Dynasty Warriors 5 is like...
*lights bottle rocket* *PFFT!* Oooh . . . ahhh . . .*nothing*
That describes DW5. Which is an enjoyable game at first, but after playing through it a few times, I've found a few flaws that detract from it.
DW4, previous installment of the popular Dynasty Warriors games, was in most hardcore fans eyes a piece of crap. It took away everything fun about Dynasty Warriors, added a few things, and left us in the cold, basically becoming a "run up to groups of five troops, kill them, move onto the next five." Dynasty Warriors 5 comes out two years later, amid much anticipation, and claims to fix many of the problems DW4 had; more aggressive AI, better allies who didn't die instantly, the removal of the autolock feature, and a LOT more troops saturating each stages. In these aspects it both succeeds and fails, proving again that KOEI can never tweak a game to perfection. Of course, like all reviews, this is opinion, but it's well-reasoned opinion.
Something anyone should be forewarned of is that KOEI is notorious for taking a base formula and driving it into the ground. They never make huge gameplay modifications and usually just try to tweak the formula with each sequel. So don't come into this thinking it'll be a totally different game.
Dynasty Warriors has never been known for gorgeous, Metal Gear Solid-style graphics. But considering that usually literally hundreds of troops would be rushing you at a time, it was forgiveable. DW5, however, has absolutely GORGEOUS levels that surpass anything in the previous installments. The characters themselves are well-designed and rendered quite well, and the effects in the game are great. The greatest achievement of KOEI is easily the now great draw distance and a huge increase in the number of troops onscreen at a time. While slowdown does still occur (something I believe KOEI claimed to have elminated), it's few and far inbetween, and usually only lasts for a moment or two. My only true complaint is that while they did take the time to synch up the lips in cutscenes to match the English acting, they kept the FMV bits in their natural Japanese motions, making it look very awkward.
Bringing back a vast majority of the voice actors from the previous installment, and again choosing to nix the Japanese voice acting option, KOEI both succeeds and fails (like always). While most people complain about the lack of Japanese voice acting, I frankly don't care. It's not especially authentic, and the English voice actors do a fine job (for the most part). Compared to the previous game, the VAs are much more enthusiastic, giving the game a more "real" feel. However, don't come into this game expecting GTA or MGS-quality voice acting, it's not THAT great.
The music has also improved. Most of the music in DW4 was either boring or boarderlined on making you want to hit the mute button. Not so in DW5. While they did keep a lot of the Chinese instruments, it's changed up a bit in that the guitar is again heavier and more aggressive, and a bit of techno (yes, techno) has been added. Overall it creates an interesting sound that I feel matches fine.
KOEI has trimmed a lot of the fat this time around. For the most part, the fans responded quite negatively to the Create a Warrior and Dueling, and were indifferent to a few other bits. All of which were removed. Instead, KOEI spent it's time with the maps, scripting, and characters themselves, and the result is rather impressive. The maps in the game are well-designed and interesting, the script itself is pretty interesting, considering that half of it is made up, the characters have been differentiated even more, and a lot that had no real personality in the last game were given a boost of character, the addition of more solid voice acting just adds to it. It was quite pleasing seeing the improvements.
The gameplay, too, has been tweaked. The weapon leveling is gone, replaced by a more Samurai Warriors/DW3-esque "collect" mode, allowing you to choose from your plunder which ones you like. A new feature is the weight class, where the weapons now have three possible weights (heavy, medium, and light, of course), and the character using them is affected accordingly (heavy increases attack, but lowers attack speed, light does the opposite, medium is the default) which adds another dimension to the gameplay, which I felt was well-executed.
There tend to be missions in each map, similar to Samurai Warriors, but without the severe penalties of SW. Except for a few maps historically correlating (Chi Bi, Guan Du, Yi Ling) where failure to do the mission meant death, the missions tend to be rather unimportant and don't destroy your morale.
However, there is one place where Dynasty Warriors 5 falls on its face: the difficulty.
Dynasty Warriors 5 is easy. There's no two ways about it. Easy is embarassing, normal is easy, hard is easy. The only difference between the three modes is the increase/decrease in enemy stats. I feel this really isn't enough. It's like making the archers overpowered in DW3 or an enemy could kill you in five hits in a duel in DW4, it's cheap, not hard. Chaos mode is a cop-out. While it is insanely difficult, with even peons being able to kill you in a few hits, that, too, is cheap, not hard. The AI, with the exceptions of the enemy generals, is for the most part lethargic and uncaring, but when they do hit you, they take out huge chunks of your life bar making you wonder if steroids were secretly handed out behind your back.
Again, while this is difficult, I MUCH rather prefer a game where the enemy fights back, but doesn't kill you in three hits. I don't understand it, either. DW2 and 3 were both difficult for that reason (though 3 had the unpleasant addition of overpowered archers), I don't see why 4 and 5 had to completely miss the point. Because of this, I have a feeling that Dynasty Warriors 5 will end up collecting dust in a few months. Don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE DW fan, and if they'd actually get the difficulty thing right, I'd actually play the game for far longer periods of time. Overall I feel the game, like every other Dynasty Warriors game both adds to and detracts from the base formula, so I give it a 7 out of 10.
*lights bottle rocket* *PFFT!* Oooh . . . ahhh . . .*nothing*
That describes DW5. Which is an enjoyable game at first, but after playing through it a few times, I've found a few flaws that detract from it.
DW4, previous installment of the popular Dynasty Warriors games, was in most hardcore fans eyes a piece of crap. It took away everything fun about Dynasty Warriors, added a few things, and left us in the cold, basically becoming a "run up to groups of five troops, kill them, move onto the next five." Dynasty Warriors 5 comes out two years later, amid much anticipation, and claims to fix many of the problems DW4 had; more aggressive AI, better allies who didn't die instantly, the removal of the autolock feature, and a LOT more troops saturating each stages. In these aspects it both succeeds and fails, proving again that KOEI can never tweak a game to perfection. Of course, like all reviews, this is opinion, but it's well-reasoned opinion.
Something anyone should be forewarned of is that KOEI is notorious for taking a base formula and driving it into the ground. They never make huge gameplay modifications and usually just try to tweak the formula with each sequel. So don't come into this thinking it'll be a totally different game.
Dynasty Warriors has never been known for gorgeous, Metal Gear Solid-style graphics. But considering that usually literally hundreds of troops would be rushing you at a time, it was forgiveable. DW5, however, has absolutely GORGEOUS levels that surpass anything in the previous installments. The characters themselves are well-designed and rendered quite well, and the effects in the game are great. The greatest achievement of KOEI is easily the now great draw distance and a huge increase in the number of troops onscreen at a time. While slowdown does still occur (something I believe KOEI claimed to have elminated), it's few and far inbetween, and usually only lasts for a moment or two. My only true complaint is that while they did take the time to synch up the lips in cutscenes to match the English acting, they kept the FMV bits in their natural Japanese motions, making it look very awkward.
Bringing back a vast majority of the voice actors from the previous installment, and again choosing to nix the Japanese voice acting option, KOEI both succeeds and fails (like always). While most people complain about the lack of Japanese voice acting, I frankly don't care. It's not especially authentic, and the English voice actors do a fine job (for the most part). Compared to the previous game, the VAs are much more enthusiastic, giving the game a more "real" feel. However, don't come into this game expecting GTA or MGS-quality voice acting, it's not THAT great.
The music has also improved. Most of the music in DW4 was either boring or boarderlined on making you want to hit the mute button. Not so in DW5. While they did keep a lot of the Chinese instruments, it's changed up a bit in that the guitar is again heavier and more aggressive, and a bit of techno (yes, techno) has been added. Overall it creates an interesting sound that I feel matches fine.
KOEI has trimmed a lot of the fat this time around. For the most part, the fans responded quite negatively to the Create a Warrior and Dueling, and were indifferent to a few other bits. All of which were removed. Instead, KOEI spent it's time with the maps, scripting, and characters themselves, and the result is rather impressive. The maps in the game are well-designed and interesting, the script itself is pretty interesting, considering that half of it is made up, the characters have been differentiated even more, and a lot that had no real personality in the last game were given a boost of character, the addition of more solid voice acting just adds to it. It was quite pleasing seeing the improvements.
The gameplay, too, has been tweaked. The weapon leveling is gone, replaced by a more Samurai Warriors/DW3-esque "collect" mode, allowing you to choose from your plunder which ones you like. A new feature is the weight class, where the weapons now have three possible weights (heavy, medium, and light, of course), and the character using them is affected accordingly (heavy increases attack, but lowers attack speed, light does the opposite, medium is the default) which adds another dimension to the gameplay, which I felt was well-executed.
There tend to be missions in each map, similar to Samurai Warriors, but without the severe penalties of SW. Except for a few maps historically correlating (Chi Bi, Guan Du, Yi Ling) where failure to do the mission meant death, the missions tend to be rather unimportant and don't destroy your morale.
However, there is one place where Dynasty Warriors 5 falls on its face: the difficulty.
Dynasty Warriors 5 is easy. There's no two ways about it. Easy is embarassing, normal is easy, hard is easy. The only difference between the three modes is the increase/decrease in enemy stats. I feel this really isn't enough. It's like making the archers overpowered in DW3 or an enemy could kill you in five hits in a duel in DW4, it's cheap, not hard. Chaos mode is a cop-out. While it is insanely difficult, with even peons being able to kill you in a few hits, that, too, is cheap, not hard. The AI, with the exceptions of the enemy generals, is for the most part lethargic and uncaring, but when they do hit you, they take out huge chunks of your life bar making you wonder if steroids were secretly handed out behind your back.
Again, while this is difficult, I MUCH rather prefer a game where the enemy fights back, but doesn't kill you in three hits. I don't understand it, either. DW2 and 3 were both difficult for that reason (though 3 had the unpleasant addition of overpowered archers), I don't see why 4 and 5 had to completely miss the point. Because of this, I have a feeling that Dynasty Warriors 5 will end up collecting dust in a few months. Don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE DW fan, and if they'd actually get the difficulty thing right, I'd actually play the game for far longer periods of time. Overall I feel the game, like every other Dynasty Warriors game both adds to and detracts from the base formula, so I give it a 7 out of 10.
