Dynasty Warriors 4 and XTreme Legends Review
If you have any history with the Dynasty Warriors games, you probably already know what to expect here. Even if you haven't, odds are you have a fair idea. But I'll do an intro anyway. Humor me.
So, take the general historical setting within the classic Chinese novel 'The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,' in which three factions rise to power during the collapse of the Han dynasty, and fight for control of the empire. Dynasty warriors is a 3D action game flung directly into the middle of this setting - meaning it's a perfect excuse to run around with a one man army wasting thousands of mooks. Anyone who has played arcade games knows what I'm talking about - it's you against the world, and you leave the world's shit in ruins. A great formula for a game, really. You can't really give Koei major points for literary achievement; after all, they're interpreting, not writing the story. The story is pretty engaging, actually, if you like sweeping war dramas, but if you were expecting interesting examinations of characters on a personal level, well, you lose.
XTreme Legends is essentially what happens when a game company listens to the fans of its game, and one-ups itself. If you like Dynasty Warriors 4, there's really no reason to complain about XTreme Legends. It is literally more of the game, but done better. With more than a fair share of bug and problem fixing. If you did not previously buy Dynasty Warriors 4, XTreme Legends does not require it; but Legends does enhance it. In short, Legends is both its own game and an enhancer for the original, which is pretty cool. Sounds good?
Then let's talk gameplay. If you like 2D side-scroller beat-em-ups, Dynasty Warriors comes about as close as a 3D game can to emulating the same experience. It also picks up the major advantage of the third dimension; you can choose where you fight with actual accuracy. The game operates on a pretty simple control schema: one button makes your character hit stuff. Another makes him hit stuff harder. For reference, these buttons are the square and triangle buttons respectively. Intersperse the triangle button while hitting the square button and you will discover that your character has 6 special moves, apart from his normal combo. This is true of every character. Yep, all 40-something characters. Oh, and yeah, there's over 40 playable characters. They are not all unique; subtle differences are there, sure. But not unique. There are distinct move types that you will recognize among different characters, and because of the controls, it's pretty easy to pick up any character and go. The final thing to know about the controls is that you have a bar that measures how angry you are. You get angrier as people hit you, and as you hit people. Basically, when the bar is full, and you hit the circle button, you get real pissed and tear everyone around you a new one. The game has more technical terms, but that's really the best way to describe it. The gameplay is simple, though a fair piece more complex than most people give it credit for, and coincidentally is easy to pick up and play. There's a lot more than I mentioned, really - the taunt, the guard, the bow, riding horses and elephants, jumping, parrying, and more are all involved in the game. There's also a simple stat system to the game, equippable items, a limited element system to give your special attacks extra flavor and power, and the whole weapon improvement side of the game. There's actually a fair amount to keep track of, if you really bother to put the effort in. It can appeal to the simple fun point of view, but there's enough meat there to keep a more thoughtful player occupied - if you'll give the game a chance. Overall, I give it high marks.
When it comes to replayability, I really can't think of a game that beats DW4 and its XTreme Legends. There has been no other game in recent history that I can just sit down and play and have fun with. A lot of games appeal to me, yet DW4XL is probably the one that I return to most often, simply because its gameplay is always appealing to me, and never really gets old. That's incredible. Final Fantasy Tactics, my favoritist of favorite games, can only keep me occupied for, at most, two hours. Maybe three if it's some vacation time and I have absolutely nothing to do. But DW4XL can suck my life away, whether or not I volunteer for it. Good and bad, but for replayability, all good.
Graphically, the games are an improvement over their predecessors. Not a wild improvement, but still an improvement. The graphics are more geared toward presenting a level of visual appeal while not sacrificing the game engine's ability to have 50 men on screen at once than being truly amazing. For what they accomplish - that is, looking decent and keeping 50 men on screen - I'm fairly impressed. The game still has piss-poor environments. Unlike Halo, which redefined the concept of the neat environment, or memorable 2D games where the little details of your surroundings could be cool to check out, DW4XL really doesn't have any interesting eye-candy between people. All of the artistic effort was clearly put towards the characters and the weapons. This wouldn't be a bad thing, if it didn't make so much of the game look the same. Overall, I would say the graphics are some good, some bad, but mainly mediocre. I'm a character design fan, though, so I lean a little more toward the good.
The music is... out of place. You get a curious mix of metal and of some 'traditional Chinese music.' Which is to say, irritating singing. The metal's also a huge step back from DW3, where the metal was at least well done. The music of DW4XL is one of its sorest points, really - nothing's good, and a couple are actually bad. Fortunately, nothing is in and of itself so offensive as to really take away from the game - I just turn the crap off, or tune it out. The sound otherwise is approximately okay. Not good, not bad - people screaming as they die, weapons clanging, etc. etc. Nothing major. BUT! The game has voice-acting. Voice-acting of pain and suffering. It's not that every character sounds bad, but rather it's that there's no clear consistency. Some characters have quite good voice actors. Others have uniquely awful ones. Like Cao "big burly man" Cao, or Huang "Putting the 'Jerry NO!' into geriatric" Zhong. Others have pretty good voice actors, like Zhang "I can make an overdramatic death pretty bad-ass" Liao, or Zhuge "I even sound like an arrogant genius" Liang. If the voice-acting was unilaterally good or bad, that'd be one thing. But the mix makes it hard to either laugh at the game's efforts as a total, or praise them. So basically... get some better quality control next time, Koei. Hire some like... actual actors.
So is the game teh w357 or teh w0r57? Well, I say teh w357. It is most assuredly worth $50, especially if you can get both XTreme Legends and DW4 in a bundle. It is not a game that you will recall years from now as being that game that bettered you intellectually, or what have you - but damn if it won't be a fun waste of your time!
Final Scores:
Replayability - 10/10
Gameplay - 9/10
Characters and Story - 6/10
Graphics - 7/10
Sound and Music - 4/10
Overall - 8/10