Articles
By Diresim
Published: Mar. 4, 2007 9:33 PM
Dynasty Warriors is one of those series. The tried and true formula, appealing to a minority of gamers (those who like to mash buttons), has been regurgitated over and over for years now, each new title offering a few added features, but none that have really propelled the gameplay too far past simple fun. Having said that, these games are certainly solid, and KOEI’s first Xbox 360 release, Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires, is no exception. The graphics and sound are improved over PS2 and Xbox versions of the series, there are more weapons, items, characters than ever before, and the hack n slash action is as competent as it ever has been. The big improvement comes in the form of a bold new turn based strategic element, seeing you in charge of the micro-management of your empire, not just of your battlefield. Although this feature is not fully fleshed out, it certainly broadens the appeal of the game, and suggests that a very bright feature might be ahead for the series. But alas this title is still plagued by the very things that have held every other game in the series back.
Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires comes in two flavours. First is Free Mode, which will have you inserted into random battles to kill to your heart’s content. There isn’t really all that much point to spending much time here, other than to come to grips with the controls, which will take all of about five seconds. Then you have Empire Mode, which is where the good stuff is. There are a number of campaigns to undertake here, although there are only two unlocked at first. Each one sees you take control of a province within the Three Kingdoms and do battle with opposing rulers until you have united the entire country and forged your own empire.
Although any individual battles you decide to oversee personally will see you taking control of one of your heroes in the good old Dynasty Warriors fashion we have come to know and enjoy, now you get to pick your battles. Not only that, but you get to decide what your empire spends its coin on, whether that be more troops, magic items, defense structures, trading. There really are a good dose of options for even the most avid strategy gamer. It’s all done in a very similar fashion to Creative Assembly’s Total War series for the PC. You can choose to have one of your generals decide what’s best for your empire each turn, or you can micromanage everything yourself.
Over time, you will be able to develop different policies for your empire, such as hard march, (which allows you to attack any province, as opposed to being limited to invading neighbours) or neutral start (which sees you beginning battles on an even footing with your opponent and a splattering of neautral bases between you – trust me this is a godsend). A lot of these policies require continued development of similar policies, and there is no explanation of how the “tree” works, therefore finding the most useful options can be quite a task. The rewards are well worth it however, and once you unlock all available policies, you will be pretty hard to beat in any battle. Although this increased level of strategy is the biggest and brightest addition to the series yet. It is not without its problems.
Firstly, the menu system by which you go about structuring your empire is much too convoluted and oppressively difficult to get to grips with. Admittedly the review copy we received didn’t come with a manual, so we were flying blind, but even so there are too many options buried within other options. Some kind of ‘most used’ menu would have been fantastic also, so you don’t have to repeatedly travel four or five options deep just to pursue the same policy you’ve been pursuing repeatedly for the previous six turns.
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