Dunno since I haven't played it; baffling that Wen Yang wasn't a character already in DW7 considering they decided to focus on Jin. Lu Su is a really cool cat from the book and is actually one of the few with a picture in Moss Roberts' translation so if they didn't make him in to any one of a variety of offensive stereotypes then I'm sure he's still solid in DW8. They seem to be getting a lot of life out of Lord Guan and Zhang Fei's actual, adopted, and purely fictional children though. What does Zhang Bao do considering they already made a female version of him?

Zhang Bao is a friend of Guan Xing, though they do have moments of rivalry, but he doesn't really interact with Xingcai at all. (On that note, I don't know if I'd go so far as to call Xingcai a female version of him since she's just a really loose interpretation of Liu Shan's wife, who just happened to also be Zhang Fei's daughter.)

As for Lu Su, he's pretty cool, actually. He's level-headed and sort of the balancing force between Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu.

Zhang Chunhua. It kinda looks like chihuahua so that one.

@hailinel: Well if Xingcai is a warrior and there's no Zhang Bao then effectively she becomes Zhang Bao; she doesn't seem to be emphasized for daintyness or feminine qualities or anything and thus her purpose as a wife as opposed to a warrior is nebulous per 200 AD standards (Zhurong aside). I do however like the redesign from the DW5 version; why not have a ridiculously oversized shield. The Japanese voice actress in Orochi 3 also isn't terrible as the English one was in DW5.

Yue Jin, though I've still got Shu, Jin and the rest of Wei to play through so it's probably subject to change.

I can't get over his Dual Hookblades, it mows through everything.

That's all true, though the stories of women in Dynasty Warriors have always been heavily reinterpreted if not completely rewritten. Zhenji and Cao Pi are frequently depicted as sharing a happy marriage even though Cao Pi eventually couldn't care less about her and told her to kill herself. Or the fact that Sun Shangxiang drowns herself in the novel after all of the bullshit she goes through as a pawn of her brother.

Though in Xingcai's case, it kind of makes sense that she'd have such a strong personality in the games given that Liu Shan is such a fop (if more a more perceptive one than he was historically).

Yeah the female stories are basicly all made up. Think of it this way though, if they were actually accurate there would be no playable females. Finally you can't expect to release a game in the west or even Japan nowadays that's for teens where everyone has a dozen wives and is sexist. It's down played as much as possible even in historical dramas made in china that are entirely based on the lives of concubines in the imperial palace. (yes they make like a dozen series a year and the older generation loves them)

In terms of favorite new character, definitely Lu Su. It's nice to see they included such a minor but incredibly important character.

Yue Jin. Those hookswords man. Now if we're talking favorite new weapon, then damn. There are just so many to choose from. I can really dig the ringblade.

@mao16: As far as the book is concerned Lu Su is the 4th or 5th most important Wu character and probably has the most lines overall, tossup between him and Zhou Yu. You could still make SSX into a playable character without stretching it too much and I don't really have a problem with including Zhen or Diaochan or other females that actually existed (though I suppose Diaochan's existence is questionable, but still a reasonably important character); if you're going to use fictional characters then start with Zhou Cang.

I wanted to say Xu Shu but he was already in Empires!

From the real new ones I'd say either Guan Xing or Zhang Bao. Both are quite handsome :D Although Jia Chong looks pretty interesting too, but I have yet to play him.

No one beats Zhong Hui in style though :D

I picked Yue Jin because I had a friend named Yu Jin from K-12, but she looks nothing like the character in the game.

Too bad this game won't drop in price before I've lost all interest in it.

@starvinggamer: Yar these games take a long ass time to drop, was surprised Orochi 3 actually went down ever. Yu Jin also an important character (distinct from Yue Jin) though mostly for his incompetence.

Yeah, there really isn't a problem with making female characters playable; Dynasty Warriors was never something that would appeal to the most ardent purists of Romance of the Three Kingdoms to begin with, so the liberties the developers take aren't really an issue. Omega Force has always done a pretty good job of toeing that line, though even among the men, some are more accurately portrayed than others.

@hailinel: I don't really have an issue with them taking liberties I'd just prefer that they stuck first to characters from the book; though supernatural entities such as Nu Wa and Fu Xi are fine as well, and even a plot wherein Qin Liangyu is summoned from the future via mysticism is fine; anything that already has a basis for existing is fine by and large it's simply inventing new characters that I take issue with. Obviously the characterizations of Zhang He and Xu Chu/Zhu are unacceptably stupid but aside from that most characters are well rendered cartoon versions of themselves (granted you could make Lord Guan much more impressive whilst still wearing his tattered and brocade robes).

You'd wind up with somewhere around 200 interesting characters before you would ever have to just invent or scrape together someone as a composite of others' and until recently they didn't really care that much about overlap; they've still yet to have a comparable leap in scale to the one between DW2 and DW3. Chen Gong and Dong Cheng are two extremely sympathetic and well characterized individuals that receive essentially no recognition in the games; what of Chen Gong's initial meeting with Cao Cao where he states "Better to wrong the world than have it wrong me first!" The book is just such an utter masterpiece that it's not hard to draw hundreds upon hundreds of interesting storylines from it but they seem to have failed pretty miserably in that regard.

I understand how you feel. But I also imagine that Omega Force has a tough job deciding which new characters to add with each release. As you said, there are a lot of characters and events from the novel based on historical precedent that would make fantastic fodder for Dynasty Warriors. But at the same time, there's only so many characters that they can add, and I imagine that they want to keep the roster as diverse as possible. So we end up with tertiary or fictional characters popping in that, though they aren't anywhere near as core to the story as Guan Yu or Lu Su, add those twists to the roster. Their roster choices are always bound to disappoint some people, though I wouldn't necessarily call their efforts a miserable failure.

My favorite guy is Wei Shen. He is in this game right?

Yoshimitsu. Is he in this game?

In all seriousness, I've never played this series but it's good to hear that this one is good. I haven't heard great things about previous entries in the series.

I haven't played the new one yet (though I'm actually kind of considering it), in the past I was partial to Zhou Yu until they gave him a staff.

@demoskinos: No but he is in the new Wolverine movie (which is shockingly supposed to be good)!