Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires
Hack and slash gets a little strategy.
Published: November 8, 2004
As one of the better examples of the PS2's near-launch games library, the Dynasty Warriors series has always skirted the line between being a pleasant half-hour diversion and a time-sucking addiction. The games have always served both sides equally well, allowing you to dip your toe into the sea of hack-and-slash goodness or just dive in head-first for a few hours.
With Empires, however, the normal formula of "swing wildly at everything that can be hit" is paired with a very basic level of Risk or even Defender of the Crown strategy, effectively rewriting Chinese history as you see fit. All this means is that that hacking and slashing you dig so much actually has some geographical relevance.
Winning battles will, for the most part, win you new land, and with it more troops and should you choose it, a new general or lieutenant to join your ever-growing army. If you need to band together to quell an insurrection, or if you're defending a parcel of land, you'll of course simple repel enemy forces, but by and large the quest here is to win as much land as possible, and do it within a set amount of time.
Well, time is perhaps the wrong term. The strategy elements, be they consulting with your officers, trading or waging war with neighboring factions, all take place in turns. It's your job to take over the whole of the country within 100 turns, or it's lights out. Between turns, you can bulk up your army, research more powerful items, restock your troops and the like by conferring with the aforementioned officers, since winning new land and troops will get you new items, thus increasing your stores of equippable goodies before you charge into battle. Simple, no?
And really, simplicity is the key here. The actual battles where you'll slice through 100 or so soldiers is as familiar as ever. Seek out the enemy leaders and systematically cleave through their ranks, or meander around, taking out smaller targets, it's all pretty much what you've done betore, although the time limits do seem a bit trimmed down from past games, a good way to add a bit of challenge to the mix, but it's mainly a matter of supporting your advancing armies and helping with the push on the enemy.
The strategy and action elements meld impressively well. The motivation of grabbing that new weapon or the drive to constantly increase your forces always gives the actual battles themselves a bit more urgency, and that's definitely a good thing when charging into your umpteenth fight. Varied geography (poisonous swamps, snowy mountains, arid plains) all play a role in how you fight, too, however basic. Still, if you weren't a fan of the action before, this probably won't convert you, but those that can' get enough, will have more than enough to munch on here.
The other major area that hasn't seen much of a nudge since the starting days of the series is the visuals. This is still an impressive enough game when it comes to the characters and their varied suits of armor headdresses and weapons, and the sheer number of enemies around you are still a joy to mow through, but the overall look of everything else is starting to get a little rough. The ground still shimmers and flickers a bit, and is still textured with an overstretched, splotchy covering.
The environments themselves, while varied in a general sort of way, aren't especially complex. Sure, you'll get your castles and your maze-like villages, but by and large they're simplistic distractions from the flat, open areas of the map that all tend to blend together. There's also an annoying trend of having enemies fade in at about 50 feet out, removing that feeling that you're taking place in a huge battle and more just a series of small bunches of enemies that you're wading through.
Then again, I can see why they can't render everything at once, either due to hardware limitations or programming talent, because when a handful of enemies and the flashy Musou attacks kick in, the action can slow to a crawl, and frames are dropped left and right. It's annoying to know that after this many games, the framerate hitches and limited draw-in are still an issue.
Even the sound is starting to feel a little dry. The effects are there, and the slight din of clanging weapons and shouting footsoldiers is enough to provide the semblance of a ground war, but I can't help but feel like a little more attention to the surrounding effects would help. Music is sparse, of course, but when it kicks in, it's certainly welcome, as is the voice acting, but it tends to smear together quickly after a few fights and short snippets from comrades.
Even with the strategy elements, this is still [i]Dynasty Warriors, and for whatever reason, Koei seems keenly aware of how to craft a game that should get tired and repetitive, but still manages to pull you in time and time again. It's something that games like Drakengard weren't quite capable of, and that in and of itself is an accomplishment. If you're looking for something completely new, this game isn't it. It is, however, an engaging mix of light, instantly accessible strategy and familiar hack and slash gameplay, and if you can stomach the latter, the former makes this game incredibly addictive, and well worth a purchase. Let's just hope that Omega Force can fix some of the nagging problems with the series before they rely on new hardware to cure things.
With Empires, however, the normal formula of "swing wildly at everything that can be hit" is paired with a very basic level of Risk or even Defender of the Crown strategy, effectively rewriting Chinese history as you see fit. All this means is that that hacking and slashing you dig so much actually has some geographical relevance.
Winning battles will, for the most part, win you new land, and with it more troops and should you choose it, a new general or lieutenant to join your ever-growing army. If you need to band together to quell an insurrection, or if you're defending a parcel of land, you'll of course simple repel enemy forces, but by and large the quest here is to win as much land as possible, and do it within a set amount of time.
Well, time is perhaps the wrong term. The strategy elements, be they consulting with your officers, trading or waging war with neighboring factions, all take place in turns. It's your job to take over the whole of the country within 100 turns, or it's lights out. Between turns, you can bulk up your army, research more powerful items, restock your troops and the like by conferring with the aforementioned officers, since winning new land and troops will get you new items, thus increasing your stores of equippable goodies before you charge into battle. Simple, no?
And really, simplicity is the key here. The actual battles where you'll slice through 100 or so soldiers is as familiar as ever. Seek out the enemy leaders and systematically cleave through their ranks, or meander around, taking out smaller targets, it's all pretty much what you've done betore, although the time limits do seem a bit trimmed down from past games, a good way to add a bit of challenge to the mix, but it's mainly a matter of supporting your advancing armies and helping with the push on the enemy.
The strategy and action elements meld impressively well. The motivation of grabbing that new weapon or the drive to constantly increase your forces always gives the actual battles themselves a bit more urgency, and that's definitely a good thing when charging into your umpteenth fight. Varied geography (poisonous swamps, snowy mountains, arid plains) all play a role in how you fight, too, however basic. Still, if you weren't a fan of the action before, this probably won't convert you, but those that can' get enough, will have more than enough to munch on here.
The other major area that hasn't seen much of a nudge since the starting days of the series is the visuals. This is still an impressive enough game when it comes to the characters and their varied suits of armor headdresses and weapons, and the sheer number of enemies around you are still a joy to mow through, but the overall look of everything else is starting to get a little rough. The ground still shimmers and flickers a bit, and is still textured with an overstretched, splotchy covering.
The environments themselves, while varied in a general sort of way, aren't especially complex. Sure, you'll get your castles and your maze-like villages, but by and large they're simplistic distractions from the flat, open areas of the map that all tend to blend together. There's also an annoying trend of having enemies fade in at about 50 feet out, removing that feeling that you're taking place in a huge battle and more just a series of small bunches of enemies that you're wading through.
Then again, I can see why they can't render everything at once, either due to hardware limitations or programming talent, because when a handful of enemies and the flashy Musou attacks kick in, the action can slow to a crawl, and frames are dropped left and right. It's annoying to know that after this many games, the framerate hitches and limited draw-in are still an issue.
Even the sound is starting to feel a little dry. The effects are there, and the slight din of clanging weapons and shouting footsoldiers is enough to provide the semblance of a ground war, but I can't help but feel like a little more attention to the surrounding effects would help. Music is sparse, of course, but when it kicks in, it's certainly welcome, as is the voice acting, but it tends to smear together quickly after a few fights and short snippets from comrades.
Even with the strategy elements, this is still [i]Dynasty Warriors, and for whatever reason, Koei seems keenly aware of how to craft a game that should get tired and repetitive, but still manages to pull you in time and time again. It's something that games like Drakengard weren't quite capable of, and that in and of itself is an accomplishment. If you're looking for something completely new, this game isn't it. It is, however, an engaging mix of light, instantly accessible strategy and familiar hack and slash gameplay, and if you can stomach the latter, the former makes this game incredibly addictive, and well worth a purchase. Let's just hope that Omega Force can fix some of the nagging problems with the series before they rely on new hardware to cure things.
