Dynasty Warriors is a prime example of “love it or hate it”. While some find the game redundant, mindless, and lacking innovation, others see it as a majestical dance in sunshine sugar fields of orgasmic pleasure—just brimming with armed bodies to decapitate as you please.
I fall into the latter category, loving the damn things like a hobo loves liquor.
Which brings us to Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce. I missed the PSP version which launched last April (though I did catch the demo which was pretty tight). Because of this, I was anxious to see what joys a console port would bring.
But when I finally got to play it, I was stricken with a blended smoothie of bitter emotion. To be fair, Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce is certainly fun and doesn’t come close to the awful I’ve seen in many, many games reviewed for this site. However, it’s far from up to snuff when contrasted with past games in the series, leaving me hungry for an experience it’s utterly incapable of delivering.
If you’re wondering about the gameplay, don’t. It’s classic Dynasty Warriors through and through. More solid than ever, the controls are sharp as a scimitar, making for some praise-worthy wartime fun. Simply put, mashing buttons in random combinations to wipe out wave after wave of enemy troops never felt so good.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the game’s camera. Controlled with the right analog stick, I don’t recall the last time I’ve had to struggle so much to get the right perspective on the action. It’s so incredibly sensitive and finicky that its hard not to notice. You know those plants that shrivel up when you touch them? Yeah, it’s sort of like that.
The same issue plagues the lock-on system. While not as bad as the camera, you’ll likely struggle to highlight the enemy you want to focus on.
New to the game is the fury gauge. Replacing the Musou bar of Dynasty Warriors past, the fury gauge powers up your officer a lot like this, boosting your jump height, attack power, the number of executable dashes, and other abilities.
Oh, and dashing is badass as hell. Easily the coolest, and most useful, feature of gameplay, dash attacks are used constantly to take down enemies and reach high platforms. If you play the game, you’ll know what I mean.
Your character also rocks a secondary weapon of your choosing, a welcome alternative to the shoddy bow of past Dynasty Warriors titles. Although you’re stuck with the primary weapon assigned to your officer (same weapon set as DW6, in case you were wondering), the secondary weapon makes up for it—at least a little.
Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce is heavily built around character customization, something that works as a double-edged sword as far as execution goes. Certainly, adding “chi” to each of your limbs, orbs to your weapons, and items to your characters inventory makes battles easier and more entertaining, but the overall process of upgrading anything is a bloody burden.
Allow me to explain. Between stages, you explore your city, which is also upgradable. This acts as a sort of storefront where you can buy new goodies for your character. Every upgrade, from weapons to orbs, costs both gold and the raw materials to manufacture the item.
Now, here’s where things get confusing…
Actually, you know what? I don’t want to explain it. Fuck it. It’s just so damn complicated and it hurts my head to think about it. Not worth it. I mean, yeah, it’s possible to understand how it works, but there’s just so much you have to keep track of. It’s pointless.
What once consisted of tacking a couple of orbs on your character is an overly ambitious “trade system” where you exchange materials and cash for new shit. All in all, the process is ridiculous. You have to keep track of so many colors, numbers, and items that you’ll find yourself forgoing upgrades and just sticking it out with a crummy, low-level sword. For a hack-and-slash, this system is far too intricate. Just power up my guy, and let me slice some bitches to bits already.
Of course, the biggest let down is the lack of something this game really should have in the first place; there’s no local co-op. That’s right, kids. In Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce, you can’t play split-screen with your buddies. This inexplicable absence of something that’s been in the game since the damn beginning is baffling and unforgivable.
To its credit, Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce offers an online mulitplayer co-op that supports up to four players at a time (which—due to unfortunate issues with my Internet connection—I am unable to review), but the fact that I can’t call up a friend and play with him/her on a split screen is pathetic. Every other game in the franchise has it; why can’t this one. Tell me, how hard is it to program a split-screen co-op?
So instead of human player support, the single player mode accommodates you with NPC generals that follow you around like bodyguards did in other games. They’re far more intelligent and capable than the bodyguards of the past, kicking some serious ass. Not to mention it’s pretty sweet to have Cao Cao and Zhen Ji backing you with the press of a button. You feel like a crack team of Navy SEALS, but with swords instead of special ops experience and machine guns. Still, it’s no split-screen co-op. *sad face*
While pretty for a DW game, the environment lack the expanse one enjoyed in past games. Load screens appear between transitions from one part of a level to the other. If you get knocked back by an enemy near one of these points, you have to wait for the next area to load, then run back, triggering yet another load screen. Don’t get me wrong—the load time is only about five seconds, and I understand this is a port from a handheld game. But this gets frustrating if it happens more than once. Plus, we’re talking stages far smaller than the massive landscapes in games as far back as DW2. I didn’t have load screens then. Why now?
Unfortunately, that’s another area where Strikeforce goes horribly wrong. While the god-awful draw distances of the past are no longer an issue, enemies literally spawn in front of you. Not to mention they spawn indefinitely. In the past, enemies would only reappear until you kill their captain. In Strikeforce, you can hack away for hours without a single breath of air. Because of this, a game once based upon killing throngs of enemies to rack up a tally in the many hundreds is reduced to “Fuck it, I’m just powering through the stage as fast as I can.”
Oh, and you can’t display the health bar of common baddies either. Only certain enemies have a life gauge, and the joy of depleting a dozen red bars in a single swipe is strictly a thing of the past.
The Final Verdict
Ultimately this is a polished port that could have benefited from a little more time and focus. While the game is fun, you won’t stay too long due to the over-complicated upgrade system. While Strikeforce has plenty of redeeming qualities, it’s not exactly a must-buy for console-owning DW fans. Though not a bad game by any means, even the most devout DW devotees will find disappointment upon seeing a classic stripped of many of the features that made it so fun in the first place.
So is Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce at least a rental? Eh, why not? But because of some over-complicated elements in a game that should be kept simple, I lost interest in just a few hours. I understand that this is the port of a PSP title (perhaps it should have remained a handheld exclusive). But this time around, I actually wish this were a case of “been there, done that” and not a case of “been there, but where’s everything gone?”
I have the feeling the online play would garner the game a few more points, so I can’t knock it that hard. I’ve been a fan of the DW series for years, having played the game since it stopped being a fighter (crazy, no?). Perhaps I spend too much time comparing Strikeforce to the old games, but when it hardly revolutionizes something already done right—taking away from the game I fell in love with—it’s kind of hard not to.
Try it if you’re still drooling over the thought of another DW, but save your pennies for Dynasty Warriors 7 if you’re expecting anything more than mediocre.
