i think your gonna dig that movie, just know that combined, that uncut version is like 4-5 hours long.

the warlords is crazy, it does have the big chinese battles that we all love , but just the story that it tells is really something else, ill just leave it at that. it kind of resonated with me.

for what its worth, warlords is set during the Taiping Rebellion of the 1860's

@mrfluke: Sounds interesting. I'll see if I can track that down. (I have quite the movie backlog building up on me.)

Lets not joke around here....we all know the Dynasty Warriors Gundam series is the best because Zechs Marquise! r-right fellas? heheheh

Which game would you recommend for someone to start out with this series?

If you have a PS3, Dynasty Warriors 8 is a good a place as any to start. The 360 version might be a good recommendation as well down the line once the patch they're working on is released, assuming it helps. If you have a 360, I highly recommend Dynasty Warriors 7 for its Story and Conquest modes.

Well, I won't say you're wrong, anyway. :P

@hailinel: No one can ever take away our love of Koei's Warrior games. Fuck the haters #YOLO #SWAG

Well I picked up the game, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Haven't really done much of the story mode, sticking mainly to Ambition to get some levels on a few characters (the Academy later on in Ambition is a damned blessing!).

At first, I was somewhat worried about the idea of any character being able to use any weapon, as that seemed to take away from the uniqueness of the cast in Orochi 3, but I find that the max affinity system helps to keep things unique, since it's not as effective to use a weapon for which you can only achieve a one-or-two star compatibility, and since you always need at least one favorite weapon to do your EX (something that's downright INSANE on some of the characters), there's plenty to keep the characters from being completely generic.

One thing I do wish, however, is that there was an option to switch to the original Japanese voice track. I'm not entirely keen on some of the English actors I've heard so far, particularly Sun Quan, who sounds more like a voice for TV commercials than a badass warlord.

Actually, the 360 version was put together after the Japanese release. There wasn't a Japanese 360 version. That, I imagine, is a large part of the problem with that version. Since the game was designed by Omega Force as a PS3 exclusive in Japan, there was likely no end of problems in getting it ported to the 360. Honestly, I'm not sure they'll ever get version parity.

@yukoasho: For what it's worth, and I haven't checked PSN in a while so I don't know if it's available yet, the Japanese voice track is being made available as a free download, just as it was for Dynasty Warriors 7.

As far as the 360 version goes, I read yesterday that apparently the patch meant to address the framerate issue has been released, but I have no idea how effective it is. You're right though, in that the 360 version will likely not parity with the PS3 without significant work.

I agree Dynasty Warriors is unjustly criticized for succeeding at being the type of game it is. It's an arcade beat'em'up that revolves around trying to meet targets and objectives, leveling up your character, unlocking new weapons characters outfits and horses, and generally just having fun. And they add new features with each installment so when reviewers give the game flak for being Dynasty Warriors, they're being idiots.

What the game does deserve criticism for is the terrible PC port so full of bugs and issues that were never fixed. I still get frustrated with units disappearing and popping in because the game arbitrarily limits the number of objects on screen, and the terrible draw distance, but what pissed me off the most was that I couldn't control the damn camera and it won't even let me rebind left/right on my right joystick so I had to rig the damn thing up with other buttons.

That's just sorry of them to release a game in such a bad state and never even patch it, I wish I knew of some community mod patch or something, because otherwise I love this game.

@valendale: I really don't have any experience with their PC ports. If they're crap, that's really a shame.

This is respectable. I will say that much.

It's a real shame, because the idiots at Koei's corporate offices think the reason Dynasty Warrior games didn't sell well on PC is because PC gamers have no interest in Arcade Beat'Em'Up games with tons of collectables and achievements. They don't seem to understand that the reason it did so poorly is because stores like GameStop were pulling it off the shelves because of returns, because they released two extremely broken ports on PC.

Koei doesn't seem to comprehend that when you sell a broken product and it does poorly, that doesn't mean people have no interest in the product, it means people don't want to buy or sell broken games they can't play.

I mean can you imagine this game on Steam, if it had full Controller Support, Online Play and Steam Achievements. It would sell like hot cakes, if Koei just understood that when you release a game, it has to be playable, and were willing to patch them.

As much as I sympathize, the fact is that console-to-PC ports have a long history of not working out well. Dynasty Warriors games are not made with PC first and foremost in mind. And if they were having that much difficulty putting together worthwhile PC ports of their games, maybe they just felt it was easier to cut their losses and focus their development on console platforms.

Do any of the Dynasty Warrior games still have the large-scale tactics/strategy of the old NES/SNES Romance of the Three Kingdoms games? Or have they all removed that in favor of arcade beat-em-up? Somedays I miss the old-school grand strategy games Koei used to put out.

(Also, Aerobiz forever.)

Dynasty Warriors isn't really a strategy series, though the Empires expansions typically have a stronger strategy element to them. Koei still produces Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition titles, but their U.S. branch localizes them very infrequently. I don't think that they've released a Nobunaga's Ambition or ROT3K title in North America since the PS2 era, which is a real shame. The closest we've gotten was their Pokemon Conquest strategy RPG (which was Pokemon X Nobunaga's Ambition in Japan).

I was a fan of Koei's old strategy games back when they still ported them to the US. ROT3K was too vague & complex for me to really get, but I loved Aerobiz & Genghis Khan 2. (Honorable mention to Rot3K4: Wall of Fire, which I might've actually understood if I had gotten a chance to play it.) I suspect my dislike of the Dynasty Warrior series stems from the feeling they replaced the strategy games I loved with it.

Honestly, a Dynasty Warriors game with an emergent narrative from high-level strategy could pique my interest.

@hailinel: to be fair it was only tsao tsao starting in number 6.

Before that it was voiced in game as cow cow.

Yeah, I know. Still, just because the localization is bad doesn't mean everyone else has to follow suit. :P

Both series just play to different audiences, really, though I understand where you're coming from. It'll be interesting to see what they do with Dynasty Warriors on the next generation of consoles.

On the subject of Wall of Fire, though, Koei actually put the SNES version out on the Wii U Virtual Console a little while back. It hasn't aged that badly, all things considered.

But that's no excuse for releasing a product so broken that stores refused to sell it, refusing to ever even patch it so that it works properly, then assuming that the problem is that the audience isn't there for it, when in reality, the problem was the broken ass port that couldn't even have 50 things on the screen at a time if you got it to work.

I don't think the problem is that it's all that difficult to put a port together, I think the problem is that the people Koei paid to do it were con artists and Koei just never cared about PC gamers in the first place.

That said, this game really is perfect for Steam. There are a lot of controller based games out on PC now, and a lot of good ports done by good companies. Koei should look one of them up, get a real port done, put it on Steam, and have achievements for all the unlockables.

If they can put it on Xbox they can put it on PC, Xbox is just a second rate PC after all.

I just wanted to bump this thread.

Not just because the OP is well written, but mostly because everyone is probably being super tolerant right now so I figure I can get away with shameless DW support.

Actually mainly because Jeff on the bombcast this week justifying why he was playing that free to play MARVEL heroes game or whatever was like exactly the same reasoning behind some of my time with these games and I just wanted to point that out.

I've only just gotten around to starting DW8 on PC, i wanted a good version of the game since DW7 on 360 was kind of a nightmare with frame rate and i doubted it would be fixed in 8 on that system.

The 60+fps is just what i needed to feel good about the game again, i've always enjoyed the series and after the moderate wait for a new PC version i'm right back in again.

People who dismiss Dynasty Warriors and yet LOVE Diablo and other loot lust games baffle me. I mean Diablo is just clicking on things until they die, picking up stuff and then comparing said stuff to the stuff you picked up before. If you wanna be real reductive about it...which I do.

So the idea that they just "can't understand" Dynasty Warriors is weird to me. In Dynasty Warriors there is that you can pick up in the field, but there's also the loot in the form of characters that you're constantly unlocking and having to level up and stuff.

Yeah the games are all kinda similar, but so are all the loot lust games. I guess the major knock against Dynasty Warriors in comparison to Diablo is that a new Warriors game seems to come out every five minutes...while Diablo takes half a century.

I like this post.

Dynasty Warriors 6. Can't say I've heard of that one. Is that photo faked? Can't be real, always thought they accidentally skipped an entry is all, like Devil May Cry.

*goes back into corner whilst silently chanting "it doesn't exist, it can't hurt me*

I think your bit about how the gameplay has evolved in the last gen is part of why I have fallen out with the franchise as it's gone along.

I'm a big fan of military history and in general what I always loved about the series since the start was that it was basically a beat em up mixed with a big battlefield. Now moment to moment you are just killing so many guys that the scale really got thrown off for me.

Dynasty Warriors 6 was the turning point I guess?

Me too. Everyone is willing to play a repetitive game if it hits the notes they want.