Like past Dynasty Warriors games, this game focuses on massive battles fought across feudal China with an epically talented soldier from a dynastic background. This entry in the franchise, however, seeks to introduce some RPG elements into the game—making it play more like a dungeon crawler. The player must constantly seek more and better equipment and skills to more effectively face the increasingly difficult foes. The game is very quest-centric, with the character returning to a home base between each mission where they can purchase new equipment, get new weapon upgrades, hire subordinates, and get trained.
The depth of the game is interestingly variable. Many of the tactical options can be left on default settings or automated, allowing the player to choose how invested they’d like to get into the actual strategies and tactics of the game. Players who are used to the button mashing simplicity of the past titles can get through this one with a minimum of actual role-playing decisions.
Pursuit
There are lots of characters to choose from. Each of the three story lines has at least a dozen characters, each of them specializing in different weapons, and some starting with different chi-powers. For example, I found that starting with “Float” was the most useful, as it allowed Princess Peach-style jumping, which became important for evading enemies. Once the character is chosen, it takes several missions before they have the money and resources to start learning new skills (called chi)—but when they do, they buy them like equipment. This is the first example of the variable depth that the player will run across.
The service in town is called an academy, but it’s more like a skill store, as the purchased chi get “equipped” (each character can equip four in addition to their starting chi), and can be moved from character to character once you gain the ability to bring multiple characters onto the battlefield. These can either be placed to simply make each character more powerful with attack and defence chis, or the player can experiment to try and discover which chis work better for which characters when working as a team. The characters can also either be left to fight on their own, or given specific objectives—deepening the experience further.
There are a variety of characters to choose from.
Each character’s main weapon cannot be changed—only improved—but those improvement options are some of the most diverse I’ve ever seen, leaving the character with innumerable possible weapon configurations. The weapon can be strengthened directly at the blacksmith, or given different advantages from socketed orbs at the enchanter. The character’s secondary weapon can be switched out for a different type, if desired, and it’s also possible to be improved in those same ways.
Just about the only aspect of the character’s development that cannot be customized is their specific proficiency with different weapons. Each character has an immutable path of advancement, which usually makes them most proficient with their primary weapon type, with their original secondary weapon type close behind. Of course, with these advancement paths spelled out for you in the character selection screen, it’s easy to choose a character that develops just the way you want.
Unfortunately, the player is left to discover all of this depth and tactical variability on their own. There is no tutorial at all, and only very few things are explained in the interface. I even resorted to the manual at one point when I couldn’t figure out just what some of the officers’ stats meant, and I still don’t know because the manual was not particularly comprehensive. I was greatly surprised that the game did not bother to teach me its mechanics.
We’ve all gotten used to spending the first half hour of any game just learning its basics, and then getting a sample of a mission that uses each new mechanic along with instructions on how to use it whenever a new one is introduced. To have that left out of a game with such foreign mechanics made it difficult to get into. I spent the first two hours of play confused about what I was doing. Of course, with such potentially simple play, that didn’t stop me from moving forward in the game, and perhaps that was the plan, as I did eventually start to figure out how all this stuff worked just though trial-and-error. Still, the lack of tutorial might make some gamers—particularly those who might have a strong need to know what’s going on—get frustrated.
The missions are pretty straightforward, and almost all have the same goal.
There is little variety to the missions. They almost all consist of “Go to the battlefield and kill the leader before time runs out”. Most of them had bonus goals as well, but the rewards were intangible for most of the game (they would offer up some material or good that would be needed for some enhancement back in town, but there was no way to know what it would do for you without returning to town and visiting every service to look over their menu), and accomplishing them was usually more annoying than fun, so I rarely did them. In addition, the payer does not get to choose which order the quests go in. The plot line, such as it is, is completely linear.
Gimmicks
This character art shows typical costume changes for a character entering Fury Mode.
The characters all have the ability to activate a special Fury Mode. As they fight, a power bar builds up, and once full it can be activated to send the character into a Super Saiyan-style enhanced state. This is what you’re seeing in a lot of the promotional screen shots that have been released; the character’s costume gets more interesting, they seem to catch fire, and some of them get extra-spiky hair. While in this state, the character is stronger, faster, and more resistant to damage. It runs out either when the bar runs down, or when the player activates their Musou Attack—which is stronger if there is more left in the boost bar. As the game advances it gets easier and easier to build the bar and activate Fury Mode (if one takes the right advancements), to the point where most of the time is spent in this mode.
Each officer has a card which shows his properties. Understanding how they all work together takes some time.
Throughout the game, the player will collect officer cards, each with a different set of stats and abilities. These cards can be placed in the town to upgrade the shops and services and be used in the battle planning screen to grant certain bonuses and advantages to the player in certain areas. Learning to use these cards is another example of the deceptive depth of the game. One can either just place them on the battle field and see what happens, counting on their character’s abilities to get them through, or one can really take the time to understand all of the stats and abilities of the officers, so that they can be used to great advantage.For example: just putting two officers in a single area powers down any bosses that might be there, and putting three officers in an area powers up the player while they’re in that area—and if you want to stop there, that’s really all you need to know. However, if you make sure that the officers that you use to power down the bosses have the same element, they can be stronger. If you ensure that the officers that are powering up your character have the same preferred weapon type as your character, you can become even stronger.
Missions can be a bit easier if the team is managed correctly.
The big gimmick here, however is the ability to play the game with others. Players can access a multi-player village through which they can team up with other Live or PSN users to complete the missions as a team.
Panorama
The visuals are colorful, frenetic, and fun. Even with lots of enemies on the screen at the same time, the game runs smooth and clean. The artwork in the game is attractive, and fits well with the theme. The character’s costumes, especially in Fury Mode, are well designed, and serve to distinguish the characters distinctly from one another. Battles produce a lot of eye-candy in the form of particle effects and ability, combo, and kill descriptions. While all of this looks nice, it’s nothing especially new. If you’ve seen another recent Dynasty Warriors game, you’ve seen this one too.
Giant Tiger!
Reigns
The combat is very simple to control: Run toward the enemies, smashing the buttons, and you’ll get some pretty impressive fights. This, however, is another place where the player can choose their own level of depth. It’s still mostly about mashing the buttons, but learning to use the targeting system, and to match the enemies with the weapons that deal the most damage will great enhance your experience. However, while those options make the player feel more in control tactically, it’s an illusion since the enemies are neverending, and always attack in waves. The best tactic is almost always to just jump over or run around the enemies to reach the objective (unless the enemies are the objective), and if you need to brute force your way through them the best method is to just mash the attack button until they all fall down, then move on.
The characters are often fighting many enemies at once.
One holdover from the past Dynasty Warriors games that they should have dropped is the combo system. Each weapon has a special attack, which does completely different things depending on the type of weapon, and which can only be used once every few seconds. This is fine, but the need to memorize a different button combo for each weapon was frankly annoying. The special move should have just been mapped to a single button, and been the same for every weapon. Making players memorize a bunch of different move combos is not an addition to the depth, it’s only an addition to the learning curve—which this game didn’t need.
Noise
The music is typical for a Dynasty Warriors game, which means lots of epic orchestral stuff with Asian overtones. It suits the game well, and lends to the drama of the battles. Unfortunately, the voice acting is also typical of Dynasty Warrior games; it’s campy, poorly executed, and usually does not match the subtitles (a pet-peeve).
Encoding
The game ran flawlessly, and every aspect of it seemed to function as intended.
Last Word
Some of the battles can get dramatic
With great graphics, neat combat modes, and a greatly variable depth, this could be a nice change of pace for any fans of the Dynasty Warriors franchise. The RPG elements are a nice addition, and they do make the game more engaging than the past titles, but it’s not quite enough for fans of slower-paced, tactic-centric RPGs to pick this one up. The battles are still so much button mashing and combo remembering that if you’re not into that sort of gameplay already, the great character development and added tactical depth will not be able to make up for it. Play it if a friend picks it up, or if you see it in the rental store, but unless you already love Dynasty Warrior games, you’ll want to give this one a try before you pick it up.
Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce is available now from Amazon
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