Dynasty Warriors 8

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I have been waiting forever for this game to come out and it finally got released today! Of course with each new title in the Dynasty Warriors series some things get better and some things don't but usually they get better with each new addition.

Dynasty Warriors 8 really delivers!

1. Better landscapes

2. A wider range of weapons

3. A new weapon system

4. New designs of characters

5. New characters

6. A bigger story mode

7. Free mode is back

8. And overall better graphics

Of course it does take a little bit to get used to all the new and updated stuff but that's part of the fun :)

Still there were a few disappointments :(

This game kind of fell short in the voice department. During the story mode there is no narrator to describe what is happening. All there is is subtitles explaining what's going on and the subtitles are too tiny to read. In the previous Dynasty Warriors 7, I think everything pretty much was voiced but in this game when you're in the camp and talk to other officers it's just silent voice overs. I was disappointed with no narrator for the story mode and that the voice overs kinda got cut in this game. Especially since the Japan version of this game did have a narrator for the story mode and pretty much everything was voiced (at least by the videos on YouTube)

Also I don't know if it was just my game but there were a few glitches. When a character is speaking during a battle their picture takes a few seconds to appear along with what they are saying and it only happened twice so far but the screen was a few seconds behind the game. Characters would be speaking and there was noise but the screen was just blank for a few seconds.

I liked this game and I am enjoying playing it. I'm just a little disappointed a few things got cut in this game and by the glitches but it may just be my game. Can somebody please tell me if their game has any of the same glitches I mentioned?

I give this game 4 stars.

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Dynasty Warriors 8 Review for PS3

Dynasty Warriors 8 is fantastic fan service that makes serious improvements which solidify it as the best entry in the series to date.

The Good

* Drastically improved AI and difficulty

* Every character has their own unique move-set with their personal weapon

* Largest roster of the series to date

* Best stage design and mechanics yet

* Great gameplay mechanics

* Return of Free mode

* Online and offline 2 player co-op

* Extremely high replay value

The Bad

* Story mode has limitations in terms of character selection

* Some slight slowdown in certain areas of the game

* Some story elements are not voiced

I have been a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors series since its second installment and Dynasty Warriors 3 and 4 were by far my favorites because of their uniqueness and difficulty with 2 not falling too far behind. However, with the PS3/360 generation the Dynasty Warriors series seemed to be going in a different direction with the mediocre Dynasty Warriors 6 and worse, but slightly better in some aspects Dynasty Warriors 7. In probably one of weakest installment to date the Omega team made some bold and questionable changes in Dynasty Warriors 6 which included drastic character changes (which included appearance changes and weapon changes), the introduction of a broken combat system and the introduction of seemingly useless gameplay mechanics i.e. ladder climbing and swimming. Dynasty Warriors 7 was a small step in the right direction and two steps back; character's got their own weapons back (sort of) and the gameplay had been improved, but with a poorly executed online multiplayer mode, the lack of a free mode and the abundance of character clones it made this outing something more to be desired. Come Dynasty Warriors 8, the newest and now new king of Koei's flagship series. The improvements to this game are astounding to say the least and it is clearly evident that Koei has listened to fan feedback this time around.

Many areas of the game have been improved with my favorite probably being the increased difficulty of the AI and of the game itself overall. It is also nice to have characters with their own unique move sets and weapons. In addition, the gameplay is extremely fun, packed with improvements and additions and unlike earlier installments it isn't as repetitive. With over 60 unique characters to choose from, great combat and more features that you can shake a spear at this is a title that I recommend to not only fans of the series, but fans of the beat-em-up genre.

I give the game a 4.5 out of 5 (90%)

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Don't get me wrong, I love Dynasty Warriors and this game is pretty good. But I think the last few days of playing Ambition Mode made me want to punch someone in the head (preferably the game developer).

Let me get into the pros first: I was disappointed by Dynasty Warriors 7 and its lack of story co-op. The main thing I love about these games is playing co-op with my husband. So the huge plus is bringing story co-op back.

I also like the weapons affinity thing. There are three affinities: Heaven, Earth, Man. I can't remember off the top of my head now what each affinity does, but each affinity is stronger against one and weaker against the other. For each battle, you can equip your character with two weapons with different affinities. So that made it kind of fun and strategic since, in co-op, we try to have the two of us have all three affinities so we never have an officer that is strong against us.

The Rage Attacks are also incredibly powerful and fun to execute. I love doing one of those rages in the middle of several hundred soldiers and just watching their bodies fly.

I'm also a fan of how some battles in story-mode can be completed in more than one way. If you fail a mission objective, that sometimes changes the victory conditions. That brings the replayability factor up a lot.

Now the cons: The minor con is that somehow, they manage to make the story-telling part of the game even more boring than a history lesson (even though that's essentially what they are). I remember these segments used to have music and sometimes voiceovers in earlier games. Those at least made the history lesson easier to stomach. I don't know why that's difficult considering the Dynasty Warriors games aren't exactly coming up with new stories. They should just be able to copy and paste what they did in previous games onto these story-telling parts if they're too lazy to do anything new.

Also, there are skills an officer can obtain and equip. Except I feel like the skills leveling is very arbitrary and the game grants them when it feels like it. Like the Fortune Hunter skill. One gets that for defeating officers after a certain K.O. count. The first time I leveled up that skill, I was pretty excited since the map was still full of enemy officers. Well, my next two officers defeated didn't level up the skill. But the one after that did. Then no more leveling for another three or four officers. And then the final officer defeated leveled it up again!

Another minor con is the rendering and framerates. I mainly notice this playing co-op so maybe it's not such a big deal for single players. When playing co-op, the enemies render so slowly! I would see a bunch of red dots on the map and race over there only to find no enemies in the area. Then 20 seconds later, someone stabs me in the back and a whole army materializes in front of me. When entering large battles (the stage where Dong Zhou sets his palace on fire is one example), the action slows down very noticeably. I guess rendering armies and flames at the same time on a split screen was too much for the game? They're not huge issues in and of itself. But for a game that's not exactly delivering cutting-edge graphics, there's really no excuse for it.

The major con bringing this down to three stars is the soul-crushing Ambition Mode. It seemed promising at first: using fame, materials, and allies to build an awesome city to attract the emperor. And obviously, you obtain those by fighting battles. Except after 20 or so battles, all the maps start to look the same...probably because they are the same! And it gets so repetitive! No matter how much you level up your character and which difficulty setting you start on, the starting battle is always an extremely easy one and you have to work up to 10 consecutive battles or so to get the difficulty up. Obviously, that can be solved if one never returns to camp. Once you return to camp, you have to start all over again from the easy boring levels to the difficult ones. Except returning to camp is pretty necessary considering one starts of with a limited number of allies that can be obtained and that number only increases with improving buildings and fame, which you need to go back to camp to do. So probably the first 50 battles or so will never be consecutive. Then there are also max numbers of weapons and animals you can obtain. So, for example, if you're trying to go 90 consecutive battles to try and get Red Hare, well, you'll be out of luck if you happen to max out your number of animals on battle 89 because you'll have to go back to camp and sell some animals before you can get Red Hare! Also, there is a finite number of officers in Ambition Mode. So once you collect them all, the battles will have no enemy officers and you're stuck defeating unit commanders in every single battle. So that very fun and interesting weapons affinity thing I posted as a "pro" above becomes basically useless in Ambition Mode because unit commanders don't have affinity weapons. At the point I'm in in the game, I'm basically going through 2-minute battles to try and get Red Hare. Somehow, I don't think its worth it and will probably give up soon.

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I'm a casual gamer and this game is so much fun. I'm glad they brought back two-player local co-op story mode. Load times are quick, and its a fun and easy game to get into for players new to the series.

My only minor con is that some of story mode includes some lengthy text that is not narrated (they typically narrated text in the older games). This text is fairly small even on a 47" TV. Hopefully there will be an update for this in the near future.

Characters and graphics in general are well polished and smooth. I can't wait to see what Dynasty Warriors will look like on PS4. In the meantime, this game has tons of unlockable characters, weapons to acquire, and abilities to max out, and five different difficulty levels to keep me happily busy. Pick this one up you won't regret it.

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The Good:

+A lot of gameplay tweaks and additions make it the most fun to play

+A large variety of characters, weapons and abilities

+Varied missions each complete with unique objectives

+Lots of different story modes to play through

+At the end of the day, the game is just a ton of fun, particularly with friends

The Bad:

-The voice acting is laughably bad

-There's no narration at all with the events inbetween battles

-A few slight performance issues get in the way

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Koei has pretty much made their mark in gaming with series such as Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi. For the most part all of these games play very similar to one another with usually little differences in their sequels. Some gamers have come to love this while many critics have come to loathe this. Dynasty Warriors has had a roller coaster of highs and lows. The Playstation 2 era was quite kind to Dynasty Warriors as the third and fourth games in particular had devoted fans. The PS3/360 era has seen more of a mixed bag with Koei experimenting a little bit. It has caused for some mixed reactions among fans. But fear not... they got it right with Dynasty Warriors 8. Gameplay wise it is by far the best Dynasty Warriors has to offer.

The story in Dynasty Warriors never changes. You'll play through the events of the three kingdoms. Wei, Wu and Shu. There's another faction here called Jin as well. There is a story mode for each force to play through. As you play the story gives you some insight as to what's happening. From a production standpoint, Dynasty Warriors has never been a standout title. While the story can be fascinating to take in (because it takes place in the Three Kingdoms era of China), it is certainly not presented well. There are moments in between each mission where you'll read a lot of text in a slide show like fashion, but there's no narrator to speak of. And beyond that, when you see the games cutscenes they are very poorly voiced and written. The voice acting, in particular, is sometimes laughably bad, while the writing tries far too hard to be complex. Someone at Koei seems to think they're being prolific as there are a lot of big speeches about honor and the like... but most of it just comes off as really cheesy and hokey. What really comes off as cheesy is whenever a particular character dies throughout the story. You'll have fun with Dynasty Warriors 8, but you may find it hard not to laugh at some of its poorly conceived cutscenes. On one hand it's kind of charming as it's clear that the team has embraced this hammy approach, but on another it takes away from what is actually supposed to be quite a series story and recount of history.

The force you choose to play as each has their own separate story. And as it progresses you'll come across new missions and select very specific characters for each story based moment. It isn't like a couple of other games in the series where you select a character. The game is about making sure that the key people in the battles are the people you play as.

Hacking and slashing is the bread and butter of Dynasty Warriors 8 and those who are familiar with any past Koei game (in particular, Warriors Orochi) will know what to expect. You can make your basic strikes while adding in certain charge attacks from time to time. You also have your Musou gauge, except this time its split into three chunks. If you manage to fill up your rage then you can use all three at once to perform a rage musou which is an incredibly powerful attack. All the basics of Dynasty Warriors are there.

A few things have changed or been improved. The entire arsenal of weapons is opened up to every character. This means that any character can pretty much use any weapon they want. And the game encourages experimenting. Likewise, you can always equip two weapons at once and change between them on the fly. Every character can do this. Every character also has a favorite weapon. And using this weapon grants them the ability to make extra attacks. Each weapon also has an affinity. Either Heaven, Earth or Man. This actually adds a rock-paper-scissors element to playing Dynasty Warriors. Each affinity is strong against one affinity, while being weak to another. For example, the Man affinity is strong versus Heaven affinity but weak to earth. Officers using an affinity you're weak against have an advantage against you and vice versa. If you do manage to use a weapon with a stronger affinity you can score some extra hits with some very cool attacks in the process. Since you can equip two different types of weapons on every character, it's always a good idea to equip a weapon with a totally different affinity from your other one.

There is, as always, a catch. Each character has a compatibility rating for each weapon. So while they can equip anything, there are definitely weapons that characters are not as good with as others. Each character has a compatibility rating with every weapon. The higher the compatibility, the better they are with said weapon. Weapons also have abilities on them that allow them to do things like turn some attacks into lightning based attacks, increase attack when your life is low or boost defense. There's quite a bit. In addition to this, performing certain feats in battle can also allow you to learn abilities that you can equip on characters. You might end up defeating an officer using a weapon with the same affinity and learn "Victory Cry," an ability that increases damage dealt to officers. Or you may learn defense boost or attack boost. There are quite a few abilities to learn, and you can equip up to four.

All this makes Dynasty Warriors 8 feel like there's actually a somewhat strategic element at play. Yes, it's definitely hack and slash, but now players may have to sometimes change up their tune when playing. It's a lot of fun in the long run, despite being as simplistic as it is.

While hack and slash is at the forefront of Dynasty Warriors 8, the missions can sometimes be about much more than that. Each mission has a certain set of objectives that must be taken care of at any given time. Instead of just rushing an enemy leader, you may have to go to various locations and perform certain duties or take out a small group of officers in order to open gates, stop an enemy advance or put a wrench in the opposing teams plans. Sometimes the goal isn't about defeating an officer but helping one escape (or preventing said escape). Each mission seems to have a good set of objectives to take care of. In the story mode this is especially important because in some missions you can branch off to other side story missions. You may even "change history," by getting to a hypothetical ending as opposed to the more historically accurate one.

All this means that if you decide to, there's A LOT to do in Dynasty Warriors 8. This isn't even taking into account that you'll need to find every characters best weapon, or all the things that can be done in Free Mode. Dynasty Warriors 8 is a pretty large game. There are tons of characters to play as and tons of stages to play through and experience from two points of view. As you progress through the story you'll be able to play the same levels in Free Mode as well where you can select any character you want and just grind and have fun.

Dynasty Warriors has never been a graphical powerhouse and Dynasty Warriors 8 is no problem. It isn't the most powerful game out there. It's fun, but you're not going to be writing home about how detailed everything is. It's nice to see a lot of enemy troops on screen at one time, but the game sometimes buckles under all of this, as the frame rate tends to drop. Other times there can be odd glitches or hitches in performance. While playing two player for instance... I discovered that the officer my friend was playing as was also roaming around on the field as an AI (thus there were two of them). Sometimes when performing certain tasks in levels the events simply failed to initiate when they were supposed to. The last bit rarely happens (it has only happened to me once thus far) but the others typically tend to happen all the time. For those wondering about installation, I'd highly recommend doing it as the game has some pretty lengthy load times otherwise.

Musically the game is alright. There are some tunes and battle themes that really stand out. As already noted, the voice acting is laughably bad, but what really stings is that the story has no narration in the sequences between the battles, where instead you'll have to read it all. The font is pretty small as well and you can't read it at your own leisure. It's done in a slideshow like manner. Dynasty Warriors, of course, has never been known for having excellent voice acting. It's often been pretty dry.

What stands out most in Dynasty Warriors 8 is the gameplay. Particularly the refinement. And teaming up with players is a treat. Doing local or online co-op really adds a lot to the experience. Playing co-op in Dynasty Warriors is just a lot of fun. Likewise, the refinements to the gameplay are welcome as it never really feels like the pace of battle is slowing down. Dynasty Warriors may not be a technical marvel, but it certainly is a lot of fun to play.