Dynasty Warriors 6

"Hack, slash and a whole lot of Halberds."

Welcome to the 6th edition of Ancient China's most famous battles and officers as they fight one and other for supreme control over China. This edition is infested with rock music, thousands of soldiers charging to their doom and hundreds of taunts and battle quotes to mock those you brutally slaughter. This is Dynasty Warriors 6.


Story

The story is well, exactly the same as the other 5 games. You take the role of an officer in Ancient China and fight the bad guys to fulfil your lord's dream of supremacy, peace and an end to all the chaos. One thing DW6 does that different from the other titles is create a lot of different and somewhat unneeded sub-plots and significantly alters history in certain characters “Musuo mode” (which is basically your story mode). A lot of people die at different times, some survive and others switch sides. This does led to a lot of different endings and it can get pretty confusing to determine exactly what's fact and what's fiction. Your best guess is just to go with the flow and enjoy the stories as they run, despite how ridiculous they can get. Long story short the officer joins the lord, conquers the land, kill the bad dude and end the chaos. They then jump on a horse and ride off into the sunset or stay and govern the land. The stories become far fetched and quite predictable, but it's nice to have the order of each battle and see your character progress from an ignorant sod to one who understands why they fight. Then there is Lu Bu's story. If you do don't know who Lu Bu is, he's pretty much the Achilles of ancient China, with badass weapons. This time, he has two mini-halberds which he attaches to create a pinwheel of ultimate doom. His musuo mode is entirely fiction from the go but each battle becomes huge generally because your goal is to kill everyone. This can be almost 2000-3000 soldiers to plough through at times. Besides the corniness of the other musuo modes, Lubu's is just plain good fun despite the effort required to unlock (basically finish everyone else's). However, don't go end expecting flawless performances and plot-hole-less stories.


Graphics

Shiny things, you'll learn to love them. A good majority of the weapons, skills, armours, enemies and officers are polished off with coats of colour to show their allegiance or just that you can kill thousands in style. The landscapes are pretty dam good for the game, with beautiful sunsets and mountains. The landscapes also have a lot of additional features that make the thought of riding over the crops of thousands of Chinese farmers all the more entertaining. Each battlefield is unique in its own little way because they are always significantly different and makes the though of having to play the stage again not a huge chore. Most of the characters pretty much got makeovers, for good or worse. A lot are giving a positive makeover (Lu Bu, Zhuge Liang and Sun Jian) but a lot are looking worse off (Zang Fei, Pang Tong, Sun Shang Xiang and Zhou Yu). Opinions differ however, so others may enjoy the new looks.


Game play

In the old game play department, there is A LOT of changes. I'll start with the good. A new system called renbu was implemented as an answer to the lazy ass percent of people who basically button bash the entire game away (e.g me). Every time you hit an enemy, you begin to fill up your renbu meter. There are 3 levels to renbu, and as it progresses your moves are expanded and combo's become longer (XXXX becomes XXXXY and so on) allowing you unleash more kick ass as the battle strides on. This good because all you really need to do is aim and smash the buttons anyway, and removes unneeded combos. The DW series is basically like any button basher, expect you have hundreds of enemies of the screen, and can easily rank up to 700-1000 kills per fight. Horses are back as well, and they actually do something! On lower difficulties you can basically ride through any opposing force on a high level character and horse and will not have to do anything, because the horse's trample damage is rather high. With a legendary horse at a high level, the battles become a breeze because of the enchantments the horses acquire allowing you to zap freeze and burn enemies as you ride through them. It's rather entertaining finishing an entire battle with just your control stick on a horse, but of course entirely defeats the purpose of the game. There is not a whole of lot of letdowns in the game play other than the tech trees and weapons used by the officers now. About a third of the totals of officers playable have unique weapons, while the rest have weapons that are clone for another 6 of them, usually pole-arm variations or swords. This is extremely depressing because a lot of the characters lost their appeal from former games and have become cloned drones. For example, my beloved Zhou Tai lost his katana and receives a cloned sword. It's a tough thing that might turn people off this game, and really hurts the unique nature of each officer. It wouldn't have taken long to fix either, which is disappointing that the developers let this stay as it is. The most devastating change is the unfortunate and inhumane changes to the beloved Zhang He. Not only is he not beautiful in appearance, he has… lost his claws. Now he wields a dumb looking pole-arm weapon and entirely lost his appeal as the eccentric officer of Wei to become just a dull and pointless officer. It sucks. However, Lu Bu is still a merciless monster. The greatest praise of DW6 is the revamping Lu Bu into a guilt-less killing machine with the most unique ancient weapons I've ever seen. You'll rush to level 50 with Lu Bu in no time, killing thousands of swine and vermin along the way. Overall, the hack and slash nature is still here, and a lot of good times and battles are ahead for if you ignore the glaring flaws with the generic characters. Musuo mode's are still good, and the addition of tomes makes mopping up hundreds of enemies fairly easy and not as tiresome as you might imagine.


Sound

Ye….the sound. A warning, it's corny, really corny. After you defeat an officer, your character says a stupid line to announce he has killed someone, and also when they acquire bases and score 1000 kills. Lu Bu still sounds like a freaking monster, but the others officers sound pretty dumb and almost make it worth turning off the sound because hearing 1-4 lines over and over each battle gets very tiresome. Besides the voice acting, you'll be listening to a few songs for each battle with a mixture of Chinese influenced music and rock mixed into one. Considering there are not a lot of tracks, you get over them quick and they can be a pain to listen. The groins and clashes of weapons also become very familiar very fast because you'll hear them a lot. Try and ignore the sound, if you can.

Replay value

There is a heap of unlocking officers, costumes and achievements to be found. Not only that, but it can be hard work to look for better horses and weapons, so this encourages you to play on higher difficulties and stages where they are more abundant. And if you are bored out of your mind after 16 or so musuo modes, there are time trial like challenges to complete and of courses plenty of stages to play and 4-5 difficulties to play them on. There is a lot to do and a lot to unlock and if you are still bored, try completing the game on Chaos mode. You get this achievement and you know you've done well because on this mode, you basically get 2-3 hitted by normal troops and 1 hitted by officers. So, have fun.


Story - 5/10
Graphics - 8/10
Gameplay - 7/10
Sound - 5/10
Replay Value - 9/10
Overall - 7/10

Unneeded changes hold this game back. You'll have a lot of fun playing it if you are new to the series, but those who have played it before, prepare for a bit of disappointment but an overall satisfying experience. Of course knowing Koei they will always stab you in the back in the form of expansion packs. Basically every few months after a release, they add additional modes and a few petty changes and release “Empires” addition. Not as DLC or disc form add-ons, but as a stand-alone title. Koei are known for their money grabbing tactics, so it's nothing out of the ordinary.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/09

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