Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires

But this one's actually somewhat different to the last thousand iterations thanks to somewhat interesting strategy gameplay.

The main mode here is the Empires mode, which in the beginning has two sceneario's. One fictional and one historical, with more to be unlocked.
The Empires mode contains the hack and slash and constant pressing of the "X" button Dynasty Warriors fans have come to know, love and if they're somewhat sane grow tired with after a dozen times, but theres a strategy section that breaks up the tedium that comes with hours of button mashing.

You'll start with one territory a general or few and lietenets as well as a bunch of troops. From there, it's pretty much up to you.
But you can encourage crafts to earn a little more dough to spend on recruiting troops, special tactics for use in battle, training for your generals, signing peace treatys with other clans and more.

From this map, you can also invade other territorys - which then puts you into traditional Dynasty Warrior action where you'll hack and slash and after enough hacking and slashing, hopefully take over the territory.
From time to time, you'll also be attacked and need to do more hacking and slashing to defend your territory.
And just for varietys sake, sometimes your allies will request that you do a joint attack on and enemy or even help them defend their land, which - you guessed it - leads to more hacking and slashing.
If it were all simply hacking and slashing I'd have to give this a low score, but the strategy layer is a welcome change, but in the next DW's could do with being a little more in depth, I feel.

Graphically, DW5 is decent - it's not horrible looking, but I'm not sure it's exactly pushing the 360. But then I don't have an eye for detail.
There does seem to be more going on in the screen then usual, I think.
And if its the trade off between more guys on screen and graphics, then the more guys is a good thing.

The audio department is as good as ever. Excellent music and sound effects. The voice acting though is still mighty lame.

The Create an Officer mode is better if I remember correctly.
Theres certainly more weapons to choose from, which is just awesome.
Doesn't seem to be a real variety in the visual aspects of creating your own officer though.

All in all, if your a Dynasty Warriors fan but like me have grown tired with the formula (or even lack there of, perhaps) then the strategy part of empires is a welcome change.

But if your just not into strategy stuff, using your brain or just liked Dynasty Warriors as it was, well - keep playing the last DW then - almost the same anyhoo.