DYNASTY WARRIORS 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition
Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition Review
Nostalgia Goggles Factor: Very Low.
Bug Factor: Very Low.
Crash Factor: Very Low.
Replay Factor: Intrinsic.
A crowd-control, hack’n slash game based on a Chinese novel, set in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. DW8XL contains an enormous amount of content and repetitive gameplay.
As I have played and reviewed DW3 recently, I will be doing some comparisons between these two games. Like many other reviewers have pointed out, “Complete Edition” is a lie, as is evident from glancing at the DLC section and you should not be playing this game with a keyboard.
– Real player with 749.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Third Person Games.
-sigh- Where do I begin?
Well, I gotta start by saying, if you’re looking to get into the Warriors/Musou games, this would be the ideal title to start with. Easily the best title in the series (at least since DW5).
For those new to the series, Dynasty Warriors (a.k.a. Shin Sangoku Musō) is, basically, a hack-n'-slash based on era of the Three Kingdoms of China, and the romanticized novel of the same name. In its stages, there are thousands of enemies of various calibers to mow down. You got your peons that go down in a few hits, your commanders that are a little tougher, your generic named officers that are a threat, and other playable characters that have the same abilities you do. You have a more-or-less equal amount of allies on your side, and how they fight is determined by your side’s overall morale, which itself is determined by your performace. Each character has their own string of combinations, but I’ll get into that in the next paragraph.
– Real player with 681.6 hrs in game
DYNASTY WARRIORS 7: Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition
This is the best possible start for newcomers to the Dynasty Warriors franchise period.
Sure most people will say play Dynasty Warriors 8 first as it has better gameplay but if you start with 8 you will not be able to appreciate the series as much as you will if you start with this one.
Why is that? Because Dynasty Warriors 7 has a story mode that has you playing pretty much every major character in the game. This is great because those new to the series are likely going to be overwhelmed by the massive roster of character, much like in fighting games, Dynasty Warriors roster usually consists of picking the character that looks the coolest (unless you have any interest in ROT3K lore prior to playing this series). This isn’t the case with Dynasty Warriors 7 as you get to experience every single character’s perspective rather than just playing as one character over and over again. I find that this keeps the experience from being too repetitive compared with previous games in the series where you just stick to a certain character for each mission. Dynasty Warriors switches the characters up giving you new moves to use each time and no character is hard to master since the entire game is designed around pick up and play gameplay which is great.
– Real player with 73.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Great Soundtrack Games.
Every Allied Officer ever: “Whatever you do, DO NOT PURSUE LU BU!!”
Proceeds to pursue Lu Bu
Repackaged as Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition, Koei’s number one “Ancient Chinese Genocide simulator” series returns back in time 7-8 years back to re-release 7 into Steam,
! knowingly that they kinda admit they screwed the pooch with DW9.
To make things short
Gameplay: Dynasty Warriors 7 returns back to their usual bread and butter 6-button attack combos after immediately divorcing 6’s Renbu attack system. Levelling up is non-existent and was rather replaced with a skill system (8:XL would eventually revert that).
– Real player with 55.9 hrs in game
SAMURAI WARRIORS: Spirit of Sanada
Finally 100% completed this game…. ugh…
If you’d asked me in the first 10 hours of playing, back then I probably would have recommended it…
… But then it started to drag on… and on… and on… and I found I wasn’t even halfway through the game yet before I’d got completely sick of it.
I’ll put it this way: It is like a Samurai Warriors game… except ONLY about the Sanada family… and with hours of text blocks and cutscenes sandwiched inbetween every battle… and like Samurai Warriors 4-II, the trigger conditions for the various tasks you have to undertake in battle are really flaky… and you often have to wait through tons of pointless dialogue and pop-ups for hundreds of kills or whatever before the game bothers to acknowledge you’re near someone it has an event for (by which time you’ll be running out of daylight). Expect to finish a lot of battles to find a few of them still locked and no clue what to do to unlock them… sometimes because you killed the guy you were supposed to kill before the game told you to kill it and it just never procced.
– Real player with 82.4 hrs in game
I have played all of the Samurai Warriors games to date and am a huge fan of the Warriors games. And I have to say this is the best Samurai Warriors and possibly the best Warriors game I have played. In Spirit of the Sanada they focus specifically on the Sanada Clan making their way through the Warring States Period. This game is much more story focused than previous installments, filled with tons of dialogue, characters and events. The main story took me around 35hrs to complete so it’s not just some short spin off. The battles are very fun despite being a bit repetitive. They also have added in a day/night cycle which switches thing up a bit but makes battle time limits shorter. Furthermore, they’ve also included a stratagem system into this which can give you an advantage in a battle or make a task much easier to complete. While using them isn’t necessary, it can make life so much easier in battle because some of them get pretty rough at times if you’re not overpowered. The only downside is it takes forever to charge it up after completing objectives once before. I’m going to close by saying this, I’ve played through this series 5 times now (SW - SW4-II) and I’ve read up on the actual history featured in this series. I went into this game knowing exactly how things were going to play out and what the ultimate fate of everyone would be. But despite this I could not help tearing up. The way they executed the ending of this grand story was excellent. It left me so sad but very satisified. I just cannot praise this game enough. I highly recommend this to any Warriors fan and to anyone who is looking to get into the series.
– Real player with 64.8 hrs in game
DYNASTY WARRIORS 9
So, after this game got some patches and new features were added I thought it would be the right time to revise my review. I started and tested this game every time they released a patch. After over 120 hours and completing every achievement in this game here is what I think after all the patches and new features. Notice I played every Dynasty Warriors game from 2 to 9 as well as the extreme legends and empires variants.
Technical:
Performance:
The game still has huge performance issues. It depends on the version of the game. 1.13 was okay while the newer versions have big frame drops again. I have a pretty good pc and still get these drops.
– Real player with 143.8 hrs in game
While this game is not as terrible as some people claim it to be, almost every aspect of it is mediocre at best. It is obviously rushed, maybe with additional 6-12 months of development it could be a better a game, but it’s Koei we are talking about. They have fanatical devotion to “quantity over quality” principle, so instead of taking time to make one good game, they will make 5 identical shallow games and milk them with DLC. Back to the topic:
1)Open world, the main feature of this game (and the savior of the franchise in Koei’s dreams) is the biggest flaw. While the map is pretty big, exploring it is not fun at all. Cities look mostly identical and they are relatively small. Besides the standard visiting traders and blacksmiths routine just like in any other game, there is nothing to do in them. Resources are everywhere and very easy to find and obtain. From aesthetic point of view landscapes look very bland in comparison to real China (compare some photos with screenshots). You can find bandits and animals in the wilderness doing completely nothing. That is everything I can say about exploration. Then we got super fun activities to do in a hack and slash games. Fishing (mashing button to become the richest man in China in 10 minutes), hunting (beating or shooting animals for no particular reason), housing (inviting officers to make bonds with them which are completely pointless), errand boy quests (beside being boring, they offer pitiful reward), setting traps (just getting materials from them after some time), everything we could ask for a musou game.
– Real player with 90.0 hrs in game
Ryse: Son of Rome
fun game that holds up today even though it was just a “tech demo” when release. decent story, solid graphics, and mediocre gameplay. plays like a simpler version of the batman arkham series. the only downside is that campaign is very short (4-6hrs) and the combat is repetitive. still, worth checking out since it plays like an extended action movie.
– Real player with 60.8 hrs in game
Contrary to what the game’s title might leave you believing, the protag’s name is not actually Ryse, but it’s actually Marius. Some characters do tell him to rise from time to time when he’s being a lazy slacker falling asleep in the middle of a war, and the subtitles use an i instead of a y, but that’s just semantics. I’d also consider the “Son of Rome” part to be a little inaccurate since a city can’t conceive people. Although people can be conceived inside cities, and Marius’s daddy-o, Leontius sure laid down the pipe on his wife Septima. And we have confirmation that he did so at least twice since Marius has a sister! I might be going a little off track here, so let’s get down to the game itself.
– Real player with 21.8 hrs in game
SAMURAI WARRIORS 4-II
Intro
Coming straight from Samurai Warriors 2, I expected nothing short of fluid and great gameplay and Koei has delivered
with Samurai Warriors 4-II. I’d always prefered the SW games compared to Dynasty Warriors or the
Warriors Orochi games which I played on the Xbox 360.
I’ll make many comparisons to Samurai Warriors 2 as that was the last SW game I played, back in 2007 and I recenly played again to get that ever so good Nostalgia feeling.
Warriors / Story
– Real player with 212.2 hrs in game
Samurai Warriors 4-II is a sequel to Samurai Warriors 4, or it’s a remake, or it’s Xtreme legends. Or…. honestly exactly what it is, isn’t clear.
The Warrior series has a long history of doing Xtreme Legends which is their “complete” edition usually allowing someone to play both the original and extra levels in one with more characters. However, there’s only one new character, Naomasa II, who is interesting, but not enough for a whole new game. There’s also no way to play the old game, there are just new stories here. It’s not a remake either, as the stories are vastly different, and the characters are the same. The game claims to focus on the characters more in the stories, but honestly, the stories feel the same style as the original game, though the original Samurai Warrior 4 has better stories (At least characters you care about more), but I found the ones in 4-II to be more interesting on some levels. At least it’s not the same story we’ve heard three times already in this series, it’s a new character that the game wants to focus on, which is a good change.
– Real player with 59.3 hrs in game
SAMURAI WARRIORS 5
This is a new engine. It doesn’t have the plethora of models that the old workhorse of WO2 and 3 had. So it’s a smaller roster. That being said, it still feels like SW game. I enjoy it more as I play more of it.
Each weapon does have a basic moveset. But each character brings a couple special moves to their weapons. For instance Saito’s spear has very basic moveset up to C5. Toshiie’s spear has an unique C1 and unique C5 barrage and a max of C6. Tadakatsu’s spear has an unique C1 and an unique C6 move also.
– Real player with 241.1 hrs in game
Koei has taken a huge risk here, effectively rebooting the Samurai Warriors franchise, and it amazingly works.
I’ve been a fan of the Warriors series for most of my life, starting with DW2, I’ve seen the highs and lows of this franchise, and the start of the Samurai side series. I consider DW8XL one of, if not the best of the series, and everything about 9 was a complete failure to reimagine and reinvigorate. So when news broke of Samurai Warriors 5 and it also attempting to reimagine the series, I like many, dreaded the worst. Now, 16 hours in, I can confidently say Koei has a massive success in this rebooted franchise.
– Real player with 59.6 hrs in game
DYNASTY WARRIORS 8 Empires
This review will be posted, while having DW5E in mind. Gonna be long.
DW8 Empire is first empire game that come to PC from the series.
You don’t need any of DLC to experience 100% of the game or complete 100% achievement run. Mostly, it’s just flavour.
Game outside of battle aspect got reworked entirely, You are not being considered always a ruler. You can play as Free Officer, Vagabond Unit (a party without a land), Officer under someone, their Lieutanant, Officer, Strategist or Marshal. The last two being almost as the ruler themselfs, but with the option of rebel/betrayal. To win the game, You don’t have to be a ruler, all You have to do, is to be inside the winning force. I lost only once so it’s hard to say if there’s even Game Over screen.
– Real player with 171.2 hrs in game
OMG still in shock with the release of empires on PC. I have long heard of it, but haven’t been able to play the “Empires” of a Dynasty Warriors game since it usually goes out on PS3 or XBox. And here it is, right on my doorstep, on steam. What better way than to test it out.
This review should be unbiased (Sort of), as I have been a dynasty warriors player of Dynasty Warriors 3, 4, 6 (5 skipped due to not being on PC), 7, and 8. I have experienced all the 1 vs 10000 army battles, while slaying down all that stands in my path (including gathering the courage to stand against the mighty Lu Bu, though mostly getting my blade handed back to me 10 times fold).
– Real player with 128.9 hrs in game
Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc
Very old but catchy and interesting game. For the first time, I’ve played this game when I was a child, and it gave to me tons of hours of fun. Now I can remind to myself of these epic and positive moments.
What’s the game like?
I can compare it with Dynasty Warriors with an actual story set in medieval times, with an inventory system and RTS elements. In simple words, it’s like an RPG (but more or less linear) where you can select the character (not only Joan of Arc is available). The game has eight stages, and each stage has it’s own huge battleground – an entire map where you can feel yourself free to explore every corner. It’ll take about 2-3 hours to finish it. There are even some sub-quests you can get from civilians. However, the main feature of the game is fighting and castle sieges. Command all your troops via RTS mode to besiege the castle or stronghold and switch your control to Joan of Arc to fight personally. Tons of enemies will try to separate your body from your head. You can lead your battle however you want: upgrade your main characters stats and lead an entire army to victory or fight alone 1vsDozens of bastards.
– Real player with 20.4 hrs in game
Jeanne d’Arc/Joan of Arc is a medieval action-RPG set during the 100 years war. You can switch to a RTS camera, but if you don’t like it, you only have to use this once to man a trebuchet and command it to attack a fortress. The main focus of the game is combat. You will speak with French citizens and do side missions, but for the most part, you will fight against the English and their allies. I quite like the combat and its many combo attacks, but some newcomers might get overwhelmed by the amount of enemies. Levelling up, increasing your stats and improving your gear and weapons is addicting and you will get very strong at the end of the game when one hero can potentially take out enemy castles on their own if you do it right. Joan of Arc is all about making good tactical decisions and be smart about it. Otherwise you make it harder for yourself. I recommend this game to players who are interested in a medieval setting with lots of fighting.
– Real player with 20.0 hrs in game
Rum & Gun
Hi!
Here is yet another game review after playing this game for a while i truly got into it and i am enjoying it.
This is a pirate game without any ships a rowing boat yes but no ships so if you are looking for a pirate game with ships to sail the high seas and sink ships and steal their plunder then this game is not for you.
This game is based around YOU a pirate on land killing monsters and other fellow pirates you will have various maps to unlock spread over various (ACTS) i am on Act 2 but i think there will be 3 Acts or more to unlock.
– Real player with 79.7 hrs in game
I’ve been following this game’s development for some time, and I instantly bought it.
What really surprised me is that just for 4 euros, I expected much less content. Only one act is playable currently, but it contained 6 hours of gameplay to me. So the first big issue of the game, is that it’s too cheap :D
I would say that it’s base is similar to Diablo II, but with interesting twists on the mechanics, and the combat got a good, Doom-like, situation based weapon arsenal, which I enjoyed mastering. In the early stages the builds are flexible as well, but by the end of the game, I started dying, so I had to use most of my toolkit, changing my weapons nearly from enemy to enemy. Which was a good feeling, because I could master my skills for a long time.
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game