Dynasty Warriors 6

"The same candy in a new wrapper"

Dynasty Warriors is a name etched in many of our hearts. This series essentially set the foundation of a massive on-screen beat-em-up type of game. I remember playing the Dynasty Warriors 2 demo back on the PS2 and immediately falling in love. Though looking back at the game now and considering it fairly primitive today, it was something new and innovative. Since then I've purchased every Dynasty Warriors game with the exception of 5. Reason was they kept rehashing the same game, and just adding new characters and stages, with some minor tweaks to the gameplay. With Dynasty Warriors 6 came a whole new console and the possibility for many new innovations to the series. Did it live up to the hype? Let's find out.

Story
Dynasty Warriors is set during the Three Kingdoms era in China. These 'Three Kingdoms': Wu, Shu and Wei battled for supremacy of China. Each kingdom had very distinct rulers and generals fighting under them with different ambitions for the land. I can't bash on the story being unchanged here, for there is a limit on how much you can stretch history before it is essentially a complete branch off from the original history. Koei already bends the story quite enough. Regardless, the cinematics are excellently done, and leave you wanting more.

Each character now has a distinctive story mode for a set amount of characters. The downside for the more unique story mode for each character means that some characters were left out for Musou mode play completely. There becomes quite a disappointment as it makes some characters only levelable in free mode.

Graphics
Quite good, but not amazing. For a game like Dynasty Warriors, it is expected that graphical capability will be sacrificed in order to hold the frame rate with all the on-screen soldiers. Problem is...it doesn't. The game still suffers from frame rate drops during crowded areas and a lot of on screen activity. It is fairly disappointing Koei can still not optimize their engine to avoid too much going on at one time. Even if it had to look a little worse, or have fewer soldiers on screen, I think a more stable frame rate would be more appreciated.

Despite some of the draw backs of the new graphics, the environments and playable characters are all extremely detailed and very well done. While many of the characters have received make overs, Koei has a great artistic vision here. While some of the outfits worn are outrageous, the amount of detail put into them is astounding.

Controls
Still very good. The old Dynasty Warriors has always had very fluid and responsive feeling controls, and DW6 is no exception. Not many problems here to address, but stiff controls for many next-gen games seems to be something commonplace now, luckily DW6 does not suffer this.

Gameplay
The gameplay in DW6 still suffers from much of the same formula from the other Dynasty Warrior games, with the exception of some game play tweaks to change it up a bit. However, change is not always a good thing.

Renbu System
As many people remember from the past games, your maximum amount of strikes was dependent on the level. Once you hit the requirements to swing the maximum amount of times, your character would permanently be able to strike that number of times. By combining triangle at various presses of Square, you could mix up your moves as well. Dynasty Warriors 6 has done away with all of this. Literally called the 'Renbu System', Dynasty Warriors 6 allows for infinite combos. While it sounds good on paper, the system is flawed and overpowered at the same time. If stunlocking generals comes to mind from attacking infinitively...you're right. You can literally kill generals now without every taking a hit if you stay on him correctly, he will never have a chance to strike at all. There are 4 levels of Renbu in all, each level adding a new move to your combo. Once you complete your combo, it literally goes back to the beginning and continues into infinity. Triangle is much less significant in conjunction with square. In fact, Triangle is now its own move set alongside square. For some characters, using their triangle move set is the best move set, making the regular square swings useless, and vice versa for other characters. While seemingly overpowered, what sucks about this system is building it up to max level. To level up the Renbu System, you must defeat many enemy soldiers. The gauge actually decays when you are out of combat. In many instances you will be running or using horseback to get to the next battle location. During this time you can lose 1-2 levels of the Renbu Gauge, making your hard work getting it there mean little. In my opinion, they should have kept the infinite strikes but taken out the actual need to build the gauge and have it decay. It should be based on your character level or type of weapon.

When looking past the revamp of the combat system, Dynasty Warriors 6 is much of the same game. You fight and kill many waves of enemy soldiers, while throwing in a few generals into the mix. Generals leave behind a reward once defeated, allowing potential for new items, horses and weaponry.

There is still much twists during the battles, and a lot of combat dialogue that make the battles feel more alive. The AI is more intelligent and aggressive this time around, which works in your favor and makes the challenge a lot harder. Even the private soldiers no longer circle around you meaninglessly and will strike you at any chance they get, even from behind now. Running into a crowded enemy base now has a much more likely chance to get you killed because of enemy troops being relentless in their attack. The friendly AI can hold their own a bit better, but still get routed easily if you do not hold their hand at times.

In addition to the new makeover given to nearly every character, many characters have had their weapons replaced. This has greatly improved some characters, and ruined others. Many slower characters are at a great disadvantage to fast characters. Xiahou Dun and Dian Wei come to mind in particular. However, unlikely characters such as Diao Chan now clean house among some of the best with their new weapon and move set. Even Lu Bu has been toned down a bit, using some kind of pinwheel weapon over a long spear, which greatly has reduced his range. However, he is extremely powerful at Hu Lao Gate this time around. Some characters now use bows exclusively for their weapon. Characters not efficient in bows will no longer use them, which is not a bad removal because they were pretty useless really. Some characters even have the same move set as other characters, which seems a bit lazy in my opinion.

Some characters have also been removed from the previous games and less stages from the previous game as well.

The game also features the other game play modes such as endurance test and speed tests that were in the old games. You can even submit your high scores to the online leader boards. However, this game begs to have some sort of online play. I believe that would be innovative enough to really put the series in a new direction.

Pretty much everything else I didn't address directly uses the same formula from the other Dynasty Warrior games.

Sound/Music
I've always enjoyed the music in the Dynasty Warriors games, and I am happy to say that I enjoy the music in 6 as well. I think it would be cool if they utilized the hard drive on the PS3 and allowed for custom soundtracks to be used. The sounds in the game are alright, but unfortunately use many of the same sound effects from the previous games.

Final Thoughts
Dynasty Warriors 6 has simply not made the big impact on the PS3 as it was anticipated to do so. With the lack of new features and story modes, it is expected that we will see a DW6:XL or DW6: Empires sometime in the future. It is frustrating to shell out more money to basically get something that should be included in the original game. Empires should have been enough to include in every new game. The Dynasty Warriors series desperately needs deeper and new innovative game play. You can only improve the old formula and give the graphics a face lift so many times.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/08

Game Release: Dynasty Warriors 6 (US, 02/19/08)