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December 19, 2009

Warriors Series


I addressed part of the warriors series in a previous post (Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2). In this post I will look at the other parts of the series (Dynasty, Samurai, Orochi). Pretty much all three of the sagas in the series follow the same pattern of hack and slash hundreds of peons on a fixed map. Although I do love killing as many things on a screen as I can, I have tended to find the gameplay of this series fairly linear. From each version (Dynasty Warriors 3-6, Samurai Warriors 1-2, Warriors Orochi 1-2) of the series, KOEI tends to find that adding a few new characters constitutes and new release title. The gameplay itself does not vary a whole lot. Although the large selection of characters seems to keep us coming back for more. The gameplay can be a little tedious at times, especially since some levels can take up to 45 minutes to complete depending on which objectives you are trying to fulfill.

With each new release in the Dynasty and Samurai series, we usually find and Xtreme legends disc following shorty afterwards to provide us with a few remixed levels, new armor, and often a character or two. For the most part, this series has tended to be quite successful despite its repetitive gameplay. The one thing that was pretty cool though was the crossover in the Warriors Orochi series. Although the story line sucked to all hell, the fact that there were 77 characters to chose from in the first one was enough to keep me wanting to play.

KOEI also switched things up by adding in a 3 person team system with tactics encompassing speed, technique, and power. This allowed for players to rotate their characters during gameplay to recharge musou (special) and health gauges.

I would imaging that KOEI will continue to launch these titles as more and more games are releasing for the next gen consoles. I would venture to guess that I will probably be dead before the series as during my funeral Dynasty Warriors 100 will be coming out (I'm joking).

For the most part, if you are a fan of hack and slash games with minimal brain work then this series is definitely what you want to look at.

2 comments:

  1. Dynasty Warriors is the dumbest, most repetative game series of all time. Yet I play every one. They don't even try to make new games really. The same settings, they add a couple of new characters but often keep many of the old. getting through the levels is more of an endurance test than skill. But I seem to keep playing them as they come out with new ones. There is something fun in beating the crap out of vast amounts of troops and the graphics especially the cut aways are very good. The storylines are amazingly simplistic and sometimes confusing as if they have left out most of the story which would make it coherent. But for all the faults I still play them.

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  2. I think our need to be greedy and have as many characters as possible is what makes us continue to play repetitive games like these. But I can't complain because I am the worst offender for playing Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 as my 153 hours of gameplay demonstrates.

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