Dynasty Warriors Online review

When I got a PS2 there were a limited number of games to choose from. I ended up with Timesplitters and Dynasty Warriors 2. Timesplitters was fine for what it was (I later decided it was damn good, but at the time I was in two minds) but Dynasty Warriors 2 absolutely blew my mind. There were loads of enemies on the screen and the ability to blow them all away without any effort whatsoever. My hardly-teenaged mind loved every second and it’s a series I’ve followed through almost every instalment ever since. The one game I missed was Dynasty Warriors Online because, despite being over five years old, it didn’t release in the west until a little over a year and a half ago.

Take everything fantastic about the series and then pit players against one another

And why wouldn’t I be interested? It’s a fantastic idea and something that Koei has yet to get exactly right within the main console series. Take everything fantastic about the series – the countless enemies, the big moves, the music – and then pit players against one another. Let them choose a faction to belong to and then have them fight for those factions to the bitter end. In the main series, they’ve given little more than some occasionally shaky co-op features and they’re hardly a good replacement for four on four battles, supported by recognisable characters from the games rather than teaming up against them.

Dynasty Warriors?

Dynasty Warriors, for those of you who have never played a Warriors game, before I go into my Dynasty Warriors Online review, it is an action title that has you taking to the ancient Chinese battlefield in order to unify the country under one leader. It’s based off the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms which, in turn, was a fictionalized account of the later Han and Three Kingdoms periods. The series is on rocky ground in the states, but in Europe and Asia it’s absolutely huge and continues to sell very well game after game. It’s not surprise that Dynasty Warriors Online remains popular then, especially considering it’s free-to-play and just as addictive as it’s offline counterpart.

Like almost all MMOs, you’ll begin the game by creating your own character. There’s not a huge variety of faces and features to choose from, but at the same time you’re not just limited to “class” and “race” like some games. Almost everything you can choose from seems to be a mix and match of features from other characters, Guan Yu’s beard for instance. This leads to some potentially crazy characters and I’ve seen some funny looking devils about. On top of this, you can buy new things for your character; whether this just boosts your stats or if you can actually see what you’ve bought as well I’m not entirely sure.

Battles vary in size and objective

During your time in ancient China, you’ll roam around town or fight giant battles. If you’ve played the more recent entries in the series, specifically 7 Xtreme Legends, you’ll recognise the influence the MMO has had on the series. The town is where you’ll find quests, which usually amount to just joining and fighting battles. There’s not a huge variety of things to do, although battles can vary in size and objective. As you run around town, you’ll come across other players frequently, leading me to the conclusion that Dynasty Warriors Online is still popular enough to warrant playing.

The tutorial is unnecessarily long

Before you can explore too much, however, you’ll need to get through the tutorial and there’s a good chance that you are going to quickly get frustrated. The tutorial is unnecessarily long, especially if you’ve ever played an entry in the series before. You’ll be taught how to use normal attcks, each variation of the charge attack and your powerful Musou attack, all rather taken for granted by anybody who’s ever played the series and certainly not something that it would take a newcomer several tutorials to pick up. New parts of the game – the acquisition of bases and picking up powers, both of which we’ll talk about later – are similarly easy to learn and yet have tutorials dedicated to them anyway.

Battles are fun

Battles are fun, but not a huge step forward for the series. Run around, kill foot soldiers and officers and occasionally you’ll also have to battle deadly, although mainly just annoying, siege weapons. The higher your KO count, the more points you get and the easier you’ll find it to continue through the story. Usually there’ll be an objective, but it seems that if you can out-kill your opponent (as a team, defeat more of the enemy team than they can defeat of you), the objective practically gets ignored anyway. In the early tutorial levels, it’s not as easy as in the console games to be the strongest on the battlefield, but it’s certainly not a difficult thing.

One warrior worth a thousand 

In fact, I’d say that you start off a little underpowered. As you rise through the ranks, bigger weapons become available to you and with bigger weapons come bigger scores. It’s a nice change from the experience model rife in MMORPGs and that’s enough to make it feel a little fresher than perhaps it would have done otherwise. The great thing about Dynasty Warriors is this feeling of “one warrior worth a thousand” and to begin with I don’t really feel that. At times you have to be stupidly careful what you’re doing, especially when facing up against officers, and I can’t say that I feel the curve for that came quick enough.

It’s also fairly obvious that the game feels a bit dated now. It was released in Japan in 2006 and it feels just like a game from 2006. Graphically it doesn’t look fantastic (but is better than the PS2 games, especially when it comes to things like draw distance) and the music I think is taken directly from other titles in the franchise. It uses the character models from the pre-6 games and even that manages to date it a little bit. This isn’t exactly a negative point – the game will be 6 years old, if it didn’t feel dated it’d be a miracle of MMO design – but it’s something to be aware of.

Controls

I’ll also say that I had a little trouble with the standard controls. Part of this came from my natural instinct to use the mouse, something that works but isn’t recommended, and the other part came from some rather strange decisions for buttons on the keyboard. Before long you get the hang of it and, perhaps I’ll admit that the sheer length of that tutorial forced me to look at what I was doing, you’ll find yourself winning battles in no time. Even so, Dynasty Warriors is a game for a controller and it’s odd to see it presented in another way.

If you disliked the main series for its repetitive nature, you won’t find much to convert you here either. You’ll find yourself doing much of the same sorts of thing time and time again and the chances are you’ll come to a point where you don’t really see yourself doing all that much progress. Let’s face it, the war for ancient China is one that you’re never going to win in an MMO based around that war. You don’t feel you’re getting anywhere, even though the battles are getting significantly harder and snippets of story don’t really cover that up.

Hugely successful action game

I’ve enjoyed Dynasty Warriors Online but, being a fan of the series, I always knew that I would. As a free-to-play game, I feel it’s a nice chance for people to see these games in a different light, to give a chance to something they’d otherwise have brushed off. Other than a certain lack of depth, it’s a hugely successful action game and something that’s different enough that you could play it in between other MMOs to break up the monotony of levelling and running dungeons.

As a primary MMO, once you get past that tutorial, you’d probably find yourself getting a little bit bored by constant play. Even so, Aeria have obviously supported the game since launch over here and I’m going to continue playing whenever I get chance. Despite its faults, and it does have faults, it’s a game that is hard to dislike, and I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the people that do.

M. Growcott
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Dynasty Warriors Online review

Score: 7/10