Dynasty Warriors 4

These guys want to hurt you... unless they're on your side of course.

Dynasty Warriors 4 is the latest in a line of incredibly popular games, at least in Japanese and Chinese markets, but over here in the west it’s never sold as well as it quite frankly deserves. The game lets you choose your favourite Chinese state out of three immediately on offer (more are unlocked as you play through the game), which all offer a separate single player campaign), and then a character (also unlocked throughout the game – over 40 in total) within each state, and progress through the game in an effort to wipe out the opposing armies to eventually take control of the entire country.

You’ll control your character in a pretty standard 3rd person perspective, with a slightly disruptive camera if you don’t take full advantage of all of the sneaky features of the guard function, but you, along with your troops will have to kill literally hundreds of oncoming weapon wielding adversaries, and that is an experience to behold.

Details of a battle

If that's not a 'Musou' attack, we're all in deep trouble.

A normal battle will start with you, as your chosen general and a squad of bodyguards that you can give limited orders to setting out into the large maps to wipe out as many of the enemy forces as possible. When you come across enemies, you have a variety of attacks and ‘powers’ that you can use to dispatch them including your Musou bar, which charges up when you do damage, take damage or just have low health and when discharged acts like some kind of unstoppable super move. Fortunately, each general has a slightly different move for this, as well as regular combination attacks.

Your enemies will fight you in squads of five warriors, but squads often join together into a massive battle if fighting is going on nearby. It is not uncommon for you to turn a corner to find a 50-man brawl going on, though the chances are that you’ll take credit for half of the deaths inflicted if you join in. Just as you are a powerful general, the enemy has similar units, which are identified by their names above their character, and take a lot more punishment and skill to bring down, though when you do, you are left with a permanent stats upgrade or an item you can use to improve your statistics.

RPG Upgrades

You can even upgrade your life and Musou bars (on the bottom of the screen).

In-between each battle, your performance is replayed back to you in a rather clever map view in brief. Depending on how many enemies you’ve slaughtered, how many generals, and the time in which you managed the feat, you’ll be awarded points which can level you up, much like a Role Playing Game. Instead of picking up new weapons, your weapon is upgraded using similar points, and even becomes a new weapon every few levels. Even your bodyguards level up, and increase the maximum number you can take with you, up to a quite respectable eight. Finally, as you level up, you’ll be able to string together a higher combination attack, to put the icing on the cake.

As the story progresses, new characters will join your league of generals and will then become controllable forces. You will also gain new costumes for your chosen character, and the movies you view in the single player campaign will be viewable later. Even all of the 20 endings you can achieve through your varying performance are available strangely hidden in the options menu, which is very inspiring to collect them all, although since I’ve spent a good 10 hours playing through once, it will certainly take some time.

The Art of War

What would a Dynasty Warriors 4 review be without a shameless ogle at one of the female generals?

Characters in Dynasty Warriors 4 are very respectable, and look as detailed as necessary, especially since I’ve only ever noticed one moment of slowdown, right at the start of one level in thick grass, even with 50+ fighting warriors onscreen. The animation is fluid and effective, especially combined with the effects of slashing your way through a crowd. In fact, the only gripe I have with the graphics is the limited detail of the surroundings, which although relatively varied within the 17 levels, does seem very plain at some points when coupled with the obliterating fog curtailing the view distances.

The FMV movies meant as rewards for completing an act or level do look perfectly adequate, but can’t hope to match such games as Final Fantasy X. In game cinematics are also played at various points when you defeat a general, or sometimes just to show an event, but often cut in at the worst possible moment in the middle of a frantic massacre, dropping you right back in at the same place when it is over. Equally, if you have a particularly interesting history with any specific general, perhaps by defeating him often in previous missions, he may challenge you to a duel, which is optional, but pits you against him in a one on one 45 second fight. If you beat him, you’ll instantly return to the battle with the same health as you left with, but with one less general to kill. If you lose, which sometimes can be a matter of bad luck, you’ll receive an instant fate of game over.

90 minutes a match

There are a variety of moves, including this jumping charge move. Some you won't often use like the pathetic block.

Each battle can last anything from 30 minutes right up to 90 minutes, and you must achieve your objectives within the time, or else you automatically lose. Not being able to save mid game, as you can imagine, being challenged to a duel by one of your final opponents, 70 minutes into a 90 minute battle and losing through sheer bad luck is nothing if not frustrating since it’ll take another 70 minutes to get yourself back to where you were.

Personally, I only accept a duel if it’s early on in the battle, otherwise it’s just too much at stake if you’ve been playing for an hour. If you’re feeling like a change of pace, or just want to get across the huge battlefields more quickly you can leap upon a horse (or elephant in certain levels) that gives you a limited and pretty useless attack, but also the ability to knock over any enemies you run through, naturally leaving your troops unscathed.

Picking on the little things… elephants

You can even taunt, which can stun opponents if you're in range (or open yourself up to a nice attack).

It seems to me however that a balancing issue should have been dealt with for the elephants. Since your enemies are often the people you’ll steal these steeds from, you do seem to lose a lot of health from being hit by an elephant, whereas your enemies are knocked to the floor, and I can’t even be certain they are hurt at all. Sometimes, your enemy will come from behind you, and take you immediately by surprise with an elephant, knocking you over, and severely diminishing your health. Unfortunately, it doesn’t normally end there…

When an elephant hits you, you’ll fall to the ground, often where you were standing, but since these gigantic tree trunk legged animals keep ploughing through, you’ll most likely be pushed forward by it as it carries on. This means that once you stand up again, you’ll immediately be knocked over, and then the cycle repeats until you are lucky enough to be thrown aside, normally with only half of your health remaining, or a quick death if you weren’t feeling too perky to begin with.

Health and pickups

You can equip elemental orbs that give you more power for charge up attacks.

Fortunately, there are crates and vases littered around the level that can often provide you with increased health, a boost to your Musou bar, or just empty hope of something good, and defeating a leader of a squad will often provide you with a small health upgrade, or just a temporary stats upgrade for 30 seconds or so. Strangely, though great for collectors, your items to upgrade your stats are available to be used by any character or state you choose in any game once you’ve picked them up.

Other gametypes include Free Mode, that lets you play one scenario unlocked by Musou mode, Versus mode that gives you four stages to defeat your enemy with various objectives, Challenge Mode which has four varied game types that inspire you to set a new record and Edit mode where you can create your own officer, with bodyguard units that adds a lot of personalisation to each battle.

We’re not in it to make them scream

There's such satisfaction from your opponents sparking as you put them down. And they say games promote violence!

The general war sounds of crowds screaming, metal clanging on metal, and fire burning are excellent, however the voice acting is definitely nothing special, perhaps falling at the lowest possible hurdle while maintaining any dignity at all. All characters’ voices do seem appropriate, but the acting and writing is without much substance, really leaving the story of the game to falter under its unstoppable carnage.

Musically sound, the game delivers plenty of different tracks, although they all seem to fit into two categories; Traditional Chinese modernisations or guitar based light metal, which really feels strange in every way except to heighten the action.

War, never been so much fun

Sometimes it's difficult to see who are your friends and who are your enemies, but you can't hurt friendlys.

When I began this game, I honestly didn’t expect there to be much draw from a Chinese Civil war, but the magnitude of each battle, coupled with the sheer satisfaction of you KO meter rising on screen as you overcome waves of soldiers is quite magnificent. There’s plenty to work towards and collect, so finishing the game will take you plenty of time, however the main flaw is that it does all feel the same throughout, which isn’t as bad as it could be with worse game play, but it does mean that the same tactics generally work on each mission.

That said, it is fun, which is the most important feature of all, so I would heartily recommend the game to anyone who enjoys a good fighting game, and perhaps fancies something on a vast grand scale. Dynasty Warriors has never been as great a success over here as I consider it should be, so perhaps this is your chance to check out whether you can unite China, or if you’ll just fall by the wayside.