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Musou mode is basically the story-mode of the game, where you first choose between three sides, each starting with three warriors. The teams typically have “the huge guy with a lot of attack power but low defense”, the “small quick guy” who is more balanced, and Mr. “alternative”, who may use magic or some more exotic means of removing opponents. Regardless of what side you choose, the story unfolds in a pretty similar fashion. The common goal is to unite China in peace, and get rid of the (other) nasty power-hungry people. The story is split into a number of acts, where each contain three missions that you can do in the order you feel like. Pre-rendered videos are shown between each act, which adds a bit of personality to the side you chose to play. During the game you’ll make a lot of acquaintances; some who’ll die for you, and yet others who’ll stab you in the back when you’re getting too powerful. You’ll fight in forests, towns, on what seems like extremely big boats, and on open landscapes with towers, tents and such.
After you’ve chosen a mission and have read the story text following, you’ll get to make a number of choices. Your character can equip a number of items; some that build upon his or her magic abilities, and others that boost run speed, damage, maximum life, etc. The game also has the traditional RPG leveling mechanic, but with a slight difference. When you kill, or knock-out “noteworthy opponents” you earn experience points. At the end of a mission the experience points you’ve earned, and whatever bonuses you may have earned are added to your total score. This score adds upon your character’s maximum life, etc, but also upon your weapon’s statistics (damage and default combo length), along with your bodyguards’ statistics (same as yours, but increase slower).
If you haven’t played any of the Dynasty Warriors games, you might be wondering what you actually do. The game itself consists mainly of a number of very big battles, with some rather meaningless objectives thrown in for variety, such as warding off attackers or protecting things. In essence, what you do 99.9% of the time is whacking down Chinese villains of any shape and form. Your character can do a number of attacks using the attack button, the special musou attack button, and the jump button. Interesting combinations can be done by, for instance, pressing the normal attack button two times, and then tapping the special attack button, which will unleash a very quick sword jabbing attack with some of the characters. The weapons one can use range from normal swords to huge clubs, to just about whatever you’d imagine. Normally there’ll be one allied force, and one opposing force. Each has a number of officers, who are the strongest warriors, but there’ll usually be Elite Guards, Guards, Majors, Sergeants, Privates, and then some. Visually the forces are separated mainly by color, and sometimes the weapons they use. During the heat of battle it can be very difficult to differentiate between friends and foes, but luckily you wouldn’t be able to harm your own people even if you tried.
Secondly, the whole item mechanic could’ve been a lot cooler. It’s one thing to just get items that add to your jump height or whatever, but imagine items that’d add fire / ice effects to your huge axe or sword? You can’t really buy any new weapons either, but since you can swap between characters in between missions, it works out okay. Throughout the story more officers decide to join your cause, each with attacks and abilities of their own, but at least in the Musou mode it doesn’t make so much sense to choose a new low-level character when you’ve spent hours increasing the statistics of your main character.
Graphically the game won’t win an award, but it looks decent enough to make the fights believable. The landscapes aren’t very varied, and the coloring is usually dull and dreary. The draw-range isn’t very good, and the camera is even worse. I expected to be able to adjust the camera with the right thumb stick, like in most similar games, but the only control you have is centering it forward by pressing the L trigger. The important characters, namely the officers, do look quite nice and detailed, but as I’ve already mentioned, it’s not easy to differentiate between friends and foes.
Programming the AI for entire armies must’ve been a difficult task, but saying that the soldiers act as they would in real life would be a lie. Your friends do help out and all, but many of the non-officer soldiers tend to just stand around, move slightly, and maybe whack someone when they feel like it. Much of the enemy movement is very predictable, so it’s not especially hard to make strategies against just about any situation. Admittedly, the game is fun when you’re all alone fighting against what seems like an ocean of enemy soldiers, but in particular when you launch a special attack the framerate starts crawling. In normal fights the framerate is solid, but it’s very much noticeable during special attacks. The upside is that you can’t be attacked when doing these moves, so you won’t have to worry about losing health because the hardware, or the engine for that matter is slow.
In such a game like this it’d be easy to expect traditional Chinese music, but considering how you’re fighting non-stop, the developers chose to go with something more unexpected – 80s heavy metal! The track selection is fairly decent, but when almost each and every track is in that one genre, it won’t relieve you of whatever headache you may’ve gotten. Some of the tracks reminded me a bit of Sepultura, while others are a bit quieter. My opinion of the music would have to be that it gets almost as repetitive as the gameplay. The music helps build up some tension in given situations, but the missions last so long that by the time you’re done you’ll be downright sick of it.
The voice acting on the other hand is just so bad it’s silly. Listening to the voiceovers I couldn’t help but imagine a few sound engineers sitting in their office making up weird phrases, giggling at random intervals. The in-game storytelling is pretty horrible compared to a good and emotional role-playing game, and it doesn’t help when the officers shout phrases like “I’ll play with you some other day!” or “Fate can be cruel!” all in some weird pseudo-Chinese American accent. I’m probably wrong, but it sounded to me like the cast of voice talents was not bigger than about four or five people. Sorry Koei, but this just isn’t good enough if you’re going to immerse me in your game.
Up until now I’ve only told you about the Musou mode, but the game actually offers several other reasonably cool diversions. Using the Encyclopedia you can read up on ancient Chinese war history, about the various warlords, battles, etc.
In Free Mode you get to choose between a handful of scenarios, and play in some of the battles. Free Mode can be a nice way for your secondary characters to gain experience. In Versus Mode you play against another human opponent, in a split-screen view. The last man standing wins. Challenge mode is a bit interesting, and should feel a bit familiar to those who have played Super Smash Bros Melee on the Gamecube. Here you can choose between Time Attack (“Defeat 100 enemies as fast as you can.”), Bridge Melee (“Knock off as many enemies as you can.”), Demolition (“Destroy as many objects as you can.”), and Endurance (“Defeat as many enemies as you can.”). Not exactly as many as in the Smash Bros, but it can be a fun way for a group of friends to compete for the highest ranking. And finally there’s the Edit Mode, where you can edit officers and bodyguards. Editing is done very much like your typical RPG character creation process, letting you decide the armor style, weapon type, and more.
Conclusion:
Dynasty Warriors 4 is one of those games you really should try before you buy. It’s one of those games that you might dislike a lot for being just way too repetitive, but if you do happen to like the Dynasty Warriors formula, then the new features of this fourth iteration should be enough to justify the purchase. Koei packed a lot of cool action in this title, but even after four tries there’s still quite a lot they can do to improve the idea.
The graphics and audio isn’t exactly top notch, and I should already warn you that if you dislike 80s heavy-metal then you’re likely to press the mute button on your amplifier, because at least during the first hours it’s all guitars.
Worth renting, but unless you’re a fan, I doubt you’ll want to keep it in your collection.
