Ah. The Dark Sheep of the Dynasty Warriors franchise (well... it was until 9 showed up but shhh). I understand why Koei did some of what they did here. Now many games in and now onto a new generation of consoles, this did feel like it would be a good time to really mix things up and reboot many elements from the series.
On the plus side, the game feels even more cinematic than before. While in some ways its sad to see less story modes than in 5, the smaller amount of story modes feel a hell of a lot more individual and personal and thanks to a bump up in both the graphics and voice department, it mostly succeeds in this area.
Less successful is the complete butchering of the gameplay itself. The series has never been the most complex of gameplay styles but to dumb everything down so hard feels insulting. The difficult is almost non-existent and plowing through everything by hammering just the one button with little variance feels hollow and cheap. Its a real slog sometimes to make it through to the end and thats really bad because while the new story modes feel more special, there isnt enough of it to really go around, leaving a general feeling like half the game was left on the cutting room floor.
This especially comes into play with the characters as a whole. While the redesigns are very much a mixed bag. Some work great (Zhao Yun, Lu Bu and Diao Chan all look amazing), some others flat out suck (Sun Shang Xiang, Ma Chao and Gan Ning), the bigger problem is the weapon movesets. There's a good chunk of characters that share very generic movesets (Sword/Spear) meaning there's very little reason to play as almost half the cast. Its a bit of a clunky mess. The Ps2 version tried to amend this by adding a few more story modes and weapons but the severe graphical downgrade doesn't feel worth it.
Overall its just a bit of a stumble than a complete failure. Still doesnt make it any more fun to play though.
On the plus side, the game feels even more cinematic than before. While in some ways its sad to see less story modes than in 5, the smaller amount of story modes feel a hell of a lot more individual and personal and thanks to a bump up in both the graphics and voice department, it mostly succeeds in this area.
Less successful is the complete butchering of the gameplay itself. The series has never been the most complex of gameplay styles but to dumb everything down so hard feels insulting. The difficult is almost non-existent and plowing through everything by hammering just the one button with little variance feels hollow and cheap. Its a real slog sometimes to make it through to the end and thats really bad because while the new story modes feel more special, there isnt enough of it to really go around, leaving a general feeling like half the game was left on the cutting room floor.
This especially comes into play with the characters as a whole. While the redesigns are very much a mixed bag. Some work great (Zhao Yun, Lu Bu and Diao Chan all look amazing), some others flat out suck (Sun Shang Xiang, Ma Chao and Gan Ning), the bigger problem is the weapon movesets. There's a good chunk of characters that share very generic movesets (Sword/Spear) meaning there's very little reason to play as almost half the cast. Its a bit of a clunky mess. The Ps2 version tried to amend this by adding a few more story modes and weapons but the severe graphical downgrade doesn't feel worth it.
Overall its just a bit of a stumble than a complete failure. Still doesnt make it any more fun to play though.