Archview #29: Dynasty Warriors

 So underwhelming...

 Set in ancient China, around 1800 years ago, Dynasty Warriors presents itself as a 3D one on one weapon-based fighting game. The game is pretty different from other games of it's ilk, however. The game is played with four buttons, two buttons do the attacking(Thrusting and Slashing) and the other two provide the defense, parry and deflect. Slashes are to be parried, and thrusts deflected, do it right, and you'll open up your enemy for an attack, time it wrong or choose the wrong counter and you'll be open for attack. There's also blocking, done by inputing nothing or holding back, like other fighters.
 There are other functions, like grabbing, by pressing both attack buttons and sidestepping, by pressing both defense buttons. By attacking at the same time as your opponent, you'll initiate a clash, however mashes the most buttons wins and opens up the enemy for a counterattack. There's also Chi bars on the bottom of the screen for both fighters. It charges steadily as you stay on the offense and hit your opponent, getting blocked or backing away makes it decrease. Once it's filled, a green light turns red, and you are allowed to use a Musou Attack, the bar will decrease steadily, so it's a use it or lose it situation. If you are on the last 30% of your HP bar, the Musou Attack will be enhanced. Musou Attacks are performed the same way for every character, and there's two of them per character.

 The presentations is pretty lackluster, models are very blocky and the animations are merely serviceable. The character themselves look bland and lack any sort of personality, heck, they only have one win pose. And their movesets? Disappointingly short. To add insult to injury, the stages are boring. They consist of a infinite floor and a low res background image, sometimes it's hard to tell what that image is supposed to be. On the other hand, the soundtrack is pretty engaging, it's not the kind of music that would be used in future Dynasty Warriors games, but it's pretty good nontheless.
 As for modes, they played it safe with the usual "Arcade, Versus, Time Attack, Team Battle, Survival", y'know, the classics. There's a total of 16 characters, 10 default characters, 3 unlockable characters(Via beating the game with the default characters) and 3 bonus characters. The bonus characters are clones from other characters and are unlocked via button presses.
 All in all, Dynasty Warriors is a pretty mediocre game, it tries to do it's own thing, and while it gets commended for it, originality doesn't make up for fun.
 5 out of 10.