http://www.amazon.com/dp/7119005901/?tag=neogaf0e-20
The paperback box set of that is the version I have, looks like the cheapest of the Roberts translation on amazon. The rest are insanely expensive wtf. Anyway, yeah that version was fine and the price isn't too bad considering it's 4 volumes and like over 2000 pages.
Finally, an affordable version!
I have always been interested in reading it. I like the Musou games, Red Cliff, and Ikki Tousen a lot. Anything I come across even remotely related to the Three Kingdoms I find that I enjoy.
Thanks for posting this.
I know a lot of people hate them, but I had a blast with the PS3 Strikeforce and I'm sad we never got the sequel in English. They had a lot of fun stuff you could do in that game too, combat wise, and the multiplayer was great.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/7119005901/?tag=neogaf0e-20
The paperback box set of that is the version I have, looks like the cheapest of the Roberts translation on amazon. The rest are insanely expensive wtf. Anyway, yeah that version was fine and the price isn't too bad considering it's 4 volumes and like over 2000 pages.
For those who don't know, Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce is kinda like this weird combination of Dynasty Warriors, Monster Hunter, and Dragonball Z. Heavy focus on multiplayer (up to 4 players), maps are split into MH-like "zones", you occasionally fight large monsters, you can fly and quite literally go Super Saiyan, there's a greater emphasis on enemy officers and less on mooks (you'll rarely hit the 1,000 KO mark in Strikeforce), and there's a LOT of loot farming, since the game incorporates a crafting system for weapon creation. It's a very, very different DW game.
Personally, I quite like it. Bought the PS3 version on release, eventually sold it, then bought it again, then sold it again. :lol I'll probably end up buying it one more time and keeping it for good. But yeah, it's a good game, despite being far, FAR from a traditional DW title.
Strike force certainly is a different take on the DW games. Very different and very challenging. Countless hours were spent trying to kill death phoenix, dragon and tiger..plus the bosses. The fact I did it solo was so much more exciting!
I like the Strike Force variant! Their Awakened modes all look so flashy!
I quite enjoyed the original on PSP. Playing with friends, smaller style "portable" stages and simple easy to do missions with friends while taking less yet more challenging grunts with a big boss at the end, all quite good fun back when I could get a group together for it.
Bit of a Monster Hunter effect though, people I knew played it because others were playing it and it was something that could be and should be done together, single player wise and perhaps even without that physical human interaction there isn't the same draw despite the home console versions having good online for it.
Oh god, if you hate pop-in, then do not play WO3. I've never had too big a problem with pop-in in the Musou games but it is one of my only complaints for WO3. It seems like it may have gotten better after installing the disc, but I was pretty upset in the first couple missions when enemies where popping-in withing my melee range.
No prob. I'm pumped to order them once I have some money.
DW:Strikeforce....not one of my favorites. I don't hate it or anything; it's no DW6. But I am currently playing through it and I prefer the other games over it. And I think the difficulty might be why. I don't much like being in the middle of a combo and one pathetic mob off to the side knocks me out of it with a poke of a spear.
But I do like the dashing, flying, transformations, everything else.
Getting bored of what has been essentially the same game for a decade is certainly understandable (although that doesn't stop people from buying yearly sports games and FPS titles like CoD *rimshot*), but there is some variety in all these games.
There's some differences in game play between Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors (particularly 7's weapon-switching systm), the team-switching style in Warriors Orochi, the faster-paced/flying-enabled 4P co-op in DW Strikeforce, the real-time character-switching system in SW Chronicles, the one-on-one duals in DW Next, and then the more traditional beat-em-up/platforming main campaigns of Fist Of The North Star and One Piece Musou.
Then you have others who just dismiss these games as button-mashers after playing them for a bit on easy or normal.
But yes, it would be nice to see a major overhaul to the Musou games at this point. Especially when they have multiple game series to work with.
Aerobiz
P.T.O.: Pacific Theater of Operations
P.T.O. II: Pacific Theater of Operations
Uncharted Waters
Rise of the Phoenix
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Nobunaga's Ambition series
Liberty or Death
Genghis Khan
Bandit Kings of Ancient China
Gemfire - Medieval fantasy
Inindo: Way of the Ninja
Sangokushi Eiketsuden, Sangokushi Koumeiden, Sangokushi Sousouden
Sure not all the game on that list is good, but man, they covered a lot of interesting niches. Romance of the 3 Kingdoms 11 was what... 2004 game? It's only now that we're getting 12.
Oh more thing, Dynasty Warrior art sucks and they're making their way into the ROTK games. I might have been able to stomach DW if I was actually playing as a person that in some ways resembled Dian Wei, Zhou Tai, or Wei Yan. But no, I'm playing as a weird bald guy with an axe, a fucking ninja, and a masked... tribal wildman?
Yeah, I remember Koei used to being much more diverse back in the day (I'd love to see another Uncharted Waters or Inindo game), now they seem to be the Musou company. I've never actually played a Musou game but it doesn't sound like it would have lasting appeal with me, based on what I know about the series gameplay.
I'd imagine those PC series went away due to rampant piracy. Only RoTK and Nobu are sustainable financially, that leaves their biggest cow which is musou, which they are taking full advantage.
The battlefield concept they've gone with featuring 100s - 1000s of enemies and action action action sounds fantastic... It was fantastic but they've been done to death visuals are pathetic the engine seems like nothing has changed since the first Dynasty Warriors.
The concept had it improved with each revision would be like a dose of goty action, a simple fun & great selling franchise...
Oh hey! That's the version I have! I really wanted to get around to reading it again. It's been at least 7 or 8 years.
The funny thing that Seraphis Cain mentioned earlier in the thread is that if you don't have the stomach for grinding, you really shouldn't bother with this game...but I don't really agree. I haven't grinded out a DW game since I got all the 4th weapons in DW3, and while I always feel like I'm missing some content, I play a Warriors game until I get bored, and then I shelve it until I feel like playing it again (which typically ends up being like a few weeks before the next one I want releases).
Honestly if they can just get the level designers to actually work and make some decent levels instead of connect-a-box and leave everything else the same, the next DW:Gundam will be perfect for me.
The battlefield concept they've gone with featuring 100s - 1000s of enemies and action action action sounds fantastic... It was fantastic but they've been done to death visuals are pathetic the engine seems like nothing has changed since the first Dynasty Warriors.
The concept had it improved with each revision would be like a dose of goty action, a simple fun & great selling franchise...
but it DID improve with each revision. Look up a video of DW3 and a video of DW7 and tell me honestly that it looks the exact same, and I'll tell you that you need glasses.
Honestly if they can just get the level designers to actually work and make some decent levels instead of connect-a-box and leave everything else the same, the next DW:Gundam will be perfect for me..
For me, all they need to do is add Rose Gundam and it will be perfect.
Seeing that list of Koei games makes me want to call my parents and have them ship me my Genesis and copy of Nobunaga's Ambition.
I used to play the hell out of that game when I was younger. I didn't know anything about fiefdoms or daimyos or who Nobunaga was or what I was doing, but I still had a blast aimlessly invading people and marrying people's daughters to try to forge alliances.
Played one of the PS2 games once. Boring. For a character action game I'd rather play something like a DMC/GoW/NG game, where there's mechanical superiority. I think the one problem with this series is there usually isn't much spectacle. It's very... rote. What you're doing isn't particularly exciting, and there's no background details to give you another reason to care either.
I don't think it's terrible, but it's definitely, yep, a B-game. Problem is, B-games need some extra something to make them memorable. Games like EDF or Deadly Premonition have that, but Dynasty Warriors is utterly unappealing if the core gameplay doesn't hook you- and it needs to be waaaaaaay better to do that consistently.
I'd imagine those PC series went away due to rampant piracy. Only RoTK and Nobu are sustainable financially, that leaves their biggest cow which is musou, which they are taking full advantage.
Yeah, pretty much this. And really, I can't see Musou taking away significant development resources from any potential strategy games Koei wants to do. Omega Force is a completely separate team, after all. I just don't think there's a huge market for those titles, outside of the firmly established ROTK and Nobunaga's Ambition series. Meanwhile Musou, like it or not, is a gigantic cash cow for Koei, as Shadow780 said, so it makes sense that they would focus primarily on it.
And while I can understand Cow Mengde's complaint about the DW character designs making their way into ROTK, you also have to consider that it could be a move to get DW players interested in ROTK. And if it helps expand the audience, then it could definitely be a good thing for the series.
And by the way, just for the record, I DO own a copy of Nobunaga's Ambition: Iron Triangle. You can't imagine how excited I was to see that on the shelf when I was perusing the used games at GameStop a few months ago. :lol
I picked up Dynasty Warriors NEXT on Vita because I need Vita games and at the time, I couldn't believe I was buying a DW game (the last I played was Empires for 360), but I never disliked the series, so I figured why not. (Plus, it's a Vita game.)
Anyway, to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's repetitive, but I also find it oddly engaging. It took several hours for that to happen, but once you get in that DW groove, it's hard to put down. The amount of characters and weapons is impressive, and the game looks great on Vita. I used to love side-scrolling beat'em ups and I still do, and I feel these DW games are the lone successors to what used to be one of the dominant genres in the industry. You can either play them straight up mash or, if you want a real challenge, up the difficulty, and don't smash your Vita.
I just wrapped up the campaign in Dynasty Warriors NEXT and it took 20 hours, and there's still a lot of content left, to say the least. I enjoyed the game so much I ordered Warriors Orochi 3 for PS3 off ebay and I hope to have it soon.
I can see why the series has its fans, and I can also see why it has its detractors, but I feel the latter haven't always given the series a fair shake. I'm not saying people that do not enjoy it have to start liking it, but I certainly don't think the games are trash.
This.
And like a previous poster said, the games are whole different beasts on the harder difficulties. I've only played Gundam musou 2 and 3, but I'd like to buy Warriors Orochi 3 as well. It's hard as hell to find here though.
Yeah, I played DW:G2 and enjoyed the hell outta of it.
Though it's seriously no joke when you jack up the difficulty to the max. Enemy Aces can and will fuck your shit up if you screw up. And block every goddamn thing you throw at 'em.
*Uses Musou attack*
*Enemy blocks entire attack*
*Enemy rushes and combos my ass to death*
Game: GG!
Me: FFFFFFUUUUUU
Borderline hax though when they eat like half of the attack and can suddenly block the rest of it. Pressure FTW at least.
Though trying to beat "The True Dynasty Warriors: Gundam" mission really tests my patience. Mostly since if Musha Gundam grabs you, you're already dead.
Warriors Orochi 2 was mad fun as well. Though using Sun Wu Kong and Himiko nearly breaks the game once you get them. lol
Yeah, pretty much this. And really, I can't see Musou taking away significant development resources from any potential strategy games Koei wants to do. Omega Force is a completely separate team, after all. I just don't think there's a huge market for those titles, outside of the firmly established ROTK and Nobunaga's Ambition series.
But Koei hasn't been making strategy games. The last Nobunaga came out in 2009 I think, and ROTK 11 was even longer. Between that time, there was barely any bold strategy titles from this company. They're milking the DW games, we all know it.
Too people saying it's repetitive, is it as repetitive as God of War's combat, or many other 3rd person action games, hell, even lauded games like Final Fight are just as repetitive.
People are to easy to see this and play on easy and wear themselves out on it very fast. The game gives great sense of progression, features some really good animations, and provides some very real challenge on harder difficulties
Im not saying the game is perfect by any means, but the unsubstantiated hate the game is ridiculous. The series has evolved phenomenally over the years, and has provided tons of content.
The games are only repetitive if you make them, with so many different movesets, different ways to play the game, and different modes, the game is far from repetitive.
No hate here. Playing Warriors games is no more repetitive than someone who plays shooters over and over again. Some people just prefer ancient battlefields with over the top weapons and gameplay that allows you to mow down hordes of enemies and out maneuver an opposing army. It is just good old school, arcadey fun that scratches a certain itch.
But Koei hasn't been making strategy games. The last Nobunaga came out in 2009 I think, and ROTK 11 was even longer. Between that time, there was barely any bold strategy titles from this company. They're milking the DW games, we all know it.
My point is, though, that Koei could still make pretty much any strategy game they wanted to, in spite of the Musou milking. Yōichi Erikawa is the 34th richest man in Japan, with a net worth of $780 million. We all know he has a passion for grand strategy games, and he could pretty much self-fund anything he wanted to make with his own personal fortune. It's not that Koei CAN'T make strategy games because of Musou, it's that, for whatever reason, they choose not to. Basically what I'm saying is that it's not the fault of the Musou series that Koei's strategy output has waned in recent years.
I actually quite like the series. My favorite warriors game probably wouldn't even get in my top 100 but I have enjoyed a few games in the series (latest Orochi in Japan, Gundam 2 and 3).
My problem with the games are the following:
-not enough different from game to game.
-very very repetitive. you fight on the same battlefields against the same enemies with the same objectives literally close to hundreds of times.
-the amount of work required to achieve anything (be it achievements or just opening up game content) is dauntingly ridiculous. take Gundam 3, the amount of scenarios you have to clear to open up all the missions in an arc (all the friendship stuff that factors in, etc) is crazy. you have to fight samey battles over 100 times. it gets stale way before that.
-the combat feels good but lacks depth considering the amount of times you have to play similar levels. different characters/mechs is cool but when you consider the fact that you might only like a small fraction of all those available the variety available doesn't help in the end imo. some sort of levelling up with skill trees or buying moves to flesh out your arsenal might go a long way. crazy loot might help too.
-graphics. the geometry still looks ps2 level. i can't believe they haven't improved the engine to any serious degree this far into the series' life.
The reason they typically are released during the launch of a new system is because there isn't a large selection of games. People get desperate to play new games so they buy Dynasty Wars.
One thing they can do to revive this series is to have internet multiplayer. Can you imagine 16 vs 16 dynasty warriors fight? Have some sort of kill streak bonus, for example additional troops then archers and then bombers. It would be lots of fun.
Came across this combo video just now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_eSQxQkF1M
(Note: It's a video to show off crazy juggle combos you can do and not show off the normal stage gameplay.)
I love all the stuff you can do with DW7s combat engine. DW7 Empires can't be announced soon enough. DW7's combat + Empires battles = I can't wait!
One thing they can do to revive this series is to have internet multiplayer. Can you imagine 16 vs 16 dynasty warriors fight? Have some sort of kill streak bonus, for example additional troops then archers and then bombers. It would be lots of fun.
I love the Musou series, and I find that they have enough variety that my opinions on each iteration can vary wildly - even among other Musou fans. For instance, Fist of the North Star is probably my favorite one in the series, and despite being a Gundam fanatic, I don't particularly like the DW:Gundam games.
My recommendation for people who think the series is the same old stuff and repetitive is:
- Play cooperative. Helps the monotony, allows you to finish levels faster, and in general, just makes it a more fun experience.
- Increase the difficulty level. You can change it at any time, so if you feel like you are just pushing buttons, increase the difficulty until that no longer works for you.
- Skip the Empire/Xtreme Legends expansions. They are expansion packs, so you probably shouldn't expect them to be too different from the game they are expanding.
- Play long enough that you understand the game systems. How the characters and weapons level up is not always obvious, and most Musou games include some sort of meta-game on top of the mission structure. For instance, FotNS has a very different way of fighting and it takes a while before you start to understand what you are actually doing. (In fact, I had finished Ken's story mode before I realized it)
- Don't play the same character in every game. Even though they do change the weapons for characters occasionally, you are still playing on the same team, fighting the same general, and seeing the same events from the same perspective. Things are going to seem a lot more similar if you play the same character and only play the Yellow Turban Rebellion and Hu Lao Gate before dismissing it.
- Skip the Empire/Xtreme Legends expansions. They are expansion packs, so you probably shouldn't expect them to be too different from the game they are expanding.
The XL games are usually much more focused on pure gameplay and replayability, compared to the initial games which are story mode focused and introducing new characters / gameplay engines.
The Empires games are my favorite type of musou battles. These take all the new stuff from the latest DW game and throw in the strategic element of managing your territories / officers / giving orders mid-battle + the base capture / defense systems make it feel more like a real army battle.
Either of these two are better jumping in points for someone who want to see what's the big deal about the gameplay for the games, plus if you jump in on XL and get the original you have that + the stories and whatnot.
The XL games are usually much more focused on pure gameplay and replayability, compared to the initial games which are story mode focused and introducing new characters / gameplay engines.
The Empires games are my favorite type of musou battles. These take all the new stuff from the latest DW game and throw in the strategic element of managing your territories / officers / giving orders mid-battle + the base capture / defense systems make it feel more like a real army battle.
I never played the XL games and only played the first Empires game. How do they stack up? I was thinking about getting the empires for DW7 when they get around to it, but I remember the first Empires being REALLY good.
I never owned a Musou game until I got the one for 3DS, but before that I used to love playing DW3 with my friend.
Doing the hard modes and trying to get the best weapons for everybody was just fun. I remember fighting Lu Bu was the most terrifying thing in my gaming life at that point. Didn't play too many of the other Musou games after that, so I had like a long gap of not playing any Musou games.
Now I'm addicted to WO3!
Still got much love for the Musou games. What was the word on the One Piece one, any good?
Man, you probably picked the two worst games possible to try to "get into" the franchise. :lol I liked Hokuto well enough (Platinumed it, even), but I'd take just about any mainline DW game over it any day. And Legends of Troy...well, I'm pretty sure there was a thread just recently by someone who used to work for Koei Canada detailing all the issues the development of the game had (it was developed by Koei Canada, not Omega Force, as all other Musou games have been). It's just an awful, awful game. It even goes as far as the game's representative guest character in Warriors Orochi 3 (Achilles) being a terrible character even in a completely different game.
Though, your complaints about the story...DW is based on a historical novel (as I'm sure you're aware), so they really only have so much room to embellish for the sake of tension/dramatic effect.
And let me just say, as a fan, that I laughed harder at your TBFP of Fist of the North Star than possibly any other episode.
Hi. I was that guy. My involvement with Troy was partially halfway through development when I worked on it as a designer. Before that, I worked on both the Orochi 2 PSP port and the DW6 PSP port. And on the side, as a designer, I've always found musou games as an interesting look into game design and it's fans. I'm going to do some generalization here about your typical player who won't even step into this thread, so please bear with me.
Reasons why your typical player may not care much for your Musou game anymore:
1)Foreign theme: People gravitate to recognizable themes, with easily identifiable characters, pronounceable names, etc. Is chinese/japanese history high on that list? Do your general public even know who Nobunaga is? I can almost bet it's a no. So to them, the theme is already a lost cause: unnamed guy fighting unnamed guy. That's what it's going to look like. Other spinoffs using other licensed properties have the same issue: leveraging brands that aren't entirely mainstream - You'll service those fans greatly, but that's about it.
2)Yearly output: When people see games come out on a yearly basis, they see genre fatigue. Popular and current hot games gets a bi on this, because they're "filling the need", but for a "not the top of the game" game? It's written off as a cash-in. A few other games also come in under the same issue too, like the Spiderman games.
3)Lack of apparent depth: Your typical player may never see a)depth in the battlefield management and b)lack of combat depth.
Map management: A map with a blinking dot + event messages are ignored, and then they find their game randomly over because a general died elsewhere on the field. When a game inundates you with messages and pop-ups like a musou game does, most players start ignoring it because it's too much to read and becomes too noisy. So most people would ignore that part of the game.
...which leaves combat as the lone steward of the gameplay: Do people see the depth of the combos? Or do they see that the control mapping is all X, X, X, X... Gamers are lazy, and they will do XXXX because they game said they can. Which leads to two outcomes:
a)They can win - then they write off the combat as simplistic and boring button masher.
b)They die - then they blame the game for inadequate combat to allow them to win.
4)Visceral Combat: People who've never experienced a musou game before (or ones from long ago who did) all have probably played other contemporaries in the action genre, notably, God of War. Does the combat in a musou game feel different: yes. Does it feel wrong? Maybe. I remember one person telling me that "Musou game combat feels like dancing" - which technically is a valid complaint, but to your non-musou fans who are coming from other action games, this isn't a complement, it's damning evidence that they aren't interested already.
5)Bad AI: Stupid grunts standing there not doing anything - another sign of simple repetitive combat.
Here's a list of my personal reasons why I play them (and I think somewhat aligns with most musou fans)
1)Variety and volume in characters and combat: Orochi 3 is now at 130+ characters? When I worked on Orochi 2, it was at 96 characters, and somewhere close to 80+ stages. A pain in the ass to work on, but absolutely fantastic to play: If you don't like one character, who cares, there's another 100+ to try out. Sure, the quality of each character and stage maybe hit and miss, but musou games seems to be of "you'll find something you like about it because there's so much to choose from".
2)Actual Depth of combat: I kinda went over this above, but I think that the light strategy management actually has a place in musou games, and actually makes sense on why the combat can be a bit lighter: you as a player, needs to manage the immediate combat scenario, and the bigger picture of the other fronts that you can choose to jump into.
The other part is the depths of the combos: in most characters, each heavy attack branch does something drastically different, some are crowd clearing, others are singular focused attacks, etc. For someone who's willing to dig deep into a players moveset, there's actual depth an meaningful choices in combat. (I have to admit, reading over the WO3 thread where everyone is discussing the variations on C# moves per character is a bit overwhelming even for me)
3)Fan service - At this point, Musou games are about fan service, and there's non better showcase of that than the Orochi series: JP voices, check, absurd story to mash characters in, check, absurd scenario/stages to get certain characters and dialog, check. When a game series drops in "free mode" as a way to allow you to mix and match your playable character into any stage, it's a pretty big commitment in saying, "you can play it however you like".
The problem with musou I feel, is that these games are now stuck serving fans, and its practically impossible to reach that greater audience that has been slowly leaving. Adding more characters, more stages, more moves, more fan serivce won't make them come back. If they perceive the game as being the same when the jump was 4 -> 5, then any other musou game afterwards won't change a thing. Someone who's not discerning about how Cao Cao's moveset has evolved from DW4 to DW7 won't know the difference, plays the game the same they did before, and walk away smug thinking that the game still plays the same.
I'm curious about your complaint about Troy: in my mind, I know my list of complaints (and trust me, if I want to get nitpicky, 10+ points long), but I want to see how well it matches up with what other people see. Do you mind writing it out (I'll post mines afterwards for the sake of comparison)? Personally, I look at Troy as the eventual outcome of any attempt to marry a musou game to "western games". It ends up still being a weak western style action game, but manages to piss off every other musou fan.
As for the inclusion of Achilles: I thought they really should have gone with Ajax: His moveset is pretty close to Shingen Takeda, and would been a more interesting type to play as (of course, since Troy lacked that combo depth, they would have needed WAY more moves to make him playable too in WO3)
Has there ever been Chinese voices for any DW game? I always thought it would be amazing if that was included or just available as DLC. Would make me love the games even more.
Always just seemed like the videogame equivalent of a boss with too much health.
Some games just felt like you were doing the same thing for hours with little variation. Didn't help that the action you were performing was a mindless basic action.
Last one I played was DW Gundam. I think I was on the Odessa mission and I was running from territory to territory just mashing on mobs. after what seemed like a half an hour of that on that same mission I just turned the game off without clearing it and sold it to gamestop.
Read a bit in this threat though and I'm interested in warriors orochi 3. Also wanted to play One Piece musou as a One Piece fan.
The only real complaint that I have with the Musou games is that they need to just make Empires mode (but not that travesty that was 6 Empires) standard in the main games, because Empires is one of the most brilliant design decisions ever.
Has there ever been Chinese voices for any DW game? I always thought it would be amazing if that was included or just available as DLC. Would make me love the games even more.
The XL games are usually much more focused on pure gameplay and replayability, compared to the initial games which are story mode focused and introducing new characters / gameplay engines.
I agree, and I love those games for how they aren't just more story modes. But my advice was for people who thought all the games were identical - a lot of people consider those games to be full fledged sequels (thus the misconception that there are 25 DW games instead of 6) and if their problem is that the games reuse the same assets, then then need to at least realize that expansions are just that... expansions.
Most Musou players tend to prefer the Empires games (still pissed we didn't get SW3E), but I'm not sure I would use that as a jumping off point. I consider both XL and Empires to be augmentations rather than replacements.
I never played the XL games and only played the first Empires game. How do they stack up? I was thinking about getting the empires for DW7 when they get around to it, but I remember the first Empires being REALLY good.
The XL games tend to do a lot to fix any glaring problems that the original game had, while also adding a lot of content.
For example: 7XL added more weapons, with new unique system to them, the ability to quickly and effortlessly earn money that you could then use buy stat upgrades, a title system that gives character specific buffs, a harder difficulty mode (Nightmare), goals to do on each stage that unlocks new weapons, free mode / co-op mode for the story stages.
DW5 Empires and SW2 Empires are fantastic. I'm pissed we never got SW3 Empires in english, but DW NEXT is kinda like a 7 Empires Jr. That has kept me held over for the true DW7 Empires to be announced.
There are many problems with this series, and yet I mostly love it. I think one of the most obvious hurdles is getting to know and care about the characters. From an outsider's perspective, it IS rather crazy. Sure, it's based on history and (mostly) real people but try telling anyone that he can play as Zhang Liao, Zhang Fei or Zhang He and he'll go "who what now?". Another problem is that they're kind of stuck in a mix between realism and epicness. It's generally very, very plain. Except for character designs (which are mostly great), it looks very much like a budget game. That doesn't help for mainstream appeal. Adding the occasional T&A (Lian Shi, anyone?) doesn't help either.
Dynasty Warriors 7 did a lot to improve. Instead of running through the same 5 levels over and over they made a developing story for each kingdom, and made you play relevant characters in each. This also let them keep much closer to the actual story and kill off people as they went, which makes it much more interesting and engaging. By the time you finished all four storylines, you had played most of the characters and had a good general idea of the entire timeline from year 180-ish to 250-ish.
But I can't help wishing for someone else to step in and force Koei to improve. The traditional characters are so well established and so larger-than-life in themselves that anyone could make a new take on people like Lu Bu, Guan Yu and Xiahou Dun. Problem is, most seem to settle for perverted schoolgirl reimaginings...
Also, that box set is great for a cheap way to read the entire story. It tends to drag in sections that you don't already know from the games, though.
I've always wanted to, but it's interesting how I can languish very comfortably in the wild and overblown pomposity of a Kessen or DW title, but as soon as you drop that flamboyance into a game set in Medieval Europe, I'm a little iffy.
I should do myself a favour though.
I have a special place in my heart for Kessen 3. Don't most fans count K2 as the high point?
