Dynasty Warriors 4

"The latest and greatest from Koei"

“Dynasty warriors 4” is the latest game by Koei and is expected to be one of the company’s best selling. The game involves large-scale army vs. army combat in which you are a general taking on almost an entire army by yourself.

Story: The story is one of the best I have seen in a while, probably because it is based on real people and events. The fact that it is based on real life events gives a feeling of closeness will the character. It’s hard to talk about how great the story is without giving away some of the key points. So your just gonna have to take my word for how good it is. Over all 9/10.

Sound: The music in this game is excellent. The chinese traditional music redone with new age style suits the game amazingly well. Though it can at time become monotonous when looped over an hour. The voice acting however is not as brilliant as the music. The very American sounding and sometimes outright goofy voices of the characters make it somewhat hard to believe that the story is set in ancient china. Over all I give sound a 7/10.

Control: Controlling your general is fairly effortless but can become confusing in tights corners or around a lot of enemies. When mounted on a horse the control becomes significantly more difficult. When riding a horse you become more sluggish and when you run into things the screen shakes and moves until you ether stop or become unstuck. Attacking in this game is not only easy but also truly fun to do. A mix of regular and charge attacks make it able for the player to mix a multitude of devastating attacks to make an effective strategy against the enemy army’s masses. An 8/10 for control.

Graphics: The graphics of this game are nothing short of outstanding. The detail in all of the characters changeable costumes is incredible considering the great number of playable characters with 6 “skins” apiece. The landscapes of the missions are pretty average, Blotchy and pixilated in places, but the great enemy and character graphics more than make up for this. The Create a warrior graphics are somewhat generic with little options to customize how your general looks. Graphics get an 8/10.

Game play: The game play has improved nicely since Dynasty warriors 3 (DW3) The enemies are much smarter and now tend to block and attack more than once. The officers in the game are much smarter than they were in DW3. They attack more and retreat when low on health; this is quite annoying but much more realistic. A lot of the generals are pretty unbalanced some are undoubtedly much better than others, This ranges from being able to beat the later levels with a brand new Lu Bu to having trouble beating low level generals with cao ren. Free mode is a very useful tool to build up your general for some of the harder levels. 2 player versus mode is very fun though it has some problems. The mist in the background is misleading because you expect things to come out of the mist but they show up 8 to 10 feet in front of you. Enemies tend randomly evaporate and reappear attacking you in the back. When the other player uses a musou attack it freezes and spins the camera around for both players, this is unimaginably annoying for the player not attacking. When you near a wall the camera will move into odd positions so that you are able to see in front of you, but this only makes maneuvering more difficult. Even with all the problems beating the stuffing out of your friends is insanely fun. Challenge mode is also great fun. It has a multitude of modes to test and hone your skills. Considering everything I give game play a 9/10. I upped it a little for the great story mode.

Extras: This game is jammed packed with extras. It is almost annoying because you have to unlock almost everything in the game. You start with 9 of the possible 42 playable characters. Every person has there own secret weapon to unlock and to unlock levels for free mode you must beat them in musou mode (understandable). To unlock everything gives this game good replay value and as many play hours as you feel like putting into the game. Extras gets 10/10.

If you are new to the Dynasty Warriors games this a game you really must try out, along with the rest of the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” games. If you are a DW or Koei fan this is a must have. This is a grand game and one of the best new releases for the PS 2. Over all the game a 9/10.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/03, Updated 04/21/03