A real mixed bag. Probably the worst MK roster ever. And while i don't mind the combat in the ps2 era, here the problems are at their most noticeable. Impaling is really busted, the AI is very inconsistent, the weird abilities like shoving and powering up are strange additions which correctly vanish going forward.
The way combo's are detected here is fucked up too, and again i noticed it getting fixed for deception. In deception you simply input the command and watch it go, but here you have to line up presses with animations which fucks everything up.

However, i do like it's chill konquest mode with it's little monk guy, and this probably has the best soundtrack in the series. I also really love Shang Tsung's outfit here.

Boils down and simplifies far too much to the point of making things repetitive and boring. Tasks are now turned into tedious exercises in waiting for circles to fill and unfill.
Battles again are repetitive and dumbed down, there's not much involved you just sort of move your circle around, and watch numbers go down.
Duels, which in previous games are exciting and sort of rare; here they're annoying and frequent, if you play any sort of warrior or general, you're going to be dueling the same 3 bandits over and over again, in a system that just feels flipping a coin most of the time.
I personally don't care for the pause/play gameplay used here, i preferred the turn-based previous games, i really don't think it adds anything worthwhile to this series.

Positives: The visuals are nice, the new artwork is great, granted it was introduced in the previous game (which i don't own), and makes this always tempting to return to for just how expressive and interesting the character artwork is.
The return of the officer mode adds a great deal of replay value, added to this is an option to randomize faction placement, which means you'll not run out of stuff to try.

Overall, a shiny but weaker entry in the series.

The best "faction-mode" game in the series, and has in my opinion, some of the best systems in the series.
The decision to combine the battles and the overall map into one board is smart, i really enjoy how battles work in this one. Where tactics and battles are a great deal about placement, preparation and what types of army you field. Lu Bu on one hand can smash everything to pieces and do crazy damage, however a bunch of archer turrets, a choke point, and some mid-tier guy with 70/100 war can beat Lu Bu.
The dueling and debating mini-games here are the best the series has had. They are easy to wrap your head around, and you actually feel like your input matters, i wish they would just use these as standard going forward.

Downsides? Well, the game's AI can be downright terrible. Weaker factions will attack you once, and then never try to recover. They'll sit with a half-empty city and make no effort to recover while you build up and smash them to bits.
Also, the lack of an option to randomize placement here means that replay-value is lesser than the officer-mode entries, it's still quite a lot to try, but i can't help but wonder how much better it'd be with a randomizer.

Of all the RTK series to remake, it makes sense for Koei to return to this one. By far probably the best in the series, only held back by fairly dry and dated visuals. If you can get past the fairly humdrum look of everything here, there's a deep and endlessly replayable game here with lots of depth, facets and complexity. And better yet, it's multiplayer! So if you have bunch of brain-rotted RTK fans as friends as i do, you can all play together.
I have many memories of me and my mates deciding to play as 3 mediocre officers, and doing our best to prop up some lackluster lord who by all rights should collapse five minutes into the game.

For those curious, this isn't a expansion pack in the style of koei's "Extreme Legends" warriors titles, where it requires combining with the previous game to get full access to characters etc. This game gives you all 30 characters, all their costumes, weapons etc, and a full conquest mode to play through with each. The only thing that's lacking is the story mode that Sengoku Basara 2 had, which here is limited to a few new characters, however if you're like me, it's of mixed value anyway if you don't understand japanese.

That aside, this is probably the best game in this series i've played, and if you want an introduction, here's where to start. 30 playable characters, 30 unlockable costumes as rewards for 30 conquest modes.

Did you really think you could overcome this base?
Did you really think you could overcome this base?
They're trying to take the base, stop them!

A really great entry in the DW series, I'm fond of the vast majority of it, such as the individual story modes, good OST, hack n slash fun, new characters etc.
However there's a few things that weaken this one going back to it. I think the weapon system is one of the worst in the series, why they got rid of 4's i will never know. But the stupid Heavy/Medium/Light weapon thing was an extremely stupid idea. It's so frustrating to have a new weapon appear, with much better stats, combos etc, only to find it's a heavy one, and now i have to play in slow motion. The fact you almost exclusively find weapons in the wooden boxes means it breaks up the gameplay badly, and you have to run around box hunting when you want to be hacking and slashing.
There's also the addition of the bases, which personally I'm not a fan of. They're repetitive, and make levels sort of blend together, it's a feature that should stay in the Empires series.

Musou/Story mode is way too long in this one, we go from like 7 stages per character, to just shy of 20. And given the length of the levels in the DW series, this is far too long. I know you can switch characters, but they have to start at level 1 if you decide to switch mid story.
I also dislike the dueling system, this is more of a personal peeve, and i know some people like the whole risk/reward of it. But i think as an experience it boils down to your opponent blocking and countering while you end up with a draw and your morale goes down anyway. The only practical choices are characters with throw attacks, and there's not too many of those.
I think the story is improved here from 3, the voice acting isn't quite as bad, and having things played out linear, with breaks for narration improves on the mystifying nonsense of the 3rd game's story. However it's still kind of messed up. A pretty standard playthrough of Shu resulted in defeating Wei first, and being greeted with a "Fall of Wu" scenario, and the first battle of this set of levels was a battle against Wei at Fan Castle, all the while Wu is led by Sun Jian who's supposed to be dead at that point, it's not really that much of a leap ahead in telling the story.
I think visually it's duller than DW3, there's this very brown looking quality to it, everything just feels dusty and dull.

However, if it seems like I'm being overly negative, I actually do like DW4, these are the only criticisms i have, and they're not deal-breakers. The weapon system here is the best in the series, the character designs are much better, there's story modes for the non-three kingdoms characters built in. The OST is really great, with a nice blend of chinese traditional instruments and metal riffs. The challenge level is just shy of DW3's perfection, but it's pretty good regardless, the style of enemy AI is alive and kicking here. There's a fun little addition of character creates and custom bodyguards.

Overall, i rate this just below DW3.

The XP changes sure were a jump scare. I log in and look at the season end date, and see it's a week to go, and i'm suddenly aware that i still have pages of battle pass to get (not the shiny styles, who cares).
It's a really stupid decision to reduce the XP gain options for BR in a vain attempt to get people to play the lego modes etc. As all that happens is people find exploits and work arounds, and your modes end up un-played anyway, or even worse; stuffed with bots and people occasionally wiggling their character around.