Welp, looks like it's time to head on back to Japan and kill us a couple thousand helpless troops on our way to unite the country in these times of chaos. Dynasty Warriors is a niche series. Often criticized for it's lack of imagination and button mashing but yet still sells well, rarely traded in, and the titles hold value for a decent amount of time. Most of us here are apart of that niche and as such with buying the latest edition of Dynasty Warriors it's time for a review! Will it be enough to keep our interest? or has the franchise finally fallen to it's shortcomings?
Dynasty Warriors 7 is the direct sequel to 2008's Dynasty Warriors 6. The 7th installment in all honesty has changed quite a bit and given the franchise new life with changed or added moded, more characters, a ton of weapons, and online play.
Graphics
Dynasty Warriors has never been one of the prettiest games out there. It's because their focus is throwing as many soldiers at you as humanly possible without very much slowdown. Even with that the graphics are OK. They won't drop your jaw but they also won't make you say "oh what the fuck is this?". The game also does a good job at blending cut scenes into the game play. Instead of watching a scene, then a loading screen, and then the battle the scene flows right into the game without any loading times. Slow down was minimal, only really noticing it when online or when multiple characters were doing their special attacks at the same time. All in all it's a decent effort but it's no way the selling point of the game.
Gameplay
In my opinion this is where the game shines. For those of you not familiar or have never played a Dynasty Warriors game it's a beat'em up where you choose a warrior from one of the 3 main allegiances of Chinese armies and go into a battle killing hundreds of soldiers and generals to improve your character's stats and collect weapons. It was pretty straight forward and as you played with each character you unlocked more to run through each character's story. In this installment everything changes, now each faction has a story mode, with a 4th faction added and a story mode for the few characters that were never apart of the main armies. As you progess through each factions' story modes you play as the various characters in the armies unlocking them for additional modes as you progress.
Each character now can equip 2 weapons and have ratings for each to let you know what they are best to be equipped with. They also created a mass variety of weapons for characters to play as. In Dynasty Warriors 6 they took a more realistic approach and everyone pretty much had swords or spears with the occasional pike or halberd. DW 7 introduces everything from nunchaku to chain whips, to arm cannons. You are able to switch these weapons in mid battle and collect more powerful versions of these weapons as you kill officers. The story modes are so ridiculous that you never take any attempts at emotion seriously but it's still enjoyable to experience the various characters (65 in all). Each weapon also has a seal you can learn just by using the weapon. Seals are abilities you can equip to each weapon to boost your attack, range, defense, speed, abilities to kill officers, mastery of other weapons, and so on. Once you learn these seals they can be equipped on any weapon.
The other big mode here in DW 7 is the conquest mode. This is the main mode that focuses on multiplayer. It is basically a grid of China and you choose any of the characters from the roster and go through completing the various missions on the grip to take over all of China. You will unlock additional characters, as well as the most powerful weapons in the game. Character progression itself comes from killing officers as in addition to weapons they will also drop attack and defense ups as well as stat points. Stat points are used to unlock characters additional attacks, mastery of their main weapons, and additional special attacks. The special attacks are the most powerful moves each character has. They are called musou attacks and as you kill soldiers you build up a meter, when the meter is filled you can unleash the attack. Each character has 2 musou attacks that are unleashed via the B (or circle for PS3 owners) button on the ground, in the air, or in combination with the RB (R1) button. These come with a cut scene and a cool effect to unleash massive damage on your opponents.
What I Liked
I loved the new story mode as 5 play throughs (1 for each faction) unlocks the majority of the characters and is a fun experience. I also love the conquest mode especially with a friend, I have played it both split screen and online and the experience was very fun. Lag for online isn't to the effect of slowing the game as much as it can't keep up with the pace of both characters. What you see your friend doing may not be what he is actually doing on his end. It provides a lot of funny moments like seeing bosses drop to their death with no one near them as you see your partner on the opposite side of the room but if you are a fan of the franchise this is more of a funny little issue then anything aggravating. It doesn't slow the game down any and the experience is pretty fluent. I really enjoy each character having a variety of weapons to equip as well as some characters getting their old weapons back. I was disappointed when nunchaku and tonfas were taken out in DW 6 but I am pleased to see their return.
Character progression as been dumbed down a bit and I am OK with that, I usually like having exp and more stats to put my points into but in this game and with as often as you will switch characters it's good to keep it simple. All in all I feel they really brought out a solid installment for the game itself.
What I Didn't Like
Load times are awful, they are terrible, too long, and even when you install the game they are still long. Once you are in the battle there are no issues but damn do they take a while to load. As much as I love the game it also is a title that will only really appeal to DW fans like myself. This title will not garner and new fans or bring Dynasty Warriors to the status of Madden or Call of Duty. Maybe at some point they will create an installment that gets them a little more recognition but until then it's gonna be a small market that it appeals to.
Conclusion
This game is very fun, and they have made a lot of effort to change the game up and provide a new feel to the franchise. I have not been able to put this game down since it's release and look forward to more multiplayer in the future. That being said don't run out to get this game thinking it's gonna be insanely awesome. As much fun as it is there are flaws that the title has that will never be addressed and can bore or turn people away. It's a game for people that have loved the franchise since it's days on PS2 which is fine for me but maybe not everyone.
If you like beat'em ups, Dynasty Warriors, item collecting, or online co-op it's worth a shot. It won't be hard to find new but may be a bit difficult to find in the used section. Check it out if the first sentence of this paragraph defines you as you will really enjoy the game.
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