Dynasty Warriors 5

"Nothing groundbreaking, but still fun"

Dynasty Warriors 5 is yet another installment in KOEI's vision of the Three Kingdoms of old. Choosing one character loosely based off of an ancient Chinese warrior (of which you have 48 to choose from) you go through a stage flow of anywhere between four to eight stages and exercise your right to unify and control China. This of course has been the basic guidelines for the past three Dynasty Warrior games and little has changed since then. If this is a good or bad thing it is best left up to the player and how much face time they've had with the series.

Essentially the latest installment in KOEI's fan favored series is returning to it's routes where all the characters have an individual musou (story) mode. For a cast almost in the fifties, this is an impressive feat. At the beginning of each new battle your character will speak his mind on the last encounter with your enemies and the upcoming fight, giving each musou mode a fresh and personalized feel to it. Even characters who share the exact same mission line up have a different feel to each battle (Lu Bu and his concubine, Diao Chan, for example). A very nice touch indeed!

Unfortunately, because everybody's story mode tries to stick with their character and the path that person took through history, the length leaves something to desire. A good number of story modes will end the game with a lot of problems left unfinished (either one or both of the rival kingdoms still surviving and the land still not unified under your banner). Historical accuracy has never been a very large qualm of KOEI's as any DW fan knows (DW4's Sun Jian any one?) so why start now?

In the gameplay department little has changed from the last installment (or even in the more recent spin-off, Samurai Warriors). Basic attacks are still performed with square, charge attacks with triangle and the ever loved musou attack with circle. While one could easily dismiss the title as a mere button masher the various charge moves and counter attack ability let the player put some thought into how s/he'll decimate their opposition. Of course just hitting square repeatedly with the occasional musou will get you through most of the game but that's beside the point. What does spice up the gameplay is the addition of three new gate ways: Attack, Defense, and Supply. Storming one of these strongholds and defeating it's respective commander can easily turn the tide of battle to your side and confuse the enemy's army. This can also be used against you in the same way so if you want your army to stay in a good shape it's best to make sure the ones that hold your side's color stay safe and clear of enemies.

Graphics are somewhat of a mixed bag. In game graphics of course look nice with fairly realistic facial expressions and smooth animation. Furthermore, the amount of soldiers that can be onscreen at once can number anywhere between 10 and 50 (I'm sure if you try hard enough you can squeeze 100 hundred in there) and more impressively even with such huge numbers of polygons on screen there is next to no slow down (I'm sorry to say but two player is an exception to this). Better yet the fog of war is gone (again, two player is an exception to this).

What holds the game down, in my opinion, is the clipping effects and the FMV scenes. Clipping effects, well, I find that a bad reason to bring a game down, unless of course it comes up again and again in multiple scenes and is horribly noticeable. Only one instance of horribly noticeable clipping that comes to mind and that's one of Gan Ning's introduction scenes and his bandana cuts into his chest. It's nothing very big (I'm just being picky). it ust looked tacky. Also, one might ask why I say FMV scenes have bad graphics. First of all the animation in these scenes are choppy and the textures on the models are grainy and otherwise ugly. I blame this on the fact that most of FMVs are showing close ups of the character models are closer than the textures were ever meant to be seen as. A very good example of this is the scene before He Fei and a certain pirate props his feet up on the table to show them in their full pixeleted glory. A picky observation? You bet!

The music,of course,is the ever lovable and enjoyable rock music that have plagued (or graced) the series since it's roots. I personally love this type of music so it doesn't bother me at all. That they've even remixed some of the old tracks is an added bonus to long time fans. For new fans... Well, it's up to them if they can take the out of place, yet well made, guitar riffs.

The game is fully voiced, from cinema scenes, narrations, battle cries, everything. Too bad it's only available in English, so no dual audio for purists. A good deal of the old Dynasty Warriors 4 voice actors have come back to reprise their old roles, but a good deal of them have not (Cao Cao, Lu Bu, and oh dear lord, Sun Ce). Some people's new voices work well (Guan Yu) while others (Zhang He), well, ah... Not so much. At least the lip syncing is done well, too bad the overly drawn out dramatic pauses are still in. Win some you lose some I guess.

Replay value in this game is heavy. With all the characters to unlock, saddles, orbs, items and weapons to unlock, completionist should be busy for months.

Overall Dynasty Warriors 5 is a great game for gamers unfamiliar with series while only a mediocre game for returning fans. There isn't really anything new in the game that hasn't been done before. Perhaps branching, drawn out musou modes or an improved empire mode would've helped, I can't say. It's pretty shaky to say it's a good fifty dollar purchase, but I can guarantee it's a solid forty dollar sale. It's by no means a bad game, its just like what I said before, it's nothing groundbreaking.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/05