Sunday 03 Dec 2006

Dynasty Warriors is a grand old series, forming one of Koei’s core intellectual properties, but the question we must always ask is whether this game stacks up against its competitors and contemporaries. It’s a fairly easy question to answer though: what competitors? It seems to me a genre that is occupied by one series only, Dynasty Warriors. Ninety-Nine Nights flirts with the genre in places, but is completely devoid of the interesting in-between-battle strategy sequences. I understand that it isn’t a hugely popular franchise outside of Japan, so some explanation must be in order.

Forging an Empire

The most interesting mode of the game is Empire mode. It is here that you take charge of a fledgling Chinese faction in the third century AD and attempt to take over the whole of China. You select a province, and acquire a few Generals and Lieutenants in doing so, which you must use to fight and gain territories. In the beginning some provinces are undefended and you can walk in and take over, but soon you will bump up against your rival pretenders to the position of favoured one of the Emperor, and battle must ensue. The strategic section is important as the decisions you make there will affect the tactical position of the battle, but the action-based battles in which you play as one of the Generals are equally important in determining the outcome.

Although the fight mechanics are truly of the hack-and-slash variety, it is important what you do and where you go on the battlefield at any given time, so tactics during the battle are important. In an offensive battle you have half an hour, in real-time, to capture the enemy base, while in a defensive battle you must hold off the enemy by preventing them from taking your base for fifteen minutes. Spread out over the map there are many bases, all of which are defended by four Captains and various military units. In addition each team can bring six heroes to the party in the form of Generals and Lieutenants. These play a massive role in the battles and are where your focus must lie if you are to win the battle. Capturing bases simply means ridding the immediate area of any enemy Captains or heroes, and affords the advantage of some free Captains of your own, some extra units to defend the base and a free power-up item that is generated periodically, which often prove to be very useful. You also must take bases on the map in order to create a supply line to the enemy main encampment if you are to take that over. While on the subject of battles, it is an option to fight a battle co-op, so each player plays as a General on the battlefield, which is just… very cool.

Engaging game play

So, although the battle mechanics are really a matter of mashing your X and Y buttons to hack and slash around the field, there is a lot more going on, which immediately makes the game far more interesting than a pure battle action game like Ninety-Nine Nights. There are still the very strange cut scenes in place though, and some hilarious voice-acting in which every sentence seems to contain the word “base” in some way. The graphics are significantly worse than Ninety-Nine Nights, but they’re perfectly passable and I didn’t really care either way.