Dynasty Warriors 5

"Back to basics"

Shin Sangoku Musou 4 (Dynasty Warriors 5)

This review is for the Japanese version of the game. As far as I understand it there's not much difference in the English save for voice acting.

Graphics/Sound: 9

Very, very pretty. Given the number of polys onscreen at the same time, the game still manages to deliver an amazing amount of graphics detail. The player characters look very individualistic and incorporate some rather pretty texture mapping in their costumes. The peons are, of course, less detailed, but still manage to look decent when standing next the the PC models. The main improvement over previous installments is the lack of lag or slowdown when there's multiple generals or a lot of peons onscreen at the same time. There remains some amount of lag, but not nearly as much as the previous games. And if you like eye-candy, there are a lot of (albeit rather short) very well-rendered FMVs throughout the game. They've certainly gotten the hang of modeling semi-realistic looking people, even the weird ones with the big beards and faces reminiscent of bears.

One complaint about the graphics, on the other hand, would be that poor clipping on occasion leads to a white lattice around the polygon edges of certain structures (caves, for instance) and bits of characters' clothing falling through their bodies when they turn around.

The soundtrack isn't bad, though excepting a couple of tracks nothing too remarkable or memorable. Most of the music is the standard series rock/metal fare; don't expect to find the somewhat more melodic themes from Samurai Warriors. On the other hand, what with all the yelling and carrying on by the various characters in combat, it's not likely you'll be paying much attention to the soundtrack anyway.

Unlike the previous installment, there's a lot more voice work done by the various characters; there's a situation briefing and debriefing before and after every mission, and story mode brings up a diary-like narration. Unfortunately, this sometimes serves to highlight the rather different levels of experience in the cast, as some of the characters' voices sound professional while others sound like they're reading off a cue card. Also, voices for non-player generals and peons slmost all sound like some variation on the theme of sniveling used-car salesman.

Otherwise, the cut-scenes are decently scripted, and while a lot of the events have a somewhat more serious tone than previous installments (characters actually die when they're supposed to, historically), some of the content is just as whacky and tongue-in-cheek as ever. *cough*Zhang He*cough*

Gameplay: 9

The controls and basic gameplay are nothing new to the series: it's essentially a slash-and-hack game. If anything, this installment has gone for something closer to DW3, focusing more on action and combat than in-battle events and the like. The enemies don't increase in stats and abilities as your character does, meaning that the stages remain at a fixed level of difficulty; first starting the game with no items, it might seem a bit harder than, say, beginning stages in DW4, but once you find some decent bonus items and have played a couple of stages, most of the normal mobs will seem trivial, even on Hard mode.

The bosses (other generals) on the other hand, are quite a step up from the regular soldiers. While they don't spontaneously recover health anymore, the stronger ones will give themselves 30-second offense/defense buffs. On the other hand, they will stand still and "charge" for a couple of seconds before using their own musou attacks, and while that's not interruptable by normal attacks it is possible to use that time to get away, or pre-empt them by knocking them over, using your own musou, etc. For the most part, "hard" bosses aren't so much dangerous in being able to kill you as just have a lot of HP and defense that you have to keep chipping away.

There is a bonus Extra Hard mode which can be unlocked, during which it's not so much a smarter AI as simply an upgrade on the attack/defense values of the enemies and the lack of recovery items, though the latter can be slightly mitigated by taking a fan-wielding bodyguard along. Nevertheless, in this mode it's the actual enemies that are a threat to the player, as opposed to your commander-in-chief being defeated.

Each returning character has had their movesets slightly modified, but nothing too drastically changed from previous games. The major change would be the C5 attack, which knocks a group of enemies into the air, properties depending on character. The Jump Charge attack has also been modified so that each character's JC is unique, which is a nice touch.

They've also gotten rid of the target lock from the previous games, meaning that your character, while attacking, will actually move in the direction your control pad is telling it to, rather than having to be pried away from Random Peon #22657 with a crowbar.

Having said that, there still remains the issue of power balance between characters; there are just some characters with movesets that are better than others in terms of overall range, speed, and performance. I don't mean just Lu Bu being heads and shoulders above most other characters as he's designed to be, but there's a definite power scale between the rest of the characters, and it doesn't usually match who/what the character is supposed to be. Compare, say, Dian Wei, who has to time his hits and combos fairly accurately, to Ling Tong, who can kill infinite numbers of anything by just mashing C4.

As for the bodyguards, yes they still get in the way, knock enemies out of range, and steal your kills. At least there's only one of them this time, and the advantage of having one along is that you can use the true musou when standing next to the bodyguard.

Replayability: 8

Unlike DW4 and its faction-based story modes, each character has a unique story mode between 5 and 8 stages long depending on the character, which gives some incentive to actually use all the characters. In DW4, for instance, there's no real reason to use all the characters once you've cleared their force's respective story modes. While some of the stages overlap, for the most part (particularly if you rotate factions), there's enough variation to be keep the player's attention for doing more than just one story mode per faction.

On the other hand, once you have cleared all the characters and collected all the items, there's not too much else to do in the game. The challenge modes are interesting, but the imbalance between various characters makes it hard to do anything unique (there's a reason half the Challenge rankings on the official site are dominated by Zuo Ci).

The game itself remains quite good in terms of just mindless slash-and-hack, and is pretty decent as a stress reliever. Unlike the slightly puzzle and exporation based action games such as Devil May Cry or Castlevania, there's more focus on just swinging a weapon and watching mobs fall over, though you do have to pay at least a bit of attention to the overall battle.

There are certain events and missions that occur during battles, but nowhere near as many as Samurai Warriors, allowing the player to play through battles in their own way. The limitation on most events is speed, and as such it's quite frustrating playing as a slow-moving character without a horse. Once you've been through a stage a couple of times though, you know all the scripted events; there's no random element to the events.

Innovation: 7

There are a couple of new systems this time around, but nothing truly groundbreaking. The weight system for the weapons, for instance, adds some customizability (or perhaps just makes it slightly less frustrating to use the big slow fighters) but doesn't really make that much of a difference in the long run, if only because certain characters' movesets are designed with a specific attack speed in mind. Woe be it if your favorite character's unique weapon happens to be heavy, though.

The Musou Awakening system adds an element of unpredictability to boss encounters, as it stacks with whatever other bonuses the boss already has; an Awakened Lu Bu can literally kill you with one hit. However, if you're not taken by surprise when the effect begins, it's just a matter of running in circles like a headless chicken until the effect wears off. If you thought it was bad seeing big feathered antennas closing in behind your character, try big feathered antennas glowing with righteous fury. Using the Awakening item for the player is generally reserved for final bosses of a stage, since they have inordinately large amounts of HP and defense.

Of the mini-forts that are introduced, only the Supply Points have any real strategic value, since left alone they will raise the morale of enemy troops. The Attack and Defense forts seem to be just places you can defeat the guard captain for a powerup item, and possibly drop the morale of the enemy army. Since losing a fort lowers morale for the entire opposing force and stops all other forts from doing their job for a certain amount of time, given the player's progress the opposing army's forts never really get to do much as they're always in a confused state. And the morale loss means that there are a lot more stacked odds and various events that raise the morale of the opposing force. The cumulative effect is not much change from the previous games, but it can be harder to turn losing battles around. And possibly an effect on the player's morale as they see the "entire enemy army's morale increased" message for the umpteenth time, but it's really not the end of the world.

The new additions brings the total number of playable characters to 48, an almost ridiculously large number. One gets the impression that they may be somewhat running out of ideas for new weapons and movesets, though none of the characters are actually clones. The new character choices range from "about time!" to "huh?".

The bodyguard system offers a bit more customization, although customization in this case would be running Guan Yu's Escape several dozen times until you get a bodyguard with the weapon/stats you want. It'd be nice if you were allowed to do things like rename the guards from the rather repetitive computer generated names (1001 variations on the theme of Flower, for instance), or direct their stat growth rather than let the random number generator do it for you. However, having just one, more powerful guard means that at least it seems that they're doing something, even if the something turns out to be stealing your kills.

This installment also cut out the ability to create your own characters, rather surprising given the amount of detail said system was developed to in Empires, but with 48 characters already I'm not sure that's that much of an issue.

Overall: 8

DW5 is essentially a pretty solid action game, and rightly focuses on the gameplay in lieu of extras. It doesn't have a gripping story or mystery or life-changing metaphysical revelations, but what it does have is plenty of beating on things and an entertaining parody view of a famous historical era, the basic elements that first made the series popular. As such there's not that much that they can do in terms of innovation, but the fast paced, action-based system remains fun as ever.

As for the extras, given Koei's marketing strategies I'm certain that it's probably only a matter of time before the DW5 Moushouden (Xtreme Legends?) is released with the usual slew of extras. Unlike Samurai Warriors, however, DW5 is a decently well-balanced and fun game without adding extras or tweaking the system. It also doesn't offer anything that drastically different from the previous installments, so think of it like DW3 with better graphics, more characters, and flashier eye candy.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/05, Updated 07/14/06