Dynasty Warriors

"It's actually pretty good, but boy is it ugly"

Dynasty Warriros begs the question: "How many times do we have to play through the Three Kingdoms story?" According to Koei; as many times as it takes. Dynasty Warriors is a series of 3rd person action games where the player must assume the role of a general in one of three Chinese kingdoms (Wu, Wei, and Shu). The tales of these kingdoms and their epic battles for supremacy is outlined in the ancient classic "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" novel, written by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century. Often considered to be one of the most detailed, epic, and ingenious novels of all time, it provides a great foundation for games. Initially, the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu, and Wu are united under the Han Dynasty and repel the invasion of the Yellow Turbans. Shortly after, General Cao Cao finds himself disappointed with the leadership of Dong Zhuo and attempts (successfully) to depose the short-lived emperor. Thus, the stage is set for Dynasty Warriors.

Gameplay

The player is given the option of choosing which kingdom to represent, as well as which general in the kingdom to play as. This has no effect on the first set of missions, as all kingdoms find themselves repelling the invasion of the Yellow Turbans. After this brief tutorial mission, you'll find yourself plotting the advancement of your army against your enemies. Each kingdom has a slightly different set of missions, usually involving routing and conquering the bases of other kingdoms.

Unlike the previous Dynasty Warriors installments, the PSP version is divided into small battles which, actually, make the game more strategic. You now have to plan whether or not you're going full-force to the enemy's base (often at the expense of supplies) or whether to steal as many supply depots and morale houses as possible. Depending on how you choose to conquer your enemy, your final confrontation at the end of each chapter will be more or less difficult. For example, if you take lots of supplies and gain a lot of morale, your army will do most of the work for you once you're ready to take the enemy's base. If you run n' gun your way to the enemy base, chances are you're going to have to manually slaughter hundreds upon hundreds of troops (as well as their General, who usually is stronger than you).

Battles are fairly realistic in that your troops will advance, retreat, or capture areas during the fight, and morale plays a key role as the battle progresses. What isn't realistic, however, is how powerful your General is. Generally speaking, at level 1 you can plow through hundreds of enemies without even taking a hit. You can mow down entire infantry regiments in literally a few seconds, leaving the entire army demoralized and scared. Or, if you're particularly daring, you can run straight through the lesser peons and fight the main General, who is usually pretty difficult. Defeating a General instantly demoralizes the opposing army and if they have no more commanding officers their morale will drop rapidly until hit hits zero, at which time they will retreat and you'll conquer the area.

Overall, despite being wildly overpowered compared to the average soldier, Dynasty Warriors sports some pretty entertaining gameplay that gets better as you increase in difficulty. Strategy plays an even more important role in this edition of Dynasty Warriors, which is a nice change.

Graphics

Ugh, there's no PSP game that has character models this bad. Whereas most PSP games have characters roughly on the level of PS2 games, Dynasty Warriors looks like a bad Playstation game. Wiggly polygons are especially surprising, since the PSP (like the PS2) has polygon fixation. The fog distance is pathetically close and the game bogs down considerably when there's a lot of characters on the screen. Not exactly the best in-game engine ever made.

Sound

You probably expected old Chinese music, but instead you got loud butt-rock. That's right, this game's got more metal than a smelting plant. Disturbing. The sound effects aren't bad, either.

Overall

Other than the excruciatingly bad graphics, Dynasty Warriors is worth at least a rental.

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