Tecmo Koei’s long running Dynasty Warrior franchise returns with the new complete edition of it’s eighth iteration. Featuring the standalone game along with added extras thrown in, can this re-release justify a purchase from those who may have already wrung Dynasty Warriors 8 dry?
Much akin to the previous entries in the Dynasty Warriors saga, the tales revolve around separate narrative arks involving different Chinese factions and their subsequent warlords. With each campaign offering individual, unalike scenarios and events, there could be a long and poignant story to work through, providing you can cope with confusing exposition and comical voice work. A seasoned veteran of the franchise will know exactly what to expect here, the plucky newcomers however, will find themselves lost and out of their depth almost instantaneously due to the verbatim on offer. Fortunately, there is a codex style section to brush up on your potentially embellished ancient lore.
The gameplay holds true to its (repetitive) roots and will not surprise anyone at all versed in the art of mashing buttons. For the uninitiated, Dynasty Warrior games revolve around the concept of territory control; progression is performed by slaughtering swathes of enemies, leaders and bosses. Take out the higher ranked opponents, and the number of enemies in that area should diminish, letting your armada of goons push ever forward. With each map capable of holding upward of a thousand enemy ragdolls in total, in theory, there should never be a dull moment. In practice, things are a little different.
Without any true combos to learn and master, it devolves into alternating between heavy and light attacks depending on which set of animations you want to see at the time. Enemy grunts may as well lie down on the floor upon your approach as they pose little to no purpose apart from raising the addictive KO count in the corner of the screen. Bosses work a little differently as they are essentially the same as you. They can wield large area attacks, relentlessly pursue you and can often swing the tide of battle. The combat opens up slightly here as the new weapon fusion system allows you to bring along another weapon. Aside from the satisfaction/hilarity of beating down wave after wave of enemies with a scroll of paper, their potential elemental affinities can play a pivotal role in boss encounters. Bringing a weapon with an opposing affinity to a boss fight and you’ll likely wipe the floor with them, if you don’t have that luxury, be prepared to learn and master juggling and chaining attacks, especially on the higher difficulties. Whilst the bosses were indeed more intense, they can often break the pace if you let them fall to the ground as your attacks will not register until they spring to their feet. Whilst it would be infuriating if they could do that to you, a lot of the earlier battles entailed the exciting premise of me knocking them over, me flailing fruitlessly and me getting hit once they’d finally dragged themselves up and were ready to get knocked back down, again.
Luckily, that’s not quite as far as the combat extends, there are also ‘super’ moves that will deal tremendous damage; are of course, only available once a certain gauge is filled. Another move/mode, instantly familiar to any other third person hack and slash game being the timed, ‘suddenly I’m way more powerful than I was before, only I can’t sustain it for long’ one, where attacks are more deadly, gauges can be filled and devastating attacks can be unleashed. Once earned, they can be unleashed at any point and can be a lifesaver. Especially with the threat of potentially having to restart the entire battle from scratch.
Repetition is certainly a key aspect to get over when playing Xtreme Legends, and while it may come down to performing the same moves over and over again, you do get constantly rewarded and encouraged by the game. Item drops, including new weapons are frequent and relatively unique, and are often great fun to experiment with, such was the scroll of incomprehensible death I wielded for quite some time. Levels come thick and fast at the start, earning you new abilities to equip before combat; all this is before the frankly ridiculous amount of playable characters on offer which, due to the expansion, takes it up to a staggering 82. Needless to say, if you’re prepared to put the time in, you’ll be rewarded with many, many hours of content.
It’s shift to the PS4 is of course a welcome and progressive step, it’s just a shame it doesn’t at all make use of the extra grunt on offer. Whilst there is a clear leap in framerate performance, the draw distance is under par and enemies that are even slightly out of your remit present a disappointingly muddy blur. The special moves and animations look pretty enough, but it’s nothing you won’t have seen done better before. Hopefully the next full release will start to push the hardware a little further and we’ll see what we all envision from a game like this.
If you have played the original to death, unfortunately, you won’t find all that much new content however. Aside from (almost) humanising the newly playable and frighteningly powerful Lu Bu in his own storyline and adding some additional Fantasy Battles to whet your ‘what if’ palette, there isn’t much to draw you back in. If you did skip Dynasty Warriors 8 however, this is without doubt, the definitive version.
Much like other franchises in the same scenario: Call of Duty, Need for Speed and Assassins Creed to name but a few, Dynasty Warriors have found themselves trapped inside an inescapable, spiralling rut. On the one hand, their formulaic approach to advancement and reticence to major change will appease the hardcore fans, yet it can often split decisions on those all important ‘middle fencers’. Whilst the same basic mechanics will have to still apply for fear of alienating their loyal devotees, evolving to encompass a greater audience must also take precedence for it to realise it’s potential.
