The Best Warriors Game Yet!
For those gamers new to the series, this is a compliation of two universes; Samurai Warriors (Japan) and Dynasty Warriors (China). It boasts a giant cast of characters surpassing 100 in an entirely new storyline instead of the tried and rehashed stories of Warring States and 3 Kingdoms. Its a quite a refreshing take to be honest. There are also new characters taken from Koei-Tecmo's library; Ryu Hyabusa, Joan de Arc, and Nemea.
The story follows after the events of Warriors Orochi 2 where the villain of the game Orochi is slain and "peace" resumes in the new land. That is until a giant monster, Hydra, just destroys the new world and all the heros die in the process. The game starts off when you do a final gathering of rag tag crew to do a last man standing battle only to be rescued by a mystic named Kaguya. She then teleports you away and tells you that you can change the worlds fate through Time Travel -_-.
As rediculous as this sounds, they pull it off... Throughout the game you go back in time and change history, by doing so you recruit new heros to join your cause. New stages open up as you recruit more people and your camp grows.
The gameplay is extremely similar to all Warriors games. You have a light attack and a charge attack. You have a Musou bar for single-special attacks and these vary if your a Dynasty character or Samurai character. You have have a Team-Special attack that slowly charges up as you rack up Combo + Enemy Kills. Using the team-special allows you to go into a bullet-time-ish stance and attack/kill enemies. Enemies and officers killed in this way will be converted to gems. Those gems are used to purchase and/or upgrade weapons. Crystals may also be dropped and those provide you with rare/joke weapons.
Upgrading weapons is real easy and there are a lot more choices than previous games. As you play through the stage you will find weapon boxes dropped by officers. These contain certain stats you can use to strenghten your existing weapon. Stats such as longer weapon reach, ability to break through guard, drain life, increase weapon speed are quite critical to have if you want to survive in later stages. You can transfer these stats to your new weeapons providing you have enough gems. The transfer fee is cheap....
If you have experience playing any Warriors game, you'll fit right in. If your new, the first few stages may pose a problem to you because you try to get your bearings straight. My advice is to head straight to your current objective and eliminate as you go along.
The stages are all taken from existing Warriors games as well. There are very few variations such as a lava here or fire there. But overall if you are familiar with a stage, you'll know where to go... I would say that the difficulty is largely dependent on your character progression and current weapon skill. If your character level is high, but with low weapons you will have a hard time in 5 to 6 star stages. Replaying the stages is highly encouraged.
The musical score is the same with a new twist. A synthesizer here or there and its not bad. I would have loved to have heard a new musical score, but they do a decent enough job remixing old ones that I let that slide.
Overall there is PLENTY to do for each character. Just the main story alone will probably take 40 hrs to complete. Unlocking all the characters and stages will take even longer. YOU WILL GET YOUR MONIES WORTH if you buy this game.
The advent of DLC means that new stages, weapons will be promised throughout the coming months as well.
If I can fault this game is that it WILL get repetitive. Its not a bad thing, but as long as you unlock a lot of stages... levelling up each character will not seem so boring. Also, because it is digital only there is an extreme lack of game manual EASILY available to look at. This will deter a new players... because there is just so much information at the start to be presented that its kinda hard to digest all that in the beginning. Even now I am still trying to figure out what certain traits for certain characters do.
The translation needs to be a lot more accurate. I know people hate to read but if your going to translate a game... do it right. Don't add words that don't exist otherwise your fooling the person that spent $49.99 on a game. Even if they say the same thing and its monotnous make it monotnous. Its what the programmers originally intended. If they meant to say something different, it would have been different from the get go.
Overall this game is an 8.0 possibly even 8.25. Completionists will probably spend 100 hours learning all the characters, possessing every weapon, getting all the items, and maxing out all the bonds. Kudos to Koei-Tecmo for delivering an excellent game!