes with every defeated foe. Besides the main story mode, there is also a Survival mode.