After seven previous releases, Tecmo Koei desperately needed to breathe new life into Dynasty Warriors while staying true to the franchise.
And that they have done. Dynasty Warriors 8 adds new modes and characters with fresh abilities, while remaining very much a Dynasty Warriors game. But is it enough?
The answer to that rather depends on how much you love your beat-‘em-up games. Dynasty Warriors may dress itself up in elements of strategy gaming with its factional warfare, but at its heart it remains very much a hack-and-slash game.
And when your characters are powerful enough to wade through scores of spear-carriers and mooks, slicing and dicing them with broad sword strokes or blasting them with special powers, they’re little more than distractions between powerful level bosses.
To a dedicated beat-‘em-up fan, this is meat and drink, but after a few hours play, I found the endless mass violence rather wearisome. Yes, it’s fun to plough through a couple of waves of cannon fodder, but to do it over and over again becomes rather repetitive.
It’s not all bad, though. The factional choices — you represent one of four ancient Chinese kingdoms, each with its own heroes and agenda — do add some spice, and the ambition mode allows you to create your own faction.
But then you’re back in the battle, fighting yet more mooks.
It’s not that Dynasty Warriors is an easy game — it isn’t; level bosses can be extremely challenging — just rather repetitive. Frankly, it’s a grind — but that’s what the hack-and-slash genre demands and expects.
For me, this eighth release adds enough to maintain Dynasty Warriors’ standing, but not enough to carry it forward.
Dynasty Warriors 8
Developer: Omega Force
Publisher: Tecmo Koei
Genre: Beat-‘em-up
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360
Version tested: Xbox 360
Star rating 3.5/5
