I never owned this game but played it at a friend's house.

Really enjoyed it. Not really touched a musou game since, but if i ever come back to the genre it would have been because of this game.

I just remember thinking it was so cool that in the middle of the battle you could just. Take someone's horse. Definitely a game i'd look to own in the future!

This game is sooooo fucking good until you hit the endgame. 3 established a series foundation but the way this buidls on the musou formula adds and strengthens the series so much.

Characters immediately feel better and more flexible to play (though the lock on system is still in place), with their stats and combinations of different moves making each a surprisingly different experience when taken into battle, it's just a fundamentally more joyous game than previous musous. Stages are also vastly improved, tighter and more varied with a lot of different pathings that both make planning map position critical and don't leave you with hours of downtime walking. It's just fun, it's just so fun to throw yourself at these stages again and again.

Also shout outs to Koei for refining their tech to the point that this game feels like it has a more intentional art style compared to the previous game's programmer art-y vibes (also good). The menus and music here really hit on that sense of foreboding darkness, and the stages are imposing to match aesthetically. Love the character designs all around.
Shame Koei decided to pull its standard 2 steps forward 1 step back routine on this game. Duels would be a neat idea if they flattened the stats and morale so that it's an even fight, but they didn't, so it's often comically one sided, either pointlessly easy or so punitive to the player that engaging with the system at all is a punishment without reward.
This is compounded by the game's awkward difficulty scaling, where higher level stages give enemy AI that is both extremely aggressive and cheats like a mother fucker, getting hyper armor, frame advantage, and general responsiveness that you the player are never afforded. Oh, and the AI rubberbands too, so the stronger you get the more they cheat. It's an extremely unfair and tedious way to handle difficulty, which is a shame, because 3 had it structurally nailed even if it was still excessively hard. It feels like allies just don't do anything in this game, it's, it's odd.
Because of this I feel very unmotivated to dig into postgame, even the whole kingdom flowchart system doesn't bring the variety it promises, with the whole split final chapter only meaning you do a different order for the last few battles. Unlocking side missions through special conditions was a brilliant idea though, glad that comes back later. Valiant effort, kick ass game, but the fine point of the series is still. I will miss the taunt button :(

The Dynasty Warriors series will always be something special for me. I love the soundtrack, the simplicity, the gameplay or the feeling of power you get after crushing 1,000+ enemies.

But even some story aspects like Lu Bu's appearance or some smaller details like Dian Wei's impression on Cao Cao... There are so many great aspects to this.

#4 is my favourite among the series, even #5 is still great. But nowadays it just feels like a cash-grab with 800 season passes and so on.

One man army

Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends is probably the most I spent playing the series as a kid to the point that all of the sounds and music are still engraved into my brain. The dying grunts of soldiers, the slashing sounds of Zhou Tai pulling some sick samurai shit with the katana, the mix of rock and chinese instruments playing in the background. I really should love this game more than the previous entry but it also feels like a sidegrade more than anything, one step forward and a one step back kind of deal.

The big main differences this time around is how musou mode works and weapon progression. Musou mode isn't reliant on character specific campaigns but more overall the whole faction in general. You can fortunately switch characters during the campaign but it's a bit hard to recommend since switching to a fresh character that has a level 1 weapon in the final act with no stats will make the game much harder than it needs to be. The overall presentation is better all around the better. Much better graphics and models, voice acting that can actually be taken seriously to most people, better cutscenes and more elaborate events during important battles. One good thing is the map feels more smaller and varied this time around so you're spending less time running around and if you get a saddle, your horse is actually marked on the map so you always remember where it is (finally). You'd probably think with faction specific musou modes that replay value would be completely shot out the window but that's where "the hypotheticals" comes in. Playing stages in a specific order, doing a specific thing in a stage or in general can trigger secret chapters in your playthrough nobody else would get else otherwise. Someone you let live might come back to haunt you in a future secret chapter and I think this makes the mode pretty cool in general and I think tells a more cohesive story for the specific faction for the most part.

To say this game is different would be a huge understatement, weapon progression comes in the form of experience instead of relying on weapon drops this time around. I'm sort of mixed on this system leaning into the negative since you can spend more time than needed with the first and second weapons but it does steadily progress you into those important weapons with each battle nonetheless. You only really get experience from killing officers and generals which kind of pushes you into killing them more often than not which I don't like at all since the best thing about these games is deciding whether you just want to rush the objective or take your time and get a thousand KOs and get your "true warrior of the three kingdoms praise" from the game.

There's a lot more gameplay changes to gloss over too with mechanical play, bodyguards, the new dueling mechanic and the most egregious part about this game that really prevents me from enjoying it as much: strict lock-on. The move sets in general feel much better and more varied than the last game, charge strings get more attacks with each tier of weapon you get specifically with the charge string that stuns or staggers. Bodyguards are no longer reliant on staying alive to develop at all so you can go nuts with less babysitting, which is what I would say if it wasn't for the commanders in some of these missions being completely useless. I had this mission where our main commander just storms in a trap with no morale while everyone else was getting murdered. I couldn't even go help them since the commander literally dies in thirty seconds if left alone against soldiers with him having full health already which made the mission way more tedious and harder than it needed to be. It doesn't help the AI for friendlies aren't that great either. Now I realize you can circumvent this by switching to the character that is the commander itself for that specific mission but odds are you aren't leveled up in weapons and overall stats and it'll probably be just as hard. The difficulty curve here was weird as it was pretty easy for the first two acts and then later on gets around Dynasty Warriors 3 tiers of aggression and it felt like they got more aggressive than them during the final act. Duels are a new addition and it's hard for me to gauge whether it was a good or bad idea. After playing the first game, I mostly realize this is them trying to appease to their fighting game roots with 1v1 duels against notable generals again but it also just kinda disconnects from the pacing of the whole game a bit. It's weird to talk about immersion in a musou game but dueling does detract from that. I think the idea was cool but the execution was severely flawed here since it does kinda feel half assed.

Now you're probably thinking, "the difficulty is there, that's great!" but I have some bad news for you. Probably the one thing that really hampered my enjoyment of the game is the insanely strong lock on this game has this time around for some reason. Allow me to give an example: You are playing as a sword user and you are surrounded by five enemies, you start your combo aiming for the general but your lock on goes for one of the privates instead and you already locked in your stun combo with no way to redirect, you already lost a third of your health in normal mode. It's moments like these that can make or break your entire experience and it especially sucks when you don't use weapons with a lot of range. It can literally save your life and kill you and I'm not fond of the idea of a game completely locking your change to course correct. If Dynasty Warriors 4 lets you change your direction while attacking in your combos, this easily would've been a better game than 3 at least on a mechanical level but I really found this the most annoying part as you'll be hitting air with no way to correct on top of some of the most aggressive troop AI this time around.

The standard slew of modes are here in the original experience. Musou, Free, Versus and Challenge modes make an obvious return but the most interesting part is the Edit mode. That's right you can create your own officers! Sadly considering this is their first iteration of this mechanic, it's extremely limited but them allowing this does technically allow for some form of player expression.

I can't leave my thoughts of Dynasty Warriors 4 without talking about the soundtrack. It's probably the best soundtrack in mainline how it blends the beautiful sounds of the chinese instruments with rock that further portray the dire straits of some of these stages. Avenging Battle, one of the many ballads of battle is a perfect example of what I mean. The violent guitars with the calm strings of the erhu.

It's different but it's still just as fun is the best way I can describe this specific mainline title. It elevates in so many ways but the effort in its experimentation wasn't all a success sadly. A fan favorite for a really good reason.

Dynasty Warriors was always one of those games I would play on easy mode and just sit back and relax as I go on a power trip annihilating everyone in my way with rad music blasting in the background, this one is no exception.

The move sets are more diverse from the last game and the graphics are less grainy from 3, but unfortunately there's some stuff that set it back a bit. The main thing I'm talking about of course is the dueling mechanic. It sucks, it adds too much wasted time and it's basically just a cheap 1v1 against an enemy officer that constantly pulls musou moves out of its ass. It's very anti-fun. You can skip them and refuse at least, but then your army gets a morale drop but at least if you're playing on easy it's simple to just wipe the floor with your enemy in the standard battlefield affair and make up for that loss.

There's also a lot of map layout reuse in this one, and musou mode is now faction-dependent rather than every character having their own thing.

The soundtrack though is absolutely my favorite in the series, one of my minor complaints about DW3 was that the music was great but looped a bit too quickly for battles that would sometimes take a while. Here they fixed that and now the soundtrack absolutely fucking wrecks.

Take. A Fucking. Gander.

Please listen if you have the time. 4 isn't the best of the PS2 era of Musou games, but god that fucking music...IT'S SO FUCKING COOL.

I will gush about this shit for eternity okay? Deal with it.

For me this is the best entry on the franchise because of the music.

I also want to give a shout out to Lu Bu. One of the most frightening characters in any game. Every time he showed up, they nailed the atmosphere on how great he was as a warrior not only because how much he will kick your ass, but also, because of everyone's reactions and how he will morph each scenario in which he was in. His story is also tragic if you think about it which makes it even better.

This is the only franchise in which I don't care about repeating the same missions game after game because of how special they are. I just wished the developers would put the effort in modernizing the mechanics of the game(not what Dynasty Warriors 9 did) but it is what it is.