Dynasty Warriors 5

"The Best One in the Series Yet, but that might not mean anything to newcomers"

Ah Dynasty Warriors, a popular game in the world that achieves less than aspiring reviews and with good reason. It really hasn't changed all that much since Dynasty Warriors 3. So why is it so popular? It takes the IQ of about 50 just to simply beat the game. Ok maybe not, but it doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence to beat this game. Here's your general idea of the game, you pick one of 48 characters from the Kingdoms of Shu, Wei, or Wu and go kick a ton of ass and lead your kingdom to victory.

Gameplay: 8/10

Well what's new in this game? Not a whole lot but what they do add is are nice additions to the game. First of all it's back to the character musou modes instead of the dumb idiotic kingdom musou modes. That was one of the best things of Dynasty Warriors 3 and here it's back. There is no CAW( Create a Warrior ), no VS mode (kinda sucks...), and there are tigers! Yes there are tigers in a select few of the battles.

So I just went through the basis of what's out so I'll go on with what's new. A very nice new addition is something called Musou Rage and if you've played Samurai Warriors I'll be able to describe it much easier. It basically takes you into the mode of being all powerful yet you're not holding O in Samurai Warriors and you attack and attack and attack and it'll hurt your enemies an enormous amount. This is great considering if you're attacked by say... Lu Xun, Gan Ning, and Cheng Pu, you can use Musou Rage and then your actual musou and do a ton of damage. Note that you have to find Musou Rage items in order to use it.

Also going along with the musous are the fact that the true musous are much different than past ones. Instead of being on fire you'll be on fire and at the end do a very powerful crowd clearing attack that also works well against generals, I like this since you can defeat Lu Bu sooooo much easier in this game. :)

There are much more enemies in this game than 4 which is a sigh of relief for me because that was the whole fun of the game and it felt great just to simply kill hundreds upon hundreds of people in this game. Also, they add the whole territories from Empires (meaning on the battlefield, there will be little bases and if you conquer it you will gain a surplus of morale.) This is nice but there isn't enough strategy to make it an actually intellectual game, it's still mindless mashing for which it gets annoying.

There are 6 new characters in this game, Xing Cai, Guan Ping, Pang De, Cao Pi, Ling Tong, and Zuo Ci. They are great additions to the game and I rather like their choice (except for Zuo Ci). The Musou Mode is great in this game and most have 5 stages, some may have 6 if they are important enough. Most battles take around 20 minutes and a Musou mode on normal will take an hour and a half. But keep in mind that there are 48 characters.

Graphics: 7/10

Alright here's where the problems start to appear. When I saw pictures I thought there was a noticeable amount of change in the graphics but I was sadly mistakened. There is not much changed to the gameplay graphics except for more detailed enviroments (but still doesn't look much more detailed regardless). The CGI's however look impressive and makes the major bulk of the score, they look much smoother and they look great.

Now you've probably heard about KOEI's boast of the fact that there was no fog, but I was surprised to hear they were right and when I played it, I played it without any slowing down. This is another factor of the graphics here, in past times we all got a ton of slowdown and people disappeared and it's good to hear that there is no fog (especially if you have played Samurai Warriors)

Sound: 7/10

Well what's there to say? The same old rock music is back, the lame acting is back but yet there are some fine parts in the game that pleased me. Some of the songs are good but the whole rock music just doesn't work for this type of game, since when did China have an Aerosmith like band?

The acting in this game is slightly better than Dynasty Warriors 4 (Xiahou Dun sounds especially good in this game!) and they have changed some characters voices to fit the character better. Unfortunately, Lu Bu and Xing Cai sound like utter crap! However, they kept most of the good actors in Dynasty Warriors 4 back into 5 and that's good enough for me.

Replay Value: 9/10

Now some of you may be wondering, "How can DW5 get a replay value of 9?" Take this into mind, as much fun as it is at first, it can get real real real annoying just tapping square and triangle and throw in circle every once and a while. But the bulk of this score is all the fact that there are 48 characters to play, not to mention if you challenge yourself to max them all up completely, it could take well over a hundred hours.

Story:

This is just to give newcomers a little background on the information of the story. This game is based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is a true event where three rulers named Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan all fight to unite the land of China. Along the way to their path of victory, they encounter tyrants, and must work together at some point to destroy one another. It is a great story, and I highly recommend you read the books sometime if you get interested in this game.

Overall Score: 8/10

This is the best Dynasty Warriors game yet but it still doesn't add enough changes to this game to add some variety. Right now Koei needs to straighten out their priorities and instead of making a lot of money every year, they could simply make a great game altogether and make even more money from newly added fans. If you're a newcomer deciding on buying this game, rent it first because you may never know if you get bored, if you simply love it, buy it, because there will expansions and the endless amount of replay value going. That's my two cents on the game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/02/05