Dynasty Warriors 8 Review
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Dynasty Warriors is a franchise that dates back all the way to the original PlayStation in 1997, and 13 years later the hack and slash formula introduced in Dynasty Warriors 2 is largely unchanged. But that is not to say there are no new features or other additions in this entry. There are a good amount of additions that fans of the franchise like me will notice. They range from a new mode to overall changes to how the how a story mode can play out and some changes to the combat. But this entry still has some problems that have been present in the series for ages
Combat is almost identical to every entry of this series, but that does not mean they did not try to add or change some different aspects to change it up a bit. This largely takes the form as the three point system. The three point system is pretty much just rock paper scissors. In which every weapon has an affinity of man, heaven, or earth. Depending on if your weapon’s affinity has the advantage you can ether do more damage and take less or if they have the advantage you do less, take more and cant stager the opponent. On top of that if you have the advantage you can perform a storm rush in which you enter an uninterruptable series of attacks which can to a good amount of damage to your opponent. But if you don’t have the advantage you can do a switch counter which is when you see your opponent about to attack you switch your weapon and it gains a temporary attack boost. Those are not huge additions onto themselves they do work at mixing up the standard hack and slash gameplay a little bit.
Along with those new additions to the combat system there are tweaks to the large list characters. One such change is that each character has 4 different musou (super) attacks instead of the one or two from earlier games. And the addition of a rage mode can help mowing down troops even faster and making it more satisfying in the process. Also each character has a weapon that only they are best with unlike in Dynasty Warriors 7 where multiple characters had the same weapon they were best with, which means there are a lot more categories of weapons. This adds a bit more diversity between the massive numbers of characters and that is a much needed change from some of the older titles.
Story modes for the Dynasty Warriors games have always been a pretty strait forward experience. With you choosing an army then picking a character or given one for that battle. But in this entry you pick the army then for each mission you are given a group of two to four officers and you pick which one you want to play as for that mission, which is a pretty nice change of pace from the past entries. Each story has their own starting point now instead of the past titles which you require you to play though the Yellow Turban Rebellion and Dong Zhou’s levels before getting into your army’s story. Also some of the missions have secret bonus objectives for you to complete. For completing these objectives you could unlock new battles you would otherwise miss, an officer could be in a battle they would not be in before, and if you compete all of them up to a point in the story it could branch off between the “historical” outcome and a “hypothetical” outcome.
The new mode that is introduced in this game is ambition mode. In ambition mode your goal is to build a palace to have the emperor visit you. To do this you go on missions to gain allies, fame, and materials. Each of these is needed for the different aspects of your camp. You need allies to gain new facilities, fame to increase your allies cap, and materials to upgrade your facilities which also increases your fame cap. This mode is made up of different kinds of battles, grand battles, which get you more allies, unconventional battles, which get you more fame, and skirmishes, which get you more materials. And along the way you will be recruiting other characters serve you. While not a complex mode it is still fun.
Much like older entries in this series Dynasty Warriors 8 has technical problems. This game suffers for massive slow down. To the point where almost every battle I am playing is suffering from slow down. And even when I’m running around my town in ambition mode between battles it suffers from horrible slow down when nothing is going on. It is a real problem which but because of the simple combat it does not ruin it, but it definitely a real pain that hurts the game.
Dynasty Warriors 8 does in no way reinvent the series, but it does have some notable improvements to the game. Some new additions to the combat don’t have a huge effect on how the game is played but it is noticeable and is welcomed. The changes to the story mode add more player choice as who you want to play as, and the branching story is really interesting as a fan of the series. Ambition mode is easy fun but is not that deep of an experience. But this game suffers from massive slow down which really hurts the game. Overall it is one of the best entries and any fan of Dynasty Warriors should play this, but if you did not like the series before there is nothing here to change your mind.
I wish I could give it a higher score but the slowdown keeps it low. 6.5.
Note: Played on 360