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Mar 24 2005
Dynasty Warriors Review
PSP Game Review | Action
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| Go on! You know you want it
| Summary: Severely addicted to this game
85
hmmm, just a coupla quickies from the land of the rising sun. Im (painstakingly) translating the manual. Even Japanese people have trouble reading some of these charactars, especially all the chinese names, plus they use a historical style.
I bought this game first at a store in Japan along with the PSP at the behest of my better (female) half due to our long shared addiction for ancient chinese bloodletting on a massive scale coupled with one of the best fighting engines ever designed.
The segmented gameplay initially made me sad but once I actually played a few levels (ahem, thats stuck on the first few in hard mode) I kind of like it better than the free roaming just for the fact that you have to plan your route, and who to help, etc. Hint, if you win a stronghold section, you usually get a full life bar, and if you go back there later while travelling to another section it will fill as well. Watch out though, cause your army's moral will decrease and you may lose the battle without dying.
Moreover though its effectively dynasty warriors 3 (the horse cant jump, no bullet time in musuo moves) there are still jumping juggling combos and the enemies are waaaay smart. You cant just wade in with Dan Wei like in Warriors 3 and expect to survive. The AI is just as sharp as in Samurai Warriors, and you'll find yourself thanking the deities when the enemy decides to turn and run from that section of the map (thus not attacking you anymore).
When you choose your bodygaurds (the first option on the battle screen menu and section map) before you start fighting, they all have different abilities and levels. How many you can take depends on their level and yours. Heres the cool thing - when your fighting and really down on health, special attack etc, use the D-pad (Im assuming analog stick is movement) up and down to select the faces of your bodygaurds when theyre on fire. Then press D-pad right and they will give you a power up. This could be 30 seconds attack X2 or more life or musou, or.... seemingly nothing. You have to wait before using that one again but you can have up to four right? Try it. I guess it may be better to take just two really highlevel guards instead of four lamers, but NFS is cutting into my learning curve.
OK Gripe time: Where are the items, where is the food!!!, where are the skills? To be honest the skill structure a la Samuray Warriors was a cool but I would have preferred items like in Warriors 3 and 4 to upgrade stats on a per level basis. The food in jars and dropped at the scenes of large melees is sorely missed. Where are the elemental attacks? the level 5 weapons? Im not far in the game yet so I pray (I really do actually) that they are coming. I really miss the ability to deflect arrows like in Samurai Warriors. If it can be done I have yet to accomplish it. Lastly why oh why if the PSP is widescreen must I play in a 4:3 aspect ratio with the maps eating up the side? I can only assume this is a performance issue. Many have complained that its hard to watch your back and enemies always get you from behind with no warning. This is true (but in a real battle you wouldnt be stupid enough to stand in the middle of a crowd of enemies would you? hint hint) and with a wide field of view the annoyance of being blindsided would be much less as you could see more coming from the back and sides. However, I have already got the PSP version of warriors to enter super slow-mo twice, so I guess 4:3 was all that Koei could eke out of it.
Although the segmented play is great I think, I have to wonder if it impacts your ability to hunt down and slaughter ever last one of those retreating cowards, because as soon as they start to retreat, you cant hurt them any more and might as well just charge your musou for about twelve seconds as they run away. Maybe more realistic though, in the other warriors titles you could run 5 miles accross the map and back at a full sprint which perhaps did not ever come close to occuring in a real battle. Also, your charactar's level resets to 1 at the beginning of every new level, so what does it really mean? You do get increase in stats based on perfomance, but for 6600 points I got 3 points per stat for battle 1!!
After all in the end I am severely addicted to this game and you will often find me swearing under my breath on the train platform, beaded sweat on my brow. The initial charater choices are good; the combat is still good; the segmented map gives you sane strategy choices to make, and the bodyguard powerups are just enough to keep my from throwing my PSP onto the tracks everytime I die again. The game AI will keep you throwing that spear in all directions just to be sure nobody's charging you from behind.
OK now I gotta go play it again...
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Comments
Great review.. I am a huge fan of the DW series.. love the mindeless combat combined with strategy and rpg elements..
+
mindless action. how can you play this game for more than 5 minutes at a time? i'd rather play it on my ps2, so at least i can fall asleep after.
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Have been a fan of this series for years. I gotta say one of the things I like and dislike at the same time are the short skirmishes. Sometimes they go by to fast but at the same time it makes it more addictive. It goes like this, gotta just do one more skirmish and I'm done, ok one more, just one more and I'm done for the nights, maybe just one more.
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phildo
> mindless action. how can you play this game for more than 5 minutes at a time? i'd rather play it on my ps2, so at least i can fall asleep after.
>
thats what makes it great on the psp. The levels are broken up into edible chunks. Great for killing time on the bus, etc. Besides Ive reset the difficulty to "Hell" now. If you want to stay alive on Hell Mode you had better do some thinking about where to move and who to fight.
+
how elaborate is the fighting gameplay in this? like, is it strategic or just hack away?
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my friend got it and he says it's not that good.
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