Dynasty Warriors 8

If you've played one, you've played 'em all, and even if you haven't played one, chances are high that you're well aware of the seemingly never ceasing assembly line of Koei's Warriors games. The latest in the original franchise of this conglomerate, being Dynasty Warriors, continues on the series current-gen trend of amplifying the amount of flash that occurs on screen, and, well... not much else. If anything Dynasty Warriors 8 more so comes across as Omega Force's answer to fixing a lot of the problems with Dynasty Warriors 7 before it, and DW8 in that regard almost begins to resemble more of a £40/$60 patch than what is supposed to be a next numbered sequel. Though in truth, you could say that about a lot of this series' sequels.

Like DW7, DW8 offers up four different campaigns, as opposed to giving each and every playable character in the game their own story to follow, which has been the most recurring format for the series story modes. Though this time around, instead of each campaign dictating which specific character you'll be playing as per stage, you now have the choice between 3-4 characters. This alone is a huge improvement from how it was handled in DW7, since there was an awful lot of character repeats, with plenty of characters that were left at the sidelines. Though while there are still some characters that you won't be able to play as in the campaigns, DW8's format helps give you a little more leeway for playing as the characters you prefer, while still keeping its more cinematic approach as established by DW7. That, and Free Mode has returned, which lets you play any stage as any character.

Now when I say cinematic, don't take that to mean that the story is still well presented. In the grand scheme of Warriors games it's certainly the most well told, but that's still a pretty low bar when you consider its competition. The majority of the story is told via text over a map of Han Dynasty China, with inanimate character portraits occasionally sliding around the map to signify when a character is invading a province during the story or what have you. Though in DW7 there was at least a narrator in play, but not in DW8. Now all you've got is the text amidst a cheaply made backdrop, with a bit of music to accompany it. Considering that these games continues to be released at full price, the fact that the bulk of the story mode is presented this way is pretty damn embarrassing.

There are cutscenes as well, but they don't take up nearly as much time as the dry voiceless text, and the cutscenes don't really look that great anyway. The character models all resemble anime mannequins, and while the costume designs are as flamboyant and colourful as ever, they also look weirdly... cheap. As if the entire game is secretly following a bunch of brought-to-life mannequins who are LARP'ing it up in plastic armor. Given that it was first DW7 that made the jump to this type of presentation, and for the fact that they omitted the narrator, DW8's story mode lacks any sort of especially meaningful growth.

While you can still now select from multiple characters per stage, that doesn't mean that every playable character will have much of an outcome. In fact there's a lot of characters that show up for one or two appearances, only to be erased from the proceedings completely. Hell, even some of the more major players just straight up vanish with little conclusion as well. Plus, while DW8 of course features the mostest Dynasty Warriors, there's still a crazy amount of whom appear to be important figures across the story that are represented by some generic create-an-officer placeholder. I imagine that's also the reason as to why they still haven't finished the actual narrative yet, leaving the final Jin faction campaign on something of a cliffhanger.

When you also add to all of this the clumsy dialogue, weak voice acting--despite a vast degree of notable talent involved--and characters that never age in the face of stories that progress over decades, and you've got yourself a rather shoddy interpretation of what is undoubtedly an interesting tale. And they couldn't even be bothered to bring in a narrator this time... I mean, c'mon.

How you go about the campaigns of DW8 is exactly what you'd expect: by killing hundreds upon of hundreds of bland clone soldiers. Now I should first mention that as far as the Warriors series goes, the repetitive act of constantly cutting down wave upon wave of enemies isn't necessarily the problem I've had with these games. Rather it's the generally shallow way you often go about it, and DW8 is no different. In fact, given the increased focus on your Musou attacks--which in DW8 functions as a simple Kill Everything attack--the series has arguably been getting even more shallow. In the older games, your Musou attacks were certainly powerful, but they wouldn't completely obliterate everything that stood before you. Plus, you actually had to at least steer your attack in the older games to maximise the amount of crowd damage, whereas for the current stream of DW games, you merely press the circle button and boom, instant-murder of a 5-10 metre radius.

You would think that such a crazy powerful ability would have some caveats. Like, maybe it has a cooldown, or maybe you have to perform certain objectives first, or need to find a rare item to replenish your meter. But as it turns out, your Musou attacks are highly accessible. You'll first start out with the one bar, but it isn't long before you've got three, each representing a chance to use a Musou attack. Replenishing your meter is also rather simple, too. You can otherwise fill it up by just attacking dudes, but Musou items drop so damn frequently that you can often just sit back, press circle a few times, and that's it. Done. And I haven't even mentioned the Rage Musou attack, either!

As if your regular Musou attacks aren't powerful enough, but you also have a Rage Musou attack that has its own bar. Once initiated, you must this time steer it around as your character hilariously cleaves through every enemy soldier you can find, which can often leave you in the thick of what looks like a bouncing waterbed of corpses. It's just ridiculous enough that, despite completely eliminating any form of challenge or strategy, it's still a fun time to watch yourself clean house. It should also be noted that while the Rage bar does understandably take a little longer to fill up, it's still easy enough that it wouldn't take you too long to find yourself with another Smart Bomb x10 in the holster.

Suffice it to say, there's not really that much to the combat. It's easy to merely rely on your Musou attacks--even against Officers--otherwise you can at least do some basic combos by mixing it light & heavy style. There's also a new rock-paper-scissors sort of mechanic, where weapons are now associated by one of three elements, though it doesn't exactly amount to much. Because you can equip two weapons in a battle, you can simply switch to your other weapon should your current one leave an enemy officer with an advantage. That, or again, just keep spamming those Musou attacks -- it's clearly what the developers intended anyway.

While the combat is certainly shallow, it's at least flashy enough to be sometimes entertaining. Attack animations are varied and smooth, and your Musou attacks look appropriately ludicrous. One of the most notable improvements over its predecessor is the inclusion of more weapons. Now every single character in the game has their own unique personal weapon to equip, and the varied set of animations per weapon manage to set the characters apart even in the face of such rudimentary combat mechanics.

It may be a given at this point, but it should still be noted that Dynasty Warriors 8 doesn't exactly offer much in the way of variety. Even with four campaigns, the only difference between them is which characters you'll get to play as. Hacking and slashing your way through large environments is the order of the day, and the occasional stint that has you controlling a catapult are boring and will probably leave you wishing to actually kept back to the combat. Capturing bases, which was somewhat-relevant in the older games, now practically serves no purpose at that, unless the game is specifically asking you to capture one.

I must admit, however, that on certain occasions I found myself having a bit of fun. There's an almost zen-like sort of gratification to watching your K.O. counter rapidly climb up, and certain characters like Xiahou Yuan and Gan Ning I actually kind of enjoyed playing as. Nonetheless, it definitely requires a certain mindset, otherwise if you're like me you'll find yourself feel like you're about to lapse into a coma you're so bored. In fact with the incredible ease there is to dominate the opposition, it actually makes the notorious powerhouse Lu Bu appear to be only as powerful, if not less so, as everybody else.

You could always turn up the difficulty of course, but all that does is raise the damage modifiers up, and if anything only better highlights how shallow the game is. After all, despite all of the series constant talk of strategy and tactics, there is only one in these games: juggling. Either you're juggling the enemy, or they're juggling you, and if you try to play the game as anything else but a mindless Musou machine, then you're going to have a bad time.

There's at least Ambition Mode that adds a little more depth to things by having you run a small town of sorts. The idea is you're trying to spruce things up for when the Emperor arrives, and so you start off in some little patch of land and go on missions to try and gain fame, allies, and materials. The more stuff you get, the more buildings you unlock, such as merchants, barracks, and blacksmiths. It's interesting in theory, though ultimately doesn't deviate too much as you're still doing an awful lot of exactly what you've just done in the campaigns. The fact that after all this time and they're still not packing in the Empires mode--which combines some actual strategic gameplay to the proceedings--as your alternative to the campaigns is rather heinous. It would at the very least justify the full price-tag, especially when you consider the quality of game we're talking about here.

Graphically the game looks like it's stuck in 2007, and the art style is... well, there is none. The environments are bland and ugly, and the characters again somehow manage to look crappy despite what are some elaborate character designs; most of the game's assets are also recycled from the last game almost wholesale as well. The music isn't especially memorable either, and pales in comparison to the metal tracks of Dynasty Warriors 4 & 5, let alone the period-appropriate tunes of Samurai Warriors. The many moments where the game transitions from warring officers staring each other down, only for a hundred or so soldiers to just pop onto the battlefield looks goddamned terrible at that. And there's then the awkward pause for the cutscene to trigger after beating the primary officer to add to things, too. It at least runs at a smooth framerate on PS3, but there are still moments--most frequently involving fire effects--where the game plummets to what feels like you're playing the game in slow-motion.

The Warriors series in general is one that deep down I'm always kinda rooting for. There is clearly a lot of promise here, and the concept is certainly a sound one. However, with a fanbase as loyal as this one, it's easy to see that this franchise is probably never going to change in any drastic amount, and will continue to look and function as if it's always 10 years behind. You're either in or out, I guess. And for as much as I keep trying to get in, it's never too long before I'm dragging myself right back out.