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Koei's juggernaut series Dynasty Warriors is back with just enough to make it interesting again. They even went ahead and gave it a new number. Dynasty Warriors has evolved over time. Originally you started out in a street fighter type of one on one fight. Then in Dynasty Warriors 3 it moved out to the battlefield with armies and generals, elephants and horses. Dynasty Warriors 4 was seen as somewhat of a step back. The new weapons system was not liked by those who had played 3 and had a reputation for being ridiculously easy. Well after playing around a bit with the formulas, engines and features in Extreme Legends and Empires editions (which are basically expansion packs), Koei brings us a new and improved Dynasty Warriors 5.
For those unfamiliar with the series, Dynasty Warriors is set in ancient China and is loosely based on the historical fiction Romance of the Three Kingdoms, about the fall of the Latter Han Dynasty. Three warring families battle across the lands of ancient China, running amok with very simple play once you are into the game. Although getting to the fight may be half of the battle, you have to choose which mode you want, Musou, Free, or Challenge. Musou is story mode, in Free mode you can play any level you've played before with any character, and Challenge mode pits you against time in feats of skill and power such as survival, bridge melee or sudden death. Next you choose from a roster of 48 fighters from different families, and finally equip your fighter with power ups, saddles, weapons, and a bodyguard before entering into the battle.  Battles take place on mapped out areas that are designed with multiple routes from your encampment to the enemy encampment. Your chosen fighter then brawls their way to the enemy general, sidetracking here and there to carry out sorties to assist a general in trouble, to take out a particularly meddlesome opponent or avoid ambushes. Along the way, you can smash crates and jars for health, musou (special attack) and arrows, defeat opposing generals, take over enemy check points and destroy enemy bases. The fighting is simple enough for a button masher to play effectively, but just deep enough that a little finesse will produce 20+ hit combinations. Life bars over the heads of your enemies and allied generals make it easy to tell who's who. If you lose, your lead general is defeated or in some scenarios if your main camp is invaded then it's game over, try again. Once you make it to the lead general, don't just stand there. While your allies will be quick to attack other generals and soldiers, they will leave the final stroke to you. In Musou or Free mode, you will be given a summary of the K.O.s, points, items and more before you move on to the next stage or back to stage selection. "Why should I get this one?" you may ask? Well, people keep buying Madden games. There is a lot of new stuff and Koei has stepped up to the plate and listened to a lot of complaints of which characters have been left out of the games, that lack of difficulty issue, and the weapons system. They've also added in features from the Extreme Legends and Empire expansions such as individual story lines for each character, giving you more background on each general. Now instead of repeating the first three stages 48 times, each character starts off in a different area and level depending on who you choose. Multiple weapons options are back as well. You can store up to four at a time, and the ultimate weapons also return. While not new, the game's engine has been improved with more on screen opponents at once without the dreaded slow down. The boring old jump up and smash down aerial attacks have been mixed up a little, with Crouching Tiger inspired aerial moves and beam launching magicians. They have also added six new characters from the book: Pang De, Guan Ping, Ling Tong, Cao Pi, Xing Cai and Zuo Ci. Both enemies and allies have a little better AI. A group of allies will gang up on an enemy general and enemies will gang up on you if you get too ahead of yourself.  The bodyguard system has been totally overhauled. Instead of your own platoon of up to 8 bodyguards, you have one much more effective bodyguard that actually helps out!!! On top of following you faithfully around, they have special abilities, such as Find and Item that will give you a more powerful weapon or item than if you went alone, and depending on the class of the body guard, you can have a healer, black magician, bowman, swordsman, spearman, or crossbowman. New items include the Tiger Collar, which allows you to have a tiger fight along side with you and Musou Rage adds additional power to your special attacks. They also removed the all or nothing duels system where if you won, you kept going, if you lost, game over, or if you refused or fought to a draw your morale would drop. The play in and of itself it the same old tried and true "find the enemy make his health bar go away and repeat". So if you've had your fill of Dynasty Warriors from previous entries already, go and play something else. 
Dynasty Warriors 5 is considerably more intense that Dynasty Warriors 4. For one thing, Xiahou Dun's (they pronounce all the names for you in game) infamous arrow to the eye is still there but there are other graphic moments that have just been alluded to prior to this. Two specifics include Guan Yu being ambushed and shown run through with swords and when another character loses, a close up is shown of his opponent shooting an arrow into him. You may also find yourself being trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers in certain levels. They must have a lot of beavers on the battlefield too given the language of dam building that pervades the dialogue. While we're on this little bit of immature humor, one character's name is Cao Pi, pronounce with short ﾑI' in game, but either way, there's a pun on the guy's name.
Seriously, although this game has a lot of great things kids can pick up including map reading, teamwork, following directions, bits of Chinese history, introduction to a great piece of historical fiction and appreciation of another culture's folk heroes, this one has loads of rough and tumble action and those disturbing scenes I mentioned earlier. You have to answer the difficult questions with younger kids about the subtleties of war and that there isn't a ﾑbad guy' group (okay, so there is one guy who's a bit on the evil side) . They all had their reasons and most were fairly just. They all just disagreed, a lot. You run around hacking at people with various swords, spears, axes, clubs and fans but nobody bleeds and you don't have a ﾑkill' count but a K.O. count. The ESRB gave this T for violence and alcohol use (they drink in a couple of ending sequences and one character is a known drunk...) Play it safe and go with 10+ since if you play with them, you can press start to skip the cut scenes. Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "Dynasty Warriors" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Dynasty Warriors 5 |
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