Dynasty Warriors 4

"Koei keeps getting better and better.."

Another installment in the great Dynasty Warriors series has come upon us, and this one is better than any of the previous ones. With some drastic changes in the gameplay, it drastically is the same game at the core; run around and destroy all enemies in the Three Kingdoms period. On to the review..

****GRAPHICS****
Koei decided to vamp up the graphics in this version, and I must say they look beautiful. They completely redesigned everyone in the game, although some of the characters don't really look that different. Also, there are a good bit of variety in the stages in their appearances, and they also are well done. The animations of every character in the game are smooth, although I still experienced some slowdown, but Koei seemed to eliminate most of it. Also, the ''disappearing enemies'' in two player mode still exists, but that also seems to have been fixed a little. One last thing, the CG movies are splendidly done.

****GAMEPLAY****
Koei introduced and changed a lot of aspects in this new addition. Instead of finding weapons for your characters (there are three new ones: Cao Ren, Zhou Tai and Yue Ying), each character only has one weapon. They get experience each time they defeat an officer, and their weapons go up levels (up to 9). There are still the special weapons that you can obtain, though I haven't really gotten any myself yet. To go along with this, every character in the game received a new 1st and 3rd charge move, which added a little bit more strategy in your attacking. Also, instead of elements being already attached to weapons, you instead find orbs (items) in battles that have elements on them. You can only equip one elemental orb to your weapon at a time, and they are only activated on charge attacks when your Musou gauge is filled. That brings me to items, since they changed a little bit in that department. You now have three different sections for items; saddles, orbs and regular items. No longer do you have to waste an item slot on a saddle.

Instead of the Musou Mode being stage after stage, it's divided up into chapters. Also, there are only Musou modes for each kingdom, instead of each individual character having a different storyline. In each chapter, you're able to choose which battle you want to go into, instead of being forced into one. Also, some officers will want to challenge you to a one-on-one duel, which is separate from the main battlefield. You have 45 seconds to try and finish off the officer, so work quickly or you'll end up in a draw, no matter who has more health.

There's also something new in this game, which is the Create-A-Warrior option. You can create up to 4 different characters, which can be brought into Musou mode. Beating the Musou mode of each kingdom will unlock more options for you in the CAW. You get to choose from head, body armor, ankle armor and waist armor for your appearance. You then get to choose from an array of weapons, which will give you the moveset of an officer. For example, picking Pike 1 will give you the moveset of Zhang Liao. This option is nice, since it can give you endless opportunities (can only have 4 characters created at one time, but can overwrite them) for playing through the game, if wanted.

****SOUND & MUSIC****
Koei also decided to completely change almost every single track in the game. It's now a mixture of guitar-rock like music and what appears to be some Chinese instruments. I liked a good portion of tracks from the previous games, and I still like a good portion of them in this game.

Though the music is great, Koei did one very bad thing. They got rid of the option to choose between English and Japanese voice acting, which means the entire game has English voices. The only problem with this is that the voice acting in this game is horrible, although much more tolerable than the previous games. It is still one of the few problems I see in this game.

****DIFFICULTY, REPLAYABILITY, & LONGEVITY
They seemed to hike up the difficulty of this game quite a bit. The regular enemies are much tougher than they were before, and they seemed to tone down the archers, though they're still annoying (they made the arrows quite large in this game). This game will last you a nice long while, considering all the things you have to do.

If you loved the previous DWs, then this game is more of the same happy goodness. I believe it's also a great introduction to those who would be new to the series. I'd say buy this game if you love hack-n-slash type games.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/28/03, Updated 03/28/03