Dynasty Warriors 6

"Sixth of the game"

Ready for another trip to China for some ancient battle action? No? Well to bad, because it's gonna happen and you can't stop it. This is another installment of the Dynasty Warriors series, the 6th in the numbered series, 5th one to sport the ‘army general vs. army' gameplay, and the first in the series to be designed specifically for the nextgen systems. But did they fix it to break the mold of the series or is it just more of the same?

Once more the story is the same. You play as one of many characters that were present during a period of Chinese history chronicled in the ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms' story which was based on actual events. You choose between one of many characters and live out their more prominent battles and experience their conflicts and trials. The characters are broken up between the various kingdoms; Shu, a kingdom ruled by Liu Bei who believed in justice and an end to the chaos and pain of the common peasant, Wu, a strong naval oriented kingdom that relied on strong family bonds and clever engagements to survive, and Wei, the largest and most belligerent kingdom ruled by the ambitious dictator Cao Cao (finally correctly pronounced in the game as T'sao T'sao). Each of the kingdoms and many other lesser rulers and warlords fought for power in this time period trying to become the ruler of China.

The game play is slightly varied this time around. For one, the characters themselves have been, in some cases, drastically redesigned. Rather then just looking like slightly updated versions of themselves, the characters look to be designed to head in a new direction of design. For example, Pang Tong, a character usually depicted with a large sun hat, a scarf over his face, and green robe, is now depicted in a large furred robe with a brown furred back, a large billowing robe with special markings on the sleeves, a white mask, and two white feathers extruding from a bandanna, overall giving him the look of something like a moth. A lot of characters also have had their moves changed as well as their weapons. An example of this would be Dian Wei, who normally sports an axe, now is equipped with a short chain and a large spiked ball. The fighting style has also changed too. Rather then a simple move set that expands as the character gains better weapons or levels (starting with 4 strikes, working up to 6 or more), the game instead offers a new system that lets your attacks move nearly continuously, usually doing a set number of attacks, but the attacks blending seamlessly so you move more like the characters do in the cut scenes, attacking in one fluid motion. As you build up a combo, you can jump levels in this attack system, which allows for the fighting moves to increase and also makes the attacks get stronger or faster, depending on the weapon you are using (There are standard weapons, power weapons which increase in attack power as the meter goes up, and the swift weapons that increase in speed as the meter goes up). Other changes includes that you gain abilities through your weapons and horses, some abilities including the ability to increase attack at the cost of defense, or being able to knock arrows away with attacks, or win weapon deadlocks more often. You also have a skill system to customize your character. Each time you win a map, you earn skill points to buy skill slots. These slots can increase your stats such as attack or HP, or give you special abilities like doing damage to lesser enemies when running in a sprint, or becoming immune to certain elements. You also can get tomes which allow you special abilities in battle, such as summoning fire or a volley of arrows, or running ahead and swinging your weapon in a dash. Bases once more come into the game, this time playing a more realistic role. Rather then some attacking and some giving boosts, they usually just act as rally points or as harassment areas. Most bases usually just act to block your path and you have to batter them down to get by them. Others like smaller outposts act as turrets, since they are populated with tall towers that harbor archers that will fire volleys on passing enemies. Aside from outposts, bases have doors that have to be knocked down. Rather then taking out a defense captain, you actually have to beat the door down with you weapon and then clear out enough of the enemy soldiers that they give up and abandon the base. Once the base is yours you can go there for health items. The game also adds two new novelties to the series, swimming and climbing. You can now climb up archery towers to knock those pesky archers down, or climb up a wall to get into an enemy base. You can also swim around water areas of the map, but you have to be careful because enemies can as well. The characters have slightly expanded stories as well, exchanging the occasional CG sequence, in-level cut scenes, and character narration at important points, the game instead gives you a story scene before and after each level that uses in game graphics to further the story of the characters. The game also gives you objectives to accomplish in the levels that award extra experience points to level up if you complete them. That said, enemies no longer drop stat increase items, such as attack boosters or defense boosters, rather they drop either horses, weapons, or experience items that give loads of XP. The duel system has also been changed, replaced is the old system where you are transported to a vacant spot, instead the soldiers just form a ring around you and your opponent and you fight to the end, your enemy getting stronger for the fight but offering more XP if you win.

The game is not all good changes though. The continuous attacks means that the normal enemies are far to easy to blaze through, and the AI for the general infantry is dumbed down or at least they are too weak to hurt you at all, unlike in games like DW5 where they would often hit you in the back if you gave them an opening to whittle you down, making you stay on your toes. That said the enemy lead officers tend to do a massive amount of damage. In a later level with Zhao Yun, I was able to knock out the lesser enemy officers with just a few hits, but if a named officer like Zhang He came along, he could easily kill me in as little as 5 hits. Blocking is pointless as well because they can attack just as fast as you can, and their first hit knocks away your block and the second one kills you. Another problem is the duels, in that it's supposed to have you fight one on one but that's not the case often. When in a duel, enemy officers are powered up and harder to kill, but often while you are fighting enemy officers will wonder into a duel and suddenly you are fighting not one officer, but 4, and they are all powered up and trying to cut off your ghoulies. The cut scenes are not bad but the characters look a little artificial. In some areas due to the way the light hits them, their skin looks like it's made of canvas as fabric, and looks fake. I'm guessing they did this because the alternative might have made their skin look so reflective that it looked more like plastic. But by far the worst offence is that they spent so much space on the game for the improved HD graphics that they removed a huge chunk of the gameplay. There are 41 characters in the game, many characters like Meng Huo and Pang De completely removed from the game. Only 17 of the characters have Musou, or story modes. That means that the rest of the characters are just available for free play and nothing else. That is a massive let down that only some are worth a story and the rest are simply ignored. What made the last game worth playing was that as you went through a story for once character you had many many more to experience afterwards that were all different and fun. This one would be over too quickly and there is no reason for that.

The game is obviously the best looking one of the series and the choice of the new weapons and character designs gave it a new and updated look, but the lack of more characters to play through as means that you are really cutting back on the replay value of the game. People who enjoyed the last game will find this one far too short as they go through 17 characters when in the last game they had about 48 to play as. I'd say that if they eventually released an update that adds more characters, it would be up to par with 5 maybe, but as of now this game is a big step back in terms of overall worth. You cannot simply cut out more then half of a game and replace it with flashy graphics.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/09

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