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At this point, you either like the KOEI "mass battlefield" games, or you don't. Dynasty Warriors 6 picks up right where the others left off, with more of the same. Once again, we're thrown back into what sort of passes as Chinese history, taking up the roles of one of the Three Kingdom warriors and hacking our way to glory.
First off, the game has never looked better. DW6 is a clear jump up in graphics from even the recent Samurai Warriors 2 for the PS2, and the battlefields are familiar while looking much, much nicer. DW6 does a good job of making use of the PS3's heavy graphics horsepower, filling the levels with flowing water and leaf-dropping trees that actually are cool to look at.
Second, the combat is just as fun as ever. As always, one is able to slaughter entire fields full of enemies, collecting dropped bags of weapons and experience to crank up one's stats. Some of the weird DW affectations remain, such as squads of troops that mysteriously appear out of mid-air around you. All in all, however, the combat system holds up well even though it has basically been reduced to pure button mashing even compared to earlier versions.
Each iteration of Dynasty Warriors seems to add some good things while unfortunately removing some old standbys. For example, DW6 retains horses and even lets you level them up, permitting one to obtain strange steeds such as one that freezes anyone it runs over, or gives you a free weapon at the end of each level (presumably carried off in its teeth). Loose horses even run around on the battlefield smashing into people, instead of just standing around like idiots. Another new feature is a skill tree that is filled up with little skill points based on levelling, although there's really not much thought put into it. However, other items from earlier versions are sorely missed: new weapons do not appear upgradeable with money (indeed, there is no gold to be found) but instead are simply found as-is. Nor does one receive a bodyguard hireling who can level up; it's a horse or nothing. Having a bodyguard bomb thrower or monk who hands out life foods is sorely missed. Harkening back even further (DW 4, if memory serves), the inability to make a customized character or use a first-person bow and arrow still rankles. DW 6 adds the ability to climb up ladders onto walls or archer towers, but no ability to then use a bow to shoot people below. It's kind of silly.
Lastly, it's worth noting that the game is quite challenging. Even at the historically cream-puff "Normal" setting it is pretty easy to get murdered, notably by the over-juiced "fury" characters. I had an 18th level character with pretty good weapons get killed in two hits by some commander who wasn't even legendary tool Lu Bu. Interim saving is key even on the lower difficulty settings.
All in all, DW 6 is a good addition to your PS3 game library. I just dream of the day that KOEI puts good features into a DW game and DOESN'T remove all the good ones they'd added the prior time around.
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As someone who has every Dynasty Warrior game(Empires and Xtreme Legends included) as well as the Samurai Warriors, Warriors Orochi, Dynasty Warriors Gundam, and even the two PSP games. I think I can comment with some authority on this game. I like the visuals first of all. This is a big step up. The frame rate seems excellent as well. I encountered no slow downs in play. The addition of climbing ladders and swimming is nice. In turn the makers took out a few elements that I liked with leveling up weapons and bodyguards. The gameplay itself is basically the same thing you have been playing for years. If you are a fan of the mass battleground slaughtering enemies kind of game, then this is still going to be right up you alley. For me the story is getting a bit stale. I have seen the same time frames and characters a little too much now and I wish they would try something new. Still it is fun and I can easily recommend it to any Dynasty Warriors fan.I've been playing the Dynasty Warriors series for years. The previous games were by and large flawed, but tended to have some redeeming value...and Dynasty Warriors 5 even approached a level as close to perfection as the limited conceits of the game would reach.Lo and behold, Dynasty Warriors 6 comes out, and *everything* is now broken. This game is so bad that I'm breaking my two-year pause in writing reviews. It's just impossible not to vent.
Pros:
The acting has marginally improved from previous Dynasty Warriors games. That's about the only improvement.
Cons:
It seems Koei has swapped in the game mechanics and proportions from the Samurai Warriors series. So now your character is smaller onscreen. The physical motion of the characters no longer feels unique; every warrior moves the same, the weapons feel the same, except a couple of useless novelty characters (eg. the new Dian Wei) who move like they're tied down with lead weights. You'll feel like you're playing with a controller that's been soaked in beef fat. And they've filled the entire screen with running peons and your allies so that now when you enter a major skirmish, the whole screen flies with character names and hyperactive figures so that you can't even tell where your actual opponents are; they just drown in an ocean of writhing masses. The overhead maps are now so tiny that you can't even use them to locate the enemies around you; the red icons (enemies) look exactly the same as the blue icons (allies).
They've reverted to the horrible system of: Utterly useless allies, commanders made of butter who love to rush that spot where three super-powered enemy warriors are standing, and giant maps with objectives that require you riding from one end to the other about eight times per mission. This shouldn't be categorized as a fighting game; this is a "running game".
Allies are utterly worthless unless you're just about to score a killing blow on a super-charged enemy general...in which case your allies will rush right in to steal your kill with one last hit...and boom, you fail your mission target! Thank you very much! You no longer get a bodyguard, and even your horse seems hell-bent on messing you up by trotting away just as you're about to mount. Oh, and there will be many times when you're running around after a battle, unable to find your horse because it becomes invisible when it's behind you! Fancy playing hide-and-seek?
Your character is anemic. The "Renbu" system they implemented on this game is about the worst idea they've ever had. Why? In previous games, you get more attacks in your combos by getting better weapons. Once you get the maximum, your character is powered up and you're all set. Here, the "Renbu" system means that your character starts out every level with only three attacks in the chain. The "Renbu meter" shoots down if you're not fighting...and let's remember that this game specializes in making you run from one end to another with nothing in between, so by the time you get to that big battle, your character is back down to a miserable three attacks. It's the equivalent of starting every mission as an untrained, newbie character.
Enemies are overpowered. This has been the case for most Dynasty Warriors games, but in this case, they've now made enemy blocking impossible to break by getting behind the enemy. What's the result? Enemy generals will just block and waste your time until either their allies get behind you to gut you, or they'll just wait until your other allies elsewhere fall like flies, or your commander runs headlong into oblivion. Anybody remember when Double Dragon added the block feature? The ability to block indefinitely just doesn't work in a one-against-many fighting game. You do have special moves that can get past a block, but they're useless because they do almost no damage, and most of your characters are too slow to combo after performing it, so the enemy will just resume blocking after you break their guard. They can afford to, because it takes something like 300 mashes of the buttons to kill one minor general, and after every mission, even one of the easier ones, my hands are paralyzed. You're supposed to be able to kill those super enemies by powering up with Special Attacks or Musou attacks, but many missions will pit you against a super enemy right at the beginning (eg. "The Battle of Chang Ban", a mission that made me want to smash my console), before you've had a chance to pick up power-up items or even build a Renbu or Musou meter. And in those battles, if you get hit by one enemy combo, you die...not to mention that this game will stack three, four, even six minor generals in the same place so that you're one pygmy fighting against seven giants.
It's possible to train up your character, but now it takes so long that by the time I'm ready to play that character's story, I'm bored with the character. And they've now left about 90 per cent of the characters locked -you can't play them, period, unless you play one of only about half a dozen characters to unlock them. Which means you can't pick the characters you want until you've finished with some of the really weak, really annoying characters first. Boo.
The geography is abysmal. I can't tell you how many times I'm pounding on one super-powered general, and after about two straight minutes of hitting the guy with hundreds of attacks, I juggle him off a ledge and he falls into a river, and I have no way of pursuing because if I did, it would take five minutes to travel back to where I need to be and I'd fail the mission. So all that hard fighting work is killed by bad game design. The addition of countless annoying mountains and valleys means that the designers now make you weave left and right just to get across a quarter of the map, and if you happened to take the wrong route...sorry, your commander's dead. As I've said, this is a "running game" -like a Mario game without any of the fun of a true "platform" game.
They've also taken out many of the visual options that would have alleviated the problems. For example, many parts of the maps are so dark you can barely see a tree in front of you, but there's no option to brighten the display. And the badly acted, repetitive "movie scenes" can no longer be turned off, so if you're fighting a battle for the 50th time, you have to mash the buttons to skip it -and even then, your character will grind to a halt, putting you at a disadvantage. They used to offer an option to turn off those movies; I have no idea what possessed them to take that out.
All I can think is that Koei has finally lost the plot and passed the point of no return in its perverse thinking that frustration equals fun. Like Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, this game is frustrating for the sake of being frustrating. I suppose if all you want is a higher blood pressure, a lot of rage, and the feeling that you're at the mercy of game designers making you jump through hoops, then by all means indulge in this game. Everybody else, just go play Rock Band, or NBA '08, or any other game that is actually, well, fun -an enjoyable activity rather than what Dynasty Warriors 6 is -a tooth-pulling source of stress.
Read Best Reviews of Dynasty Warriors 6 Here
***Short review***Good: Hack-n-slash fun still abounds, fans will not be disappointed, smoother game play, higher body count possible, Renbu combo system allows for high hits, leveling up horses
Bad: Hard to see individual battlefield map, small amount of lag still present in two-player, no real major innovation (skill system is arguable), no body guards (arguable)
Ugly: Zhou Yu in thigh-high boots ; Most ignored item in the game is a comb.
***Regular review***
The lack of any major innovations does not hamper this game from being entertaining. You still play as some warrior from China's Three Kingdom's era, making your way across the land by cutting down scores of nameless soldiers along with their named Generals.
You build up your warrior's abilities by participating and winning in battles based on several criteria, such as number of men killed, targets acquired, etc. Your rank as a warrior increases based on the experience you earn at the end of the battle.
Furthermore, at the conclusion of a successful battle, considering how well you did, you might have the option of getting skills. Each skill slot on the skill tree is worth one acquired skill point and will give a boost to your warrior in various ways like more attack/defense power, more health, or some special attribute. I believe this is the same way you level up in one of the later Final Fantasies, cannot remember which. This skill-tree system is one of the new features in Dynasty Warriors.
The gameplay itself is very similar to the previous 4 dynasty warriors (the first one being a one-on-one fighting game). There is a newer way to fight, the Renbu system, that has replaced the weapon as being what determines the length of a combo. Essentially, the Renbu system gives you the option of making ridiculously long combos. It is not unheard of getting combos up to and over 200, whereas something like that would be far more difficult to do in previous editions. I find it less personal than the old way, but that is more a preference; it does not at all detract from the fun. Perhaps thanks to the PS3 hardware, it is much easier to get insane body counts. I was able to get over 2200 in one battle, which I have never done before in any other Dynasty Warriors. I suspect this will be the norm for larger battles, though I averaged out around 1000 (this is when I am not looking for enemies to kill).
Health boosts are harder to come by in this game. Towns, gates, and other bases are more crucial in this game to recover your energy. These places are captured based on the body count needed to capture it; the body count falls faster when you kill corporals or generals associated with the base. Larger bases, larger body count. In order to get into an enemy base, you have to knock down the gate. For larger walls with larger gates, you may get the option of climbing up a ladder. Another new thing not seen in previously. And health boosts in bases do regenerate, as long as the base remains on your side.
There are also no body guards in this game, them being replaced by a more detailed horse component. You begin the game with the option of riding a horse or not. You can choose one of several horses, and level them up by taking them into battle. Most horses on the battlefield belong to the more major generals, and not all of them will have one. This makes picking a horse before the battle begins a good idea You will be able to win more horses by picking up saddles within a battlefield. These can give you access to more powerful horses (though, I have not found out yet how to gain more famous horses like Red Hare). Gaining a new weapon is the same as the previous editions; find a weapon box and there you go. The strength of a given weapon is based on the difficulty of the setting and battle.
Technically, the game is of course superior to any of the previous installments. The music sounds as good as you expect from a Dynasty Warriors. It is not great, but it does the trick. Thankfully, the voice-overs are not as bad as the series is known for. But it looks like the sound effects have taken a hit; musou yells and other dins of battle were not as apparent.
The PS3 does a great job in putting bodies on the screen to be knocked down, which is great on single player. Two player, though, there is some lag when you or your partner are within large groups of soldiers. Although, clearing out the bodies will return the speed of the game to normal. The graphics are pretty good, though for some reason the characters seem a little smaller than on previous editions. Even on non-HDTVs, the graphics are decent. I was not impressed, however, with the musou attacks. They did look as devastating and battle-turning as some of the previous editions were. The crunch of laying a musou out on a large group of enemies was not as satisfying as I wanted it to be.
One major gripe, however, is the lack of a bearing point when you flip your battlefield map from the whole field to what is around you. You will constantly be switching to the start menu to gain your bearings. It is easier to see your arrow on single player, near impossible on two player. This may change with a larger screen tv.
In conclusion, if you are a fan of the dynasty warrior series like I am, then you will buy this game and enjoy it. It will be worth the money just to get through the story of each of your characters, and it hardly gets old (at least for me) to constantly cut through throngs of hapless, ill-paid soldiers. Even though the game did not blow me away and regardless of some of the minor drawbacks, this is a must have for the hack-n-slasher PS3 owner.
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I really hate this game with a strong passion. What were they thinking to change some of the people weapons. My favorite guy has been all redone for the worst they need to take it back to the older versions.
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