Dynasty Warriors 7 will provided plenty of content that fans of the series will enjoy. (Xbox 360 review)
Omega Force must've been listening to its fans. They decided to take out the renbu system and put the old charge system in. Basically you press the X button to do a regular attack. You can do combos with charge attacks with the Y button.You can increase the number of attacks you can do with points you gain by defeating officers.
With these points, you can unlock skills for your character. Each characters got their own unique skills and this diverse them a little bit. You can also pick up stats upgrade to boost your characters stats. You can raise your attack, defense, and a few other stuff with these.
The combat system is pretty simple. Some people will enjoy the simplicity while others will find it to be repetitive. I personally enjoy the simplicity of the combat. It's easy to pick up and still very fun. However not everyone will enjoy it.
One of the newest addition to the combat system is that you can carry two weapons instead of just one. This can lead to more combos and add a bit of variety to the game. There's about 36 weapons in the game. Each have their own movesets. However there's a total of 62 characters in Dynasty Warriors 7 so some people will be sharing movesets. However this is nowhere near as bad as DW6. Also every character got a unique Musou and EX attack they can perform by equipping a certain weapon. This help the character feel unique.
There is splitscreen and online in Dynasty Warriors 7. However it is limited to Conquest mode. The online is a bit laggy at times. Your friend will sometime look like he's attacking thin air when he's really attacking an officer or something. It's annoying but still fun to play.
Dynasty Warriors 7 brings plenty of content for you to enjoy. There's a Kingdom mode and Conquest mode. Both will provide hours of content. However they did take out Free mode for unknown reasons. However Conquest mode is pretty much like Free mode +.
The story mode is quite different compared to the previous games. You no longer pick a character and go through a handful of stages. Instead you pick from four kingdoms. Shu, Wei, Wu, and the newly added Jin. The kingdom of Jin is one of the biggest addition to the series. You can play as the Sima family and other characters.
You choose one of the kingdoms and play through their storyline. This can range from the Yellow Turban Rebellion to the fall of Shu. Each storyline can take up to 6-8 hours to complete. This adds up to about 32 hours just in the Kingdom mode. You also play as a variety of characters throughout the game. However certain characters don't even appear in the story mode!
Surprisingly Omega Force decided to focus more on the story this time around. Each story mode is interesting and shows the perspective of each empires quite well. There's no real good or evil side. The voice-acting is quite nice this time around. However if you're not that fond of them, you can download the Japanese voice-acting.
The other mode is Conquest mode. I remember I had trouble figuring out what it was when it was first announced. Was it like a mixture of Empire and Xtreme legends? Well not exactly. It's more of a glorified free mode though it is similar to Xtreme legends.
The game starts you at the top right part of a hex grid. There you can pick from a small amount of characters unless you unlocked some by playing Kingdom mode. From there you just complete each hex until you complete them all. There's plenty of hexes so it will take you some time to complete them all.
During Conquest mode you can visit towns. In these towns, there's many things to do. You can answer questions from Scholars, buy new weapons, forge weapon skills, buy animal guardians (Animals that will help you in battle, Ex. Horses, Bears, Panda), pick a sworn ally, etc. You can also gain allies while playing Conquest mode. However all they really do is help you. Nothing big.
The game itself looks ok. Some of the textures can look bad at times but the game can hold quite a good number of enemies on screen. Though some do randomly appear at times. The unique character models all like nice, the generic officers do have some bit of variety, and the soldiers all pretty much look the same with a few exceptions.
The music is the same rock themed tune as ever. It helps you get in the mood to kill some enemies. The tracks are all nice and fun to listen to. Though if you're not a fan of the music, make sure you have a MP3 nearby or something.
In the end, Dynasty Warriors 7 is a fun game that the fans will enjoy. However, that's the key word. The fans. If you did not liked Dynasty Warriors before, this game will not change your mind. If you never played Dynasty Warriors before, you might just want to rent it. However if you're in love with the series like I am, then you should enjoy the game. There's plenty of content and the new way they told the story is interesting.
If you got any questions or feedback, please send me a private message. I'm not the best reviewer in the world but I try my best. I would love to hear from you guys.