Finally dynasty warriors is overcoming is simplicity to offer more fun, even more for hardcore fans like me
This is my first review for the franchise (i´m getting fond of reviews maybe i should quit being and engineer and dedicate to this lol), wh i first palyed the serie i loved it coz it was a dream come true to fight sword in hand in a battlefield with troops suporting u, but as war strategist as i am (i do relly study war strategy too lol), the game gives the feeling of being too simple. With the empires spin of the series his changes a bit, and know with DW 5 empires it feels really good, of course the strategic part is still really simple and won´t do for only harddcore strategy fans but does fine to a hack and slash.
In any other means the game is pretty much the same as it predecesor, basen on the three kingdoms period in china since 184 A.D with the yellow turban rebellion, and u choose one officer from the era, that looks like a cartton animation (pretty cool one anyway), and then u hack and slash trough hordes of enemies battle after battle till u beat the game.
Weel the new thing of the empires spin off is that u do not follow an individual story with a single char hacking and salshing, but u are able to play with a kingdom and its officers maintaining it trough policies and managing ur gold, to buy tactics, replenish troops, hire officers, weaponsmith advance, product researching and developing, etc. And more importantly even, u are able to give ordes to ur troops in battle, that was one of the things that i hateda about DW series, now u can even take amore relaxed stance coz ur army wiil need u to win, but they are pretty much able of wining the battle with just some help an tactic, not like in the rest of the series where ur army was pretty much useless miscelanious.
Well as in all my reviews here come the good the bad and the ugly:
The Good:
-Being able to give orders (altough limited ones)
-Ur army starts with a nice amount of moral, that is the only matter the AI takes to calculate if a unit can defeat another, altough in this games seems that numbers also count
-Being able to know how much troops do u have
-Being able to play with the template generals, some peolple may not like it, but having the option to do so is great.
-Having to take ur time to spent ur gold in policies, and tactics
-Being able to use tactics on the battlefield, that can really change the outcome of the battle, off course u can still just quickly hack and slash trough the main base and win with no strategy.
-Being able to research weaponsmith to get new leveled weapons
-Having to spent money to produce and use items.
-Edit mode looks cooler than ever
-Gaining territory over the map is oddly gratifiying
-Tactics look good on the battlefield.
-Losing a battle does nopt means game over, feels pretty cool tha losing a battle has consequences
The Bad:
-As always most troops just stand doing circles around u expecting to be slashed and killed
-If u are not a hard core of hacking and slashing u will get bored really soon coz the action is really repetitive
-Bases and castles have their doors wide open so there is not any use of siege weapons, or any other kind of siege strategy, just kill the guard captains and that is all.
-The battles are really short, especially the defense ones
-The battle system is pretty simple
-If u decide just to hack and slash trough the battlefiel u still can win the battle pretty much easily without having to use strategy
-With the exception of a few generals all enemies are pretty much easy to defeat.
The ugly:
-The enemy warlords always acept alliances even if they are on the brink of destroying u
-There is not a diferenciation between template generals, and in some cut scenes u will not know who is who coz they don´t say their names (pretty much frustrating in some cut scenes)
-The AI of the common soldier definitedly needs some work
-There is not any use of siege weapons
-There is not cavarly forces
-Riding a horse is fun, but it is still pretty much a loss of time to fight mounted
-I´m still waiting for the health bar when mounted on a horse and the ability to jump with them showed in another KOEI franchise samurai warriors
-They did not worked to make better the duels, they just eliminated em
Final words: with its good and bad points, DW is still and unique series, and the empire ones should be the ones to continue, combinating them with the story part of the original series......off course for all of us who know about economy and marketing, that won´t happen they still will be doing tons of cash selling 3 games of the same one: DW, DW extreme legends, and DW empires (sigh)