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Review: Dynasty Warriors (alternate) |
I was actually excited about this game. 1) It would be the first 3D Fighting game to actually feature chinese characters, doing actual kung-fu stuff and not a weird japanese variant style 2) It would be based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which meant that it might have some historical accuracy.
What I wasn’t prepared for was a less than succesful attempt to copy Soul Edge. I may sound harsh by saying this, and you’re probably thinking I’ve been spoiled by Soul Edge, Tekken 3 etc. Well you’re right! The trouble is, so have you, so you probably won’t find this game too crash hot. The graphics are okay, they do the job, the 3D rendered intro was nice but they don’t do the job, the music is horrible, the backgrounds are very Tekken 2-ish, a D background super-imposed upon a Psuedo 3D field where the characters fight. The trouble is, the whole game is only 2D, you can only move on the horizontal, or jump and duck on the vertical axis. The only time when you do move in or out of the background is when you’ve just been knocked down, then can roll either way to avoid an aerial attack. Let me put it another way, take Soul Edge, then put it into Tekken 2 mode, and you have EXACTLY what Dynasty Warriors is. Hand to Hand combat works well in 2-D but with weapons, you need a lot more room to manuever around, even Toshinden had some sort of 3-D movement, albeit restricted to rolling. There are the SNK aficionados who will argue “but what about Samurai Showdown?” , SS plays more like a Street Fighter type game, but Dynasty Warriors plays like Soul Edge, except its not, but it tries to be. There are “critical edge-ish” combos which are just plain boring, being a bit faster and more powerful combos with a few wind streaks here and there.
The combos themselves are a Tekken 2 10 string affair, they usually end up going on for ages, but amazingly Dynasty Warriors gets the credit for actually having more interesting and variable combos than Soul Edge, which got boring after the repetitious one to four hit combo with little variation except high and low. Dynasty Warriors has new moves interspersed within the combos with a few nice weapon twirls and such, making the game a bit more interesting. The characters are also well balanced, even the “big” guys are useable and “flashy” enough for you to pick them more than a few times. Unfortunately while these are welcome strengths, Dynasty Warriors falls flat on its face when it comes to delivering that two player adrenaline rush that we all know and love. The fighters are slightly too large and start off a little too close to each other which only adds to the manueverability problem in the gameplay. Most players will notice the fighters a little rigid, and not as responsive as in Soul Edge, that’s not all! The moves themselves are very stagnated, after playing only for a few minutes you can tell Koei chose to borrow a few kung-fu books and basically cut and pasted in the pictures for most of the moves, while Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Soul Edge used motion capture technology to some extent.
I tried to like this game, I really did. At first you may dismiss it as just being average, but it really is a stinking pile of poop. Everything about this game screams bland and unoriginal, that you will pay good money for. If its bland and unoriginal, then you’re probably not going to have much fun with it, which means it was a waste of money. There options are EXTREMELY lacklustre that only seemed to be added as an afterthought, there are the usual survival, team, time attack game modes etc all copied from the other Namco fighters, the practice mode isn’t even all that great. To summarise Dynasty Warriors was a great disappointment, rent it for a few laughs, but that’s all. If you MUST have a fighting game to tide you over till the arrival of Tekken 3, and after all you’ve beaten Soul Edge, Tekken 1 and 2, all the Street Fighter games, buy Star Gladiator or even Battle Arena Toshinden 3, DON’T buy this.
- Fansta
