Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends

"At a second glance...definitely better"

Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends

Name rings a bell doesn't it? Yes, if you haven't heard of this series of games yet, it's most likely cause you don't pay too much attention to video games, no offense. This my friends, is the series that has been chewed up and spat out by reviewers. Why? Mostly because this series has not changed significantly over the installments. And DW5: XL keeps the tradition alive.

Gameplay: 8/10

If you don't know the basics of the DW series allow me to refresh your memory. It consists of this, choose a character (48 to be exact), choose a level, romp through a battlefield by pressing square and triangle in 8 possible combinations. Rack up a thousand or so kills, and kill off the commander. Level completed, gain rank points and weapons and different items. Ah...got to love the DW formula. Don't get me wrong, as bland as I make it sound, it's still very fun to kill a thousand people. Plus, it's not like the combo set ups are impossible to memorize or ridiculously numerous. (Which can be good or bad depending on the person I suppose)

Music: 7/10

I'm not a huge fan of their "rock-orchestra" or whatever you want to call it. But one plus to this installment is that they brought back a couple of the tracks from previous installments. It adds a feeling of nostalgia for the DW fan. And not to mention that the earlier tracks (like DW3's) were much better than some of the later ones.

Voice acting has always been a hit or miss for Koei. The same cast is mostly present, with a couple changed (for the worse, in my opinion). They do a decent job.

Graphics: 7/10

What can I say? They're not amazing and not ugly. Considering the large amounts of enemies that are on screen at one time, the character models are relatively well rendered and stay pretty fluid. Backgrounds are well done, yet still sort of bland at the same time.

Story: 5/10

Uh...DW has never thrived on story, so turn away if you're someone who lives for the story. For the most part, the legend stages will make no sense whatsoever to you if you've no knowledge of the history. But then again it doesn't really matter. But just for your big fat information, basically it is ancient China (200 AD-ish) where the Han dynasty has crumbled and the land is divided in 3 with Liu Bei, Cao Cao and Sun Jian (technically Sun Quan) trying to gain control of the land with each representing the kingdoms Shu, Wei and Wu, respectively. And they've got a whole bunch of officers ready to help them out.

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Basically everything above here doesn't really play too much into actually deciding on buying this game. The only thing you really need to read about are the 3 (technically, one) new modes in the game. Destiny,Xtreme and Legend mode.

Xtreme mode was brought in in the 4XL, and it's back in this one. This time, they've added 2 player to it though, a big plus. It's basically the exact same idea. Go through an endless "story". The big difference this time is that to upgrade weapons, you can go to a blacksmith and give him the iron you've found so that he can change your weapons. Pretty much everything about the weapon is able to be changed. Oh and the big "attraction" of this mode is that it never ends and never heals you. From my experience, I can easily say that this Xtreme mode has been made way too easy when compared with it's DW4:XL counterpart.

Legend mode was also brought back from 4XL. This time however, it's not one legend per character. It's one legend per lots of officers. Some of the legends are based on actual events that happened in the 3 Kingdoms era. Others....are weird. To put it simply, it's a one level story mode. A cool thing is that, different characters will play out the legend stage differently.

And the actual new mode is Destiny mode. Whereby you create a custom officer, and start him off in the world of DW. Your objective is to become the best there is in your army. Problem? You start off really weak...as in, peon weak. But this mode is actually pretty interesting and actually makes the DW series look more strategical.

Some additions in Destiny mode are the ability to power up your army with things like "Attack x2" or the ability to set up ambushes. And even the ability to defect in a battle. Doing these things is what allows you to gain cool new costumes for your custom characters and also makes you much more powerful.

As you can see...not much new. But it's a good rent. I'd say rent it just to try out the new Destiny mode which I found really fun. However, if you are a "hardcore" DW gamer, I would definitely suggest a buy just for the new Destiny mode. It adds a lot of strategical elements that have been missing from the DW franchise. Overall, 7/10. That is not an average.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/01/05, Updated 05/30/06