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Hunter.Requiem's Dynasty Warriors 3 (PS2)
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| [February 6, 2008 01:17:14 AM]
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GAMEPLAY
Booting up Dynasty Warriors again, I decided to have a bit of fun. Since in the last campaign, I unlocked the strongest character in the game, Lu Bu, I decided to play with him. Lu Bu doesn't have a campaign of his own, so I was stuck with free play, that is, playing through the levels with absolutely no concern for history. I played the most populous level, Hu Lao gate (traditionally rendered as Hu Lao Pass). Since the real Lu Bu in that level ties up your allies, it is quite easy to get kill counts up around 1000 without much effort. Normally, staying away from Lu Bu is of the utmost importance, as he can easily kill you in single combat, but, being free mode, I just went ahead and challenged myself and won handily. The thing that stood out to me the most playing as Lu Bu was his remarkable difficulty with engaging multiple people for the strongest character in the game. Only with the last hit of his combo does he swing his halberd around himself, making it easy for my enemies to interrupt my combo from behind. That said, his brutal power and range more then made up for his lack of decent combos. In the end, I have determined that only Lu Bu is manly enough to pull off wearing peacock feathers on his head.
DESIGN
The thing that makes Dynasty Warriors stand out so much is its lack of concern over making anything particularly accurate to the period. Players receive radio transmissions from generals and officers on a regular basis, and combo moves often defy gravity in visually appealing ways. For example, Zhaou Yu's combo puts him into a horizontal in-air barrel roll slash that bounces clockwise, and then counter-clockwise for the length of the special move. In addition, the fact that the characters in the game existed along a period off approximately 300 years does not stop D.W.'s writers from putting them together in the same levels. That said, the almost constant war screams around you, and the sound of your halberd crushing masses of conscripts with the whine of an electric guitar playing Chinese-inspired songs certainly makes up for any reservations about the game's accuracy during gameplay. In the case of D.W. the player doesn't need to know that the game is contrived because the played doesn't care: he/she is busy killing people!
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| [February 6, 2008 12:58:16 AM]
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SUMMARY:
Dynasty Warriors is, in every sense, a hack and slash game. Pick your member of the Chinese nobility from the Three Kingdoms period and commence in the slaughter of hundreds of minor soldiers and generals. The game progresses along the traditional story arc of the Three Kingdoms period as laid out by "The Romance of The Three Kingdoms". There are many, many story arcs to follow for each of a wide variety of characters, though, since this is not the expansion, there are no story modes for the more colourful of the characters, such as the absurdly powerful Lu Bu.
GAMEPLAY:
I played the game a bit before this, and had unlocked some of the unlockable characters (since you start out with only a few). I chose my personal favorite character to play, Da Quao, the fan wielding beauty married to Zhaou Yu. Playing as her is always as amusing as it is intense. While many characters have difficulties when surrounded, Da excells in it. Since real world physics aren't a particularly large issue in this game, Da can have her fans circle around her in a spiral shape when she uses her special move. Levels take around 30 minutes to beat, though you're allotted a full 90 minutes on most. As I fight my way through the battlefield, my allied troops push ahead on other fronts. Overall, the feel of the game win screen telling my story in traditional style and listing how many people I killed in each battle was well worth it.
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Hunter.Requiem's Dynasty Warriors 3 (PS2)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 5 February, 2008
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