Dynasty Warriors

I can't be the only fan of the series (well, besides fleed). My first experience was back with Dynasty Warriors 4 on the PS2 in college. We wasted far too much time going through that game and unlocking characters, maxing out skills and weapons, and finding the different accessories.

Well, Dynasty Warriors 6 came out in the US about a week and a half ago and the copy I ordered from Amazon finally came. I fired it up on the ol' PS3 (although it's also available on 360) and tried to do some 2 player coop with my GF.

The first thing I noticed is that in Musou Mode, I can't pick my character, I'm stuck with the main character for that campaign (as far as I can tell). I don't know if this used to be the case in Dynasty Warriors 4, but I don't think it was since I don't remember being annoyed by it before. Once you start though, you can see the differences right away. Orbs and scrolls and accessories have been replaced with a skill tree and different weapons. It's different but not confusingly so. As you progress you acquire different versions of your weapon that have different abilities (like leech life from enemies, do more damage, do fire damage, etc.) and get stronger. The skill tree allows you to spend points that you earn from leveling up to improve your character. You can add new special moves, bigger Musou or Life bars, increase your attack, defense, and speed, etc. It seems pretty cool in the little bit I've played.

So the first battle we tried to play was The Battle of Hu Lao gate (it's a classic!). The fighting and stuff is all pretty much the same, which I really appreciate. I actually love running around and pressing the same button over and over again. There is some weird Renbu gage which seems to go up with the more hits you get on people as you fight. As it moves up to higher levels it seems to make you more powerful or something. I'm not really sure and I didn't bother to read the instructions.

Anyway, back to Battle of Hu Lao Gate, this battle kicked our ass probably 4 times and we didn't ever beat it. The little pots with life in them seem to be harder to find in this version and when you are a level one character with no special anything, the appearance of Lu Bu will kick your ass. We ended up switching to Free Mode so we could try Yellow Turban Rebellion and another battle. Both of these were much easier thanks to the lack of Lu Bu. We were able to get through them and see how the character leveling works and stuff.

So far I'm enjoying the game a lot. It's very similar to the other Dynasty Warriors but that was exactly what I wanted. I didn't really need a new game. I just wanted one that was HD and on my PS3 and this really delivers that.

I'll keep updating this thread as I play through the game though and would love to hear from anyone else that has or is interested in the game.

They do have the Dynasty Warriors: Gundam game where you get to beat up robot alient Gundam junk. Plus there is Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orichi. I tried the Gundam game but just didn't enjoy it as much without the hokey voice acting and ridiculous mispronunciation of names.

Pursue Lu Bu?! I've played enough Dynasty Warriors to know not to do that. He'll rip your shit up. I was just running around minding my own business when Lu Bu shows up and takes 5/6 of my health away in a single hit. I spent the next 10 minutes running around looking for health somewhere and after I finally found it, Lu Bu had tracked down my girlfriend and killed her.

Hey, in Dynasty Warriors 6 you can actually level up your horse. And they get ridiculous names. Although you don't have bodyguards anymore so I kind of miss having Kevin and Arnold following me around.

The game has been pretty fun so far. I played a few more hours in 2 player mode last night and today. It still seems like it can be really easy to die in though. But it's fun enough and even though it's (extremely) repetitive there's something about it that I've somehow come to love. Kind of like Diablo or something I guess..

So after a ton of playing this yesterday I'm still loving it. I think I've played the Yellow Turban Rebellion battle at least 15 times. It's a great place to start with a new character and the stages compact structure means that you're never running around and not fighting people.

I've finally had a chance to play some single player stuff and it's been pretty fun. There's definitely a lot more on display (effects and enemies) when not doing the split screen. On of the most obvious examples was that I'd played Battle of Hu Lao Gate a number of times in 2 player and never noticed it was snowing. In single player you could see the snow everywhere, and snow flake effects all over the screen. Some of the other effect differences (motion blur, musou effects) may be from the increased screen real-estate though. I don't really care enough to sit down and analyze it though.

I've started to like the horses a lot more, once I realized that they could do elemental damage. Essentially I'd just charge people and my horse will kill 1/3 of them, my weapon will kill another 1/3 of them, and then the horse's elemental effects (Ice/Fire/Lightning) will damage effect about 1/6 of them. It's great fun to ride through lines of fleeing/charging enemies and decimate them. Also, I finally figured out how to jump with my horse (L1 button). That makes getting down hills and over short walls much easier.

As far as the campaign itself, the Musou Mode cutscenes are still pretty ridiculous and I would probably just skip them but my GF likes to watch them so I end up having to sit through the whole thing. If you could tolerate any of the other games cutscenes though, you should be able to take this.

A few more thoughts on the 'skill tree' advancement. For each character, there are 50 upgrade bubbles. These upgrade bubbles are connected with lines, some of which branch or dead end, to one or more root bubbles. You have to start at the root and slowly choose upgrades as you level up (each level lets you select another bubble). The bubbles are your basic stats like, more life, defense, attack, musou.

Then there are other bubbles that are actually new abilities like additional Renbu levels (you start with a single Renbu level and can eventually get up to a 4th), faster Musou gauge filling, faster speed, better horse abilities, additional bonuses to your special attacks, etc. The unfortunate thing is that the path is already laid out for you. All you get to do is choose what order you're going to upgrade them. It would be great if I could actually choose to just to spend all of my upgrades to make my guy obscenely powerful or really really fast. But they've already outlined how your character will grow so you don't really have that much say in it.

I'm still enjoying the games repetitive fun though and would say if you liked the old ones and enjoy a good button mashing game, this one is entertaining. I just hope that at some point they add online play to it. Versus or cooperative battles over the internet could actually be a lot of fun. Could you imagine 8 on 8 battles with this? If done well, it could be really cool.

Wow, this is I think the perfect encapsulation of what it's like to play Dynasty Warriors.

As far as the "strong" attack being gone, that's a not true. There are still "strong attacks" and now you can even get the elemental damage/benefits associated with those too (ice/fire/lightning). Some of the amount of hits you can do in a combo and stuff is also controlled by the Renbu gauge now as well. Dynasty Warriors 6 also seems to use a lot more different elevations. They've created ladder climbing/jumping down mechanics and it can make figuring out how to get around levels a little trickier.

Also, the poor acting and music is still there. Although occasionally it turns from less rock music into more of a fanfare theme. And they've started to pronounce some of the names more correctly (still not how you would actually pronounce them but closer to how you should).

Yeah, they now correctly pronounce Cao as 'Tsow.' He'll always be Cow Cow to me. Luckily they still mispronounce the 'qu' names. For instance, Sun Quan should be pronounced as 'Chew-on' but they say as 'Kwan.'

Um, I don't know why you'd want to go through and play the game with more than 17 characters. But yeah, that sounds about right. I don't really know about how different the weapons are though.

I'm not actually a big fan of the 'empires' army controlling stuff. I like having a single guy and leveling him up and mindlessly killing hordes and hordes of people. I haven't actually played Dynasty Warriors 6 in quite a while.

As far as Orochi goes, I may get it eventually (possibly for my PSP) but with all the actual good and original games that are coming out, I don't know that I'll need another iteration of Dynasty Warriors for another year or two.