The fourth entry in Koei's action-packed Dynasty Warriors series presents an interesting question: How many times can a company revisit the same gameplay concept, adding just enough features to please hard-core fans, and still get away with selling it as an entirely new game? With Dynasty Warriors 4, Koei is walking a fine line between updating a venerable franchise with valuable new features and simply milking a cash cow. True, the Dynasty Warriors games have met with commercial success, both in Japan and North America, so clearly a lot of players are into this tried-and-true, hack-and-slash formula. But for the casual gamers who are on the fence about whether or not to try yet another Dynasty Warriors game, the blatant uniformity of the fourth installment will probably cause them to pass on it.
Dynasty Warriors still takes place in ancient China, beginning with the downfall of the Han dynasty. You start the campaign (or "musou") mode with one of three factions--Wu, Wei, or Shu--and engage in a series of branching battles that chronicle the turmoil that engulfed China during the latter Han. There's a classic piece of ancient Chinese literature about this period called Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so the story of this and all the other Dynasty Warriors games is indeed deeply rooted in historical fact. This adherence to history has always been one of the most appealing features of the series, but now that we're in the fourth iteration, it's starting to lose its luster. How many times can you really fight off the same Yellow Turban Rebellion or fight the same battle at Hu Lao Gate before you get tired of the whole thing? Dynasty Warriors 4 brings back many of the same characters as well, and though there's an almost absurd number of characters and alternate character models to unlock (creating ample replay value for those who are into that sort of thing), the key figures--in terms of the gameplay and plot--remain more or less the same. To be fair, Koei's use of actual history as a storyline limits the liberties it can take with such things, but that doesn't help make the game seem any less familiar.
The gameplay in Dynasty Warriors 4 will be familiar to anyone who's played the previous entries in the series. After choosing your faction, you then choose from among several officers to go out and wage war. The actual missions are as fast-paced and chaotic as ever, with literally hundreds of friendly and opposing soldiers running back and forth in the midst of battle. All the available, playable characters are of the superhuman variety--as their attacks can lay out literally 10 or 20 foes at once--and, as always, it's pretty amusing to see a whole pile of bodies flying like rag dolls before the swath of your sword. All the characters have a basic combo attack that can be improved with experience, and they can increase their stats in a number of other areas too. Items picked up during battle will also help you out, as you can equip them between missions for added effects later. In a welcome change to the musou mode, you can now change characters between missions, so you're not stuck playing the same officer throughout an entire nation's campaign.
Thankfully, Dynasty Warriors 4 does bring a few minor new features to the table. Like Dynasty Warriors 3 Xtreme Legends for the PlayStation 2, Dynasty Warriors 4 offers edit modes for both bodyguards, who protect you in battle, and officers, whom you can control directly in battle. However, the changeable aspects consist mostly of superficial features like gender and garb, so it's up to you to actively improve a new character after he or she is created. You'll notice a couple of minor new features in the battles, too. For one, an enemy officer will occasionally challenge you to a one-on-one duel, and, if you accept, you and your foe will enter into a fight while unencumbered by surrounding troops. Another new battle element is the addition of siege engines. For instance, your forces may be moving a battering ram toward a fortified enemy gate, and you'll have to protect the ram from enemy forces while it's being made ready to sunder the doors. Finally, and perhaps most notably, your officer can gain weapon experience independent of his or her stats, which increases the character's overall proficiency in combat. These features are nice to see, but they provide only marginal enhancement to a gameplay model that's identical to its forebears.
Dynasty Warriors 4 came out on the PlayStation 2 several months ago, so you might think Koei has taken this extra time with the Xbox port to really enhance the graphics. That's not the case, though, as the game looks pretty much just like it did on the PS2. As is usually the case with a PS2-to-Xbox port, this new version has cleaner-looking visuals, with noticeably less aliasing than on the PS2, but, at a glance, it would be hard to tell the two versions apart. There are occasional, disturbing frame rate dips when the action gets intense. This is a bit disappointing. The character models look good, with a nice amount of detail and decent animation, but, as usual, the backgrounds are pretty sparse--often consisting of simple planes and basic buildings. The sound effects are serviceable, but they're pretty much indistinguishable from the effects featured in the previous game. As expected, the voice acting carries on the series' campy tradition; it's mostly of the quality you'd expect to hear in a dubbed kung fu movie. Surprisingly, the soundtrack is a little more varied than its predecessors. Although the standard '80s-style wailing guitar rock is back, some of the music (mostly in the menu screens) has a more ambient feel to it. This is definitely a welcome change, as it makes you less inclined to bang your head constantly during gameplay.
All this criticism of Dynasty Warriors 4's sameness is not to say that it's a bad game. Quite the contrary: The gameplay is solid, the graphics are pretty good--by Xbox standards--and the storyline is well rendered. However, calling Dynasty Warriors 4 an evolutionary game is a bit of a stretch--as the core gameplay is almost identical to that of its predecessors. Though the menus and artwork have changed, and a few new features have been added, the average player would be hard-pressed to guess which Dynasty Warriors game this is after observing a random battle scene for a couple of minutes. Serious Dynasty Warriors fans will surely eat up the new features, and if you've never tried one of these games before, this is as good as any to start with. However, less-than-avid fans of the series, who might be looking for a fresh new gameplay experience, need not apply. If that weren't enough, this new Xbox version has no substantive features to make owners of the PS2 game the slightest bit interested, though if you haven't played any version of Dynasty Warriors yet, this is probably the best one to get. In the end, Dynasty Warriors 4 is good, but it's the same kind of good that Koei has been releasing for almost three years now.
