The Dynasty Warrior series has been around for a long time, and it didn’t take long for the main series took the street fighter route, with it’s Xtreme Legends expansions. This version of the game carries on that tradition, but this time as a full release, not requiring the vanilla version of the eighth installment. This also marks the first mainline entry for the Vita as well. But this game also proves that even after eight installments and many spinoffs that sometimes all a gamer needs is a little more of the same to satisfy that simple desire to have fun.
The game is actually a compilation of the original Dynasty Warriors 8 and the Xtreme Legends add-on expansion that needed the original to even work. Seeing as neither the Vita got a release of 8, or that it would have been a waste to port just the vanilla game, the Playstation 4 got the combo of the two titles. So as you can expect, this version most certainly lives up to the complete part of the name, despite approaching Street Fighter levels of ridiculousness. There is a lot of extra content in the package as a result of this. In addition to the story mode and free mode, there are ambition and challenge modes. Ambition mode is a mode where the goal is to gather resources and develop your camp, all to impress and gain favor with the Emperor. Various rewards can be earned through this mode as well, such as new weapons or costumes. Challenge mode like the name implies is about completing different challenges and setting high scores to unlock even more weapons and have your scores be shared on the leaderboards. The game also has a gallery and encyclopedia. The encyclopedia in particular is useful, as the load screen that go in-between battles also serve as story exposition to explain what is going on. That’s if you can care long enough to be invested, as the text often scrolls by fast, and those unfamiliar with the story of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms will be a bit lost.
The Story mode itself is the bulk of the game and after picking a faction; you will play from that perspective, and go through many of the characters storylines. Some characters start at level 1, and some start as high as level 25, but you can grind in any of the other modes if you find yourself having difficulty in the battles. New characters can also be unlocked in this mode. The game also uses an element system of sorts that confer temporary abilities when your two selected weapons get swapped out during battle. As in the previous games, you can perform Musou attacks which clear the immediate area around you of enemies. In addition you can also pull off a Rage mode once the meter builds up after so many hits are racked up. In this mode strength and speed are increased for a short time. And of course, you can pull off simple combos with standard and heavy attacks. Combat is pretty basic, and most mission objectives usually boil down to being at the right place at the right time, and not dying and defeating the enemy to weaken their morale. It’s a simple game, but it should satisfy those that just want a quick pick up and play itch. And you can even do online co-op play.
The music of the game is serviceable, if not a bit of an anachronism, carrying the mainstay and generic hard rock soundtrack of previous iterations. The voice acting is strangely a bizarre mix of good voice actors, who lack any sort of voice direction to do convincing roles. Then again this an Hack-and-Slash brawler about historical fiction in Ancient China with hard rock music playing in the background. It’s hard to care much about performance, so the voice acting just added to the cheese factor of it all. It’s curious that the game is English dubbed only though.
As far as performance issues are concerned, the PS4 version runs at a near constant 60 frames throughout, while the Vita version sometimes dips below the 30 frames that it has. The games do have cross-saving with each other, but data from the PS3 version can only be send to the other versions, and not the other way around. One thing I did find odd was that if you aren’t in the right location at the right time, some event flags will refuse to trigger, which can makes clearing levels a bit tricky. But it doesn’t happen too regularly. If you like the series but have been away from it for a while, it would be worth it to pick it up again. There is a wealth of replayability with all of the unlockable characters, weapons, and costumes to collect. And then there are the various modes to try. Outside of that, the game, much like its predecessors, is one where you can satisfy that craving for stupid, yet simple and fun gameplay. Kind of like the videogame equivalent of a popcorn movie. As long as you aren’t expecting anything spectacular, it will do you right.
Gameplay
Graphics
Sound
Overall
