As an admitted Koei fanboy, I naturally feel the urge to review one of the company's latest titles. First lets take a brief look at Dynasty Warriors the series so we can understand the series a bit better.
Dynasty Warriors 1 was a fighting game featuring primarily Chinese heroes duking it out Soul Calibur style. This game led to the Musou series in Japan, which English importers just considered an extension of the original fighter. Since Dynasty Warriors 2 the series has been what Yahtzee would call a spectacle fighter mixed with battlefield simulation as you play a historically famous hero (or in the case of custom characters, yourself in a massive power fantasy) roaming the battlefield and laughing as you slaughter hundreds or even thousands of generic peons while having occasional intense duels with other officers. The battles are mostly based on historical ones from the Three Kingdoms era of China, as told in the Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The series' combat formula has changed little since Dynasty Warriors 2, the controls pretty much being the same and familiar characters making appearance, thus putting the series somewhere between fighting games and sports titles for the necessity of sequels. While fighting games usually have a plot that develops from game to game sports titles just update stats and add some neat new features, some kind of gimmicky, to draw attention.
The question becomes then is Dynasty Warriors a stagnating series? For Dynasty Warriors 3 they introduced Xtreme Legends, effectively an expansion pack which let you play as new characters. For Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires was first introduced, which brings us to today. While the main series tells the stories of the playable characters and their actions in historic battles which only get redesigned between games, not really doing much for innovation since its still the same enemies each time, Empires is pretty much a scenario creator. In the original you could play as the ruler of a province of Three Kingdoms era China and, along with your trusted officers, set out to conquer the entire nation. The game thus became a mix of strategy and spectacle action, as you could plan on having enemies join your side mid-battle as well as still introducing hapless peons to your sword's business end.
So with the history done, lets look at the game, shall we?
The game is for the PS3 and X-Box 360, Koei having never really played favorites since the original X-Box came out. Koei's also been catching up with the times lately and made the game both Trophy and Achievement loaded. The game features the cast of Dynasty Warriors 6 along with the return of a character that was removed for the original: Meng Huo, the leader of the tribe-like Nanman people, who now apparently wields a giant totem as a weapon instead of a pair of animal gloves. The game also features new movesets for a few characters who originally essentially had copies of others, making the characters unique again in both movesets and appearance rather than just the latter. Weaponry ranges from the previously mentioned totem to pretty much every kind of Chinese sword you can imagine, several polearms, fans, finger darts, a ball and chain and even a weird fusion of a polearm and a throwing star. As a result, there are weapons that should appeal to pretty much any person, which is good since the game has brought back something else: custom characters.
Edit Mode is back in Empires 6 with 100 slots available. That's right, you can make 100 custom characters. You get the usual custom fare you'd expect by this point, having height and width sliders, body types, hair color, hair styles, noses, eyes, mouths, and a bunch of clothing, some of which naturally has to be unlocked in-game. The characters also get their choice of the 42 available movesets, several different types of voice which vary in pitch and attitude, and even what special moves you start with. While Dynasty Warriors 6 featured a type of rage mode where you could cut loose with one of six different special abilities that isn't the series staple musou attack, in Empires characters can get up to four special abilities slotted with their weapon which can range from an ice blast to creating shadow-like duplicates for a set period of time, helping set characters apart again. Additionally each officer now has a strategy card that the player is presented with in-game to help dictate their policies when they're a ruler, but more on that later.
Gameplay consists of just one mode: Empire Mode. This is a bit saddening actually since past Empires games have allowed you to do quick-play where you and possibly a friend battle in a homebrew scenario. This also means the two-player function of the game is heavily limited, and with no online play this really isn't a game to play with friends. Still Empires hasn't really been about that before so you can't dock them too much for that, just frown on it.
Empires Mode starts with you picking a scenario to play. Like before you can choose to play a classic scenario from the Three Kingdoms era, such as the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Battle of Chi Bi (which was recently made into a John Woo movie by the way). After that you pick an officer to play as. Now, not only are the 41 original characters from the main game available, but there's Meng Huo, your custom characters and every single other non-sepcial officer in existance. Characters who are just based on simple templates are also playable even though they have simple movesets and nothing really special to offer save their unique tactics. The amount of time that went into giving all of these guys stats is staggering, so Koei should get praise for this if nothing else, though EA does do this with Madden thus it isn't mind-blowing, just impressive. After the character choice you'll start the game, unless you're playing the 'chaos' scenario, in which case you can choose to play as either the ruler of a territory or a wandering mercenary, the former option letting you pick your territory and three officers who serve you.
Actual gameplay consists of two different modes: Ruler and Officer. Ruler is nothing new, having been in Empires 4 and 5, but Officer is the game's big new development.
Players can now be mercenaries who are hired by lords as officers or just wander China, helping villages in need while making friends. Officer mode works by every action the player wanting to make requiring a point, and when the player is out they're done their turn for the month. Actions involve travelling, doing certain events such as getting hired by a lord or trying to start a coup d'état, or just doing a mission. Missions can either be assigned to you by a lord, if you have one, or selected from a list of mercenary requests. These missions are similar to the Xtreme mode from Dynasty Warriors 5, in which you could be required to escort someone, deliver a message or defend a village. What's new now is that wild animals, such as tigers and wolves, are now real enemies that you can fight and slay (in game they call it K.O. of course to avoid PETA complaints).
Rulers meanwhile are more or less the same as before, just with some differences. Once again the ruler is limited to how many officers he can employ, the magic number being 15 in this game. Officers generate strategy cards which players can use during their turn to affect battles, their gold income via local harvesting, troop strength and other such changes. Every season as well the player can pick 3 month policies that have similar effects. The policy cards are always the same, though each one can only be used once per month and you always get one random card at the start of the month. Ruler actions are not mercenary ones as now battles don't use them up, policies behing the only part of ruler gameplay that eat up actions. Some policies cost more than one action point however but they can be picked up before and after battle, should you wish to do combat first. For battle you can chose a neighboring province to invade, assuming you have an established road leading to it.
Battles are a bit more advanced than in Dynasty Warriors 6 due to the Empires system. The first and most obvious change is you can now issue orders to troops on the battlefield, assuming you're the commander. All units start on basic AI but via the pause menu and arrow pad you can dictate strategy, from attacking specific officers to defending certain bases. Speaking of bases, they now come in five flavors: guardhouses, armories, watchposts, supply bases and main camps. Bases no longer have locked doors like they did in the past but you have to decrease base morale to 0 to capture it, which is done by killing enemies. Just taking out peons won't cut it, pardon the pun, so you should be aiming for guys with titles like Lieutenant or Guard Captain. Not only does capturing bases lower enemy morale and extend your foothold on the battlefield, it gives you a spawn point for healing items and a spawn point for base resources. Watchposts are generic but tend to have archers, armories produce tiger tanks (giant wooden boxes with tiger heads that breath fire, known as Juggernauts to DW fans), guardhouses produce heavy troops and cavalry and supply bases are big morale controllers that also spawn the best healing items. The strategy here is to, with your allies, capture bases until you have a connecting line from your main camp to theirs, then raid the camp and kill the commander, winning the battle. This is how you win in invasions, but when defending just waiting until time runs out also works, as all battles have a time limit, which kind of makes sense since it can dictate how long you have until your army's resources or deleted or vice versa.
Officer mode combat is the more unique one of the bunch, featuring missions like escorts as well as slaying wild animals and hundreds of pirates. There's no bases to worry about, no morale, just you making sure your objective isn't failed. Another nice addition is during assigned missions from your commander, if you have one, there are bonuses for doing actions like defeating a certain officer within a certain time limit, so the routine is a lot less redundant in officer mode at the expense of lacking much tactical play. The game thus feels a lot like two titles rolled into one.
With the battles covered lets talk the game in general. There are huge visual improvements, including animated talking characters outside of battle instead of still-frames as seen in the past. Events also include the player forming bonds with other characters that can lead to marriage (if the character is the opposite sex of yours) or taking an oath of siblinghood (if they're the same sex). These events give your gameplay a bit more flavor as your wife/husband and your brothers/sisters occasionally appear in special events to get you extra rewards. The big gaffe here is sadly that Koei didn't seem to care that Sun Jian, if the player, can marry HIS OWN DAUGHTER (Sun Shang Xiang). Other additions include being able to customize your custom characters at any time, thus implementing new fashion pieces isn't a problem. The game features a massive soundtrack including audio from Dynasty Warriors 2 so you won't run out of tunes to listen to both in battle and out. The game also features bonus content that's underwhelming as its mainly color changes for the non-custom characters, their voice files and wallpaper, all of which is bought via completing in-game objectives. What was smart however was changing how data is carried over from one campaign to another. When beating a scenario you get a 'New Game +' type of thing for your save file which, when loaded, gives you bonus points that can be used to do things like keep your old weapon data and horses as well as getting bonus gold to start with and bonus treasure, treasure being used to upgrade weapons.
Finally lets talk online content, by which I mainly mean Achievements and Trophies, though I'll speak in Trophy terms since I played this game on the PS3. Every Bronze Trophy is unlocked by beating a battle as a specific character just once. Essentially you need to beat minimum 43 battles with a different character each time to get all the Bronze Trophies, which is kind of lazy in my opinion but I guess it makes sense and encourages people to try characters they've never touched before. Likewise the Silver trophies are for clearing scenarios and the Gold ones are for completing all scenarios and unlocking all the hidden content. Downloadable content is also available, but its mainly extra costumes for characters, though its free at least.
Overall the game is a must have for fans of Dynasty Warriors 6 who like being able to create their own battles and characters, for them I'd say Buy It! However for the average person that's a lot to ask for a series that's almost stagnating with the number of sequels and spin-offs is has. Still, if you want a mix of strategy and action with a lot of spectacle, this is definitely a Rental if not a Buy.
Dynasty Warriors 1 was a fighting game featuring primarily Chinese heroes duking it out Soul Calibur style. This game led to the Musou series in Japan, which English importers just considered an extension of the original fighter. Since Dynasty Warriors 2 the series has been what Yahtzee would call a spectacle fighter mixed with battlefield simulation as you play a historically famous hero (or in the case of custom characters, yourself in a massive power fantasy) roaming the battlefield and laughing as you slaughter hundreds or even thousands of generic peons while having occasional intense duels with other officers. The battles are mostly based on historical ones from the Three Kingdoms era of China, as told in the Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The series' combat formula has changed little since Dynasty Warriors 2, the controls pretty much being the same and familiar characters making appearance, thus putting the series somewhere between fighting games and sports titles for the necessity of sequels. While fighting games usually have a plot that develops from game to game sports titles just update stats and add some neat new features, some kind of gimmicky, to draw attention.
The question becomes then is Dynasty Warriors a stagnating series? For Dynasty Warriors 3 they introduced Xtreme Legends, effectively an expansion pack which let you play as new characters. For Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires was first introduced, which brings us to today. While the main series tells the stories of the playable characters and their actions in historic battles which only get redesigned between games, not really doing much for innovation since its still the same enemies each time, Empires is pretty much a scenario creator. In the original you could play as the ruler of a province of Three Kingdoms era China and, along with your trusted officers, set out to conquer the entire nation. The game thus became a mix of strategy and spectacle action, as you could plan on having enemies join your side mid-battle as well as still introducing hapless peons to your sword's business end.
So with the history done, lets look at the game, shall we?
The game is for the PS3 and X-Box 360, Koei having never really played favorites since the original X-Box came out. Koei's also been catching up with the times lately and made the game both Trophy and Achievement loaded. The game features the cast of Dynasty Warriors 6 along with the return of a character that was removed for the original: Meng Huo, the leader of the tribe-like Nanman people, who now apparently wields a giant totem as a weapon instead of a pair of animal gloves. The game also features new movesets for a few characters who originally essentially had copies of others, making the characters unique again in both movesets and appearance rather than just the latter. Weaponry ranges from the previously mentioned totem to pretty much every kind of Chinese sword you can imagine, several polearms, fans, finger darts, a ball and chain and even a weird fusion of a polearm and a throwing star. As a result, there are weapons that should appeal to pretty much any person, which is good since the game has brought back something else: custom characters.
Edit Mode is back in Empires 6 with 100 slots available. That's right, you can make 100 custom characters. You get the usual custom fare you'd expect by this point, having height and width sliders, body types, hair color, hair styles, noses, eyes, mouths, and a bunch of clothing, some of which naturally has to be unlocked in-game. The characters also get their choice of the 42 available movesets, several different types of voice which vary in pitch and attitude, and even what special moves you start with. While Dynasty Warriors 6 featured a type of rage mode where you could cut loose with one of six different special abilities that isn't the series staple musou attack, in Empires characters can get up to four special abilities slotted with their weapon which can range from an ice blast to creating shadow-like duplicates for a set period of time, helping set characters apart again. Additionally each officer now has a strategy card that the player is presented with in-game to help dictate their policies when they're a ruler, but more on that later.
Gameplay consists of just one mode: Empire Mode. This is a bit saddening actually since past Empires games have allowed you to do quick-play where you and possibly a friend battle in a homebrew scenario. This also means the two-player function of the game is heavily limited, and with no online play this really isn't a game to play with friends. Still Empires hasn't really been about that before so you can't dock them too much for that, just frown on it.
Empires Mode starts with you picking a scenario to play. Like before you can choose to play a classic scenario from the Three Kingdoms era, such as the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Battle of Chi Bi (which was recently made into a John Woo movie by the way). After that you pick an officer to play as. Now, not only are the 41 original characters from the main game available, but there's Meng Huo, your custom characters and every single other non-sepcial officer in existance. Characters who are just based on simple templates are also playable even though they have simple movesets and nothing really special to offer save their unique tactics. The amount of time that went into giving all of these guys stats is staggering, so Koei should get praise for this if nothing else, though EA does do this with Madden thus it isn't mind-blowing, just impressive. After the character choice you'll start the game, unless you're playing the 'chaos' scenario, in which case you can choose to play as either the ruler of a territory or a wandering mercenary, the former option letting you pick your territory and three officers who serve you.
Actual gameplay consists of two different modes: Ruler and Officer. Ruler is nothing new, having been in Empires 4 and 5, but Officer is the game's big new development.
Players can now be mercenaries who are hired by lords as officers or just wander China, helping villages in need while making friends. Officer mode works by every action the player wanting to make requiring a point, and when the player is out they're done their turn for the month. Actions involve travelling, doing certain events such as getting hired by a lord or trying to start a coup d'état, or just doing a mission. Missions can either be assigned to you by a lord, if you have one, or selected from a list of mercenary requests. These missions are similar to the Xtreme mode from Dynasty Warriors 5, in which you could be required to escort someone, deliver a message or defend a village. What's new now is that wild animals, such as tigers and wolves, are now real enemies that you can fight and slay (in game they call it K.O. of course to avoid PETA complaints).
Rulers meanwhile are more or less the same as before, just with some differences. Once again the ruler is limited to how many officers he can employ, the magic number being 15 in this game. Officers generate strategy cards which players can use during their turn to affect battles, their gold income via local harvesting, troop strength and other such changes. Every season as well the player can pick 3 month policies that have similar effects. The policy cards are always the same, though each one can only be used once per month and you always get one random card at the start of the month. Ruler actions are not mercenary ones as now battles don't use them up, policies behing the only part of ruler gameplay that eat up actions. Some policies cost more than one action point however but they can be picked up before and after battle, should you wish to do combat first. For battle you can chose a neighboring province to invade, assuming you have an established road leading to it.
Battles are a bit more advanced than in Dynasty Warriors 6 due to the Empires system. The first and most obvious change is you can now issue orders to troops on the battlefield, assuming you're the commander. All units start on basic AI but via the pause menu and arrow pad you can dictate strategy, from attacking specific officers to defending certain bases. Speaking of bases, they now come in five flavors: guardhouses, armories, watchposts, supply bases and main camps. Bases no longer have locked doors like they did in the past but you have to decrease base morale to 0 to capture it, which is done by killing enemies. Just taking out peons won't cut it, pardon the pun, so you should be aiming for guys with titles like Lieutenant or Guard Captain. Not only does capturing bases lower enemy morale and extend your foothold on the battlefield, it gives you a spawn point for healing items and a spawn point for base resources. Watchposts are generic but tend to have archers, armories produce tiger tanks (giant wooden boxes with tiger heads that breath fire, known as Juggernauts to DW fans), guardhouses produce heavy troops and cavalry and supply bases are big morale controllers that also spawn the best healing items. The strategy here is to, with your allies, capture bases until you have a connecting line from your main camp to theirs, then raid the camp and kill the commander, winning the battle. This is how you win in invasions, but when defending just waiting until time runs out also works, as all battles have a time limit, which kind of makes sense since it can dictate how long you have until your army's resources or deleted or vice versa.
Officer mode combat is the more unique one of the bunch, featuring missions like escorts as well as slaying wild animals and hundreds of pirates. There's no bases to worry about, no morale, just you making sure your objective isn't failed. Another nice addition is during assigned missions from your commander, if you have one, there are bonuses for doing actions like defeating a certain officer within a certain time limit, so the routine is a lot less redundant in officer mode at the expense of lacking much tactical play. The game thus feels a lot like two titles rolled into one.
With the battles covered lets talk the game in general. There are huge visual improvements, including animated talking characters outside of battle instead of still-frames as seen in the past. Events also include the player forming bonds with other characters that can lead to marriage (if the character is the opposite sex of yours) or taking an oath of siblinghood (if they're the same sex). These events give your gameplay a bit more flavor as your wife/husband and your brothers/sisters occasionally appear in special events to get you extra rewards. The big gaffe here is sadly that Koei didn't seem to care that Sun Jian, if the player, can marry HIS OWN DAUGHTER (Sun Shang Xiang). Other additions include being able to customize your custom characters at any time, thus implementing new fashion pieces isn't a problem. The game features a massive soundtrack including audio from Dynasty Warriors 2 so you won't run out of tunes to listen to both in battle and out. The game also features bonus content that's underwhelming as its mainly color changes for the non-custom characters, their voice files and wallpaper, all of which is bought via completing in-game objectives. What was smart however was changing how data is carried over from one campaign to another. When beating a scenario you get a 'New Game +' type of thing for your save file which, when loaded, gives you bonus points that can be used to do things like keep your old weapon data and horses as well as getting bonus gold to start with and bonus treasure, treasure being used to upgrade weapons.
Finally lets talk online content, by which I mainly mean Achievements and Trophies, though I'll speak in Trophy terms since I played this game on the PS3. Every Bronze Trophy is unlocked by beating a battle as a specific character just once. Essentially you need to beat minimum 43 battles with a different character each time to get all the Bronze Trophies, which is kind of lazy in my opinion but I guess it makes sense and encourages people to try characters they've never touched before. Likewise the Silver trophies are for clearing scenarios and the Gold ones are for completing all scenarios and unlocking all the hidden content. Downloadable content is also available, but its mainly extra costumes for characters, though its free at least.
Overall the game is a must have for fans of Dynasty Warriors 6 who like being able to create their own battles and characters, for them I'd say Buy It! However for the average person that's a lot to ask for a series that's almost stagnating with the number of sequels and spin-offs is has. Still, if you want a mix of strategy and action with a lot of spectacle, this is definitely a Rental if not a Buy.
