Reminiscing about Dynasty Warriors

 Gonna take you back to the past to play some sh... oh wait.

 So, I'm supposed to be studying, so I don't really have much game time right now, but I wanted to write a lil' bit, so here I am. The beginning of this story harkens back a time before Youtube. A time where you got your videogame news from dial-up connections or videogame magazines, where knowing how a game played out wasn't as easy as going online and getting some videos. Regardless, at this point in time I had just graduated from the Nintendo 64 to the Playstation 2, I had already played the amazing Metal Gear Solid 2 and the obscure and underrated little gem Okage. So, I was out with the family, and I came across this game. The cover was very alluring, all these knight-like characters holding these different weapons... I had to play it.

 And never before had I played something like Dynasty Warriors, nobody else probably. Here you were thrust in a very open battlefield, filled with what felt like thousands of warriors, but was actually more like a dozen or so, still, your body count would easily rise over the hundreds. You played as this overpowered general that could mow down enemies like it was nobody's business. When you first get to the select screen you are greeted by these weird warriors with weird names like "Zhao Yun", "Zhou Yu" and "Guan Yu". Eventually I settled with this guy named "Zhou Yu", he wore red and brandished a Sword, he was my kinda guy. I had countless hours of fun with the game, but I think I wasn't very good at it, since my most vivid memories reside on the Yellow Turban Rebellion stage, the very first in the game. Later I would come across the "Unlock all characters" code, and the one that allowed you to edit the opening. Boy, how much fun I had editing the Opening(Something which I would find amusing at best nowadays!). I quickly decided that Zhou Yu would be the main good guy and the one that'd get the most scenes, Diao Chan would be his babe and Ma Chao would be his friend. Jian Wei was relegated to the enemy/rival character and I think Zhao Yun was the main bad guy.

 As years went by, I came across DW 4 and 5 on PC, which I installed, but never took them "seriously". I just downloaded some trainers to unlock everything, just so that I could, on my spare time, pick any one warrior(Mostly Zhou Yu!) on any stage and have a riot. I remember playing some stages during some university classes, heh.

 Ironically enough, later on in my life I'd get very interested in the "Three Kingdoms" period of China, and grew very fond of the depictions of the ancient Chinese generals in these games. For some reason I tend to sympathize with Wu, must've something to do with them being associated to the color red and the fact that I played as Zhou Yu. Plus, they were the least douchebaggish of them all(Come on, Shu totally had that betrayal coming, Liu Bei refused to give them back Jing!).

 Present Day, I'm still in love with the series and the spin offs. I've Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, Warriors Orochi 3(My personal favorite), DW: Gundam 2 and 3, Dynasty Warriors 2, 4, 6, 7 and DS and Samurai Warriors 3 and 3DS under my belt, plus, I already bought DW 8 and have plans to get Hokuto Musou 2 and the One Piece Pirate Warriors games later this year, and even so I'm still not tired of the series. Sadly Zhou has received some changes I'm not fond of, they changed his sword into a Staff, and gave him the bishonen treatment, ruining how he looked, but it seems DW 8 brought back his old head, so I might just give him a try. As for which characters I play now, that'd be the badass Cao Pi, Sima Zhao and Wang Yuanji.

 Since I'm at it, might ass well speak a little bit about the DW clones I've played:

 Sengoku Basara - Samurai Heroes: This one is really good, and I love, absolutely adore the English dub, they got it so right. The gameplay is very badass as well, it has a very different flavor to Samurai Warriors(The direct competition) which is very welcome. I'm not completely sold on the character designs though, I really like Mitsunari and Ieyasu(Even over their SW incarnations), but the rest of the designs... eh, not my cup of tea.

 Saint Seiya - Sanctuary Battle: I used to love Saint Seiya, but after rewatching it last year I can safely say that I despise it. It's dumb, it's sexist and it makes no sense. REGARDLESS, I really like this game. I mean, the first time I played it and went for 100% completion I came across the game's biggest flaws: DW is a very repetitive game, but thanks to its rather free-form approach to how you can play each level, repetition doesn't sink in very easily. In this game, if you go for the extra chapters and missions you will be redoing the same levels over and over and over again, and they are very linear, offering little variation, which means the game becomes a total drag and if you couple it with the limited movesets of each character... regardless, I've played the Story Mode over 4 times already, and I never get tired of it, it's very well paced and recreates the story arc pretty well, borrowing elements from both the manga and the anime. Just... don't play it for too long!

 Bleach - Soul Resurrection: Remember the issues I had with Sanctuary Battle? How linear and repetitive it was? How movesets were very limited and rather dull? Yeah, it's even worse in Soul Resurrection. It doesn't even have a great story mode(Which is what saves Sanctuary Battle). This game is the perfect example of how NOT to make a Dynasty Warriors game. Movesets are very limited, it feels even worse than Sanctuary Battle. The stages are very linear, you've always have to go through them in the same exact matter, fighting, usually, the same enemies over and over again. Then the game has 50 missions... which take place in the very same stages that you must traverse in the very same way. You've no idea of how repetitive the game can get, and how fast you get tired of it. And the story mode is very lame, it covers, more or less, from the last Grimmjow vs Ichigo bout 'till Aizen's defeat, but it skips through a lot of events, there's not a single Vizard in the game, for instance(well, technically you get Ichigo). Sanctuary Battle had a very in-depth story mode, which is what keeps me coming back to it. The one saving grace of this game is that you get to play as Mugetsu Ichigo, which is badass.


 Know what? Since I'm at it, might as well talk a bit about my favorite Musou games:

 Fist of the North Star - Ken's Rage: Being a HUGE fan of the franchise, as sexist, dumb, ridiculous and plot-hole ridden as it is, probably played a huge part in it, but here's why I love it: First of all, the graphics are downright amazing, but where it shines the most is in the cutscenes, they recreated some of the best scenes in the series with amazing detail. Then there's how unique the characters feel, sure, it has less characters than any other Musou game, but each one feels very unique. There are three styles, Hokuto, Nanto and Special, and even between characters that share a style, they've unique R1 actions and unique attack strings. Customization, each character has a healthy amount of special moves, and you can bring up to four with you at any time. Every time you use a special attack, the game will pause, show you a few still shots of the aftermath with the name of the move in Japanese in the lower area of the screen, very badass and faithful to the series. Lastly, the "feel" of the game, movements have a lot of weight behind them, giving each move a very deliberate, powerful feel to them, as a result the game feels slower than other Musou games, but in this case, it's not a bad thing. I love this game, I platinum'd it and pumped over 80 hours in this effer.

 Dynasty Warriors - Gundam 3: I didn't dislike DW: Gundam 2, but it didn't sit well with me, the friendship system was an absolute nightmare. Dynasty Warriors 3 fixed that, but added some very weird, disjointed "mission" mode, where you selected missions and you'd get random maps most of the time? It was weird, very weird. And yet, I clocked over 120 hours into this one, platinum'd it as well. I really can't say "why" I liked it so much, I just did.

 Warriors Orochi 3: I loved Hokuto Musou(Fist of the North Star), partly, due to how slow it was, but I liked this one due to how fast it was. I love the gameplay mechanics, like bringing up to three characters with you(And even then it feels too little, there're so many more Warlords I'd like to bring with me!). As previously mentioned, the speed, this game is faster than even DW 7, and it also seems to be able to show more enemies on screen at the same time than DW 7? I dunno, but battles in this game feel even more massive. Then there's of course the incredibly huge roster of characters, over 90 in all, and they are, at least, slightly different from each other. Clone characters from DW 7 got decloned so that now they only share the basic Square string. All in all, this game is the ultimate celebration of everything that makes the Warriors/Musou series good.


 And that's about it, my story with the Dynasty Warriors games. I don't think any of them would even crack my top 50 games(MAYBEEEEEE Warriors Orochi 3), but I always enjoy them, they are fun, mindless mashers in which you can feel like a total badass while mowing down hundreds of enemies, how can anyone dislike that!?