Gamespot gave this game a bad rating. It deserved something better.
The gameplay has almost been completely changed. Weapons no longer play a part in how many attacks you have. You improve your character by your accomplishments and not by what weapon you get. There is now a grid similar to FFX which allows you to by improvement in stats and attacks with points gained by leveling up.The attacks are new, and there are MANY of them. The new renbu system is weird at first but is very easy to understand. It is simply hit people, get cooler attacks. There are also a lot of different attacks that are used from blocking, like grapples and counter attacks. The musou is the same, but a new special attacks has been added (used by pressing L2) which can be 1 of 5 different things for your character.
The stories are engaging for each character and provides insight into their character and relationship to other heroes. It provides a nice break from JUST fighting.
The one thing that amazed me the most was how many people could be on the screen at much. With being able to have about 200+ people on the screen at once, one swing can hit almost 30 people. And the frame rate almost never slows down.
This game does require a bit more skill than the older games, but it can either be a hack-n-slash with just mashing box and killing loads of people on Easy, or you can try the battle on a harder difficulty and have to counter, grab, combo, musou, special, mash mash mash, counter, grab, musou...you get the idea.
For those who have played the previous games, GET THIS GAME. For those who have never played a Dynasty Warriors game, buy this and get in on all the fun,