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Derek Green
United States
Lexington
Kentucky
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My first exposure to the Dynasty Warriors series, Koei games, and the Three Kingdoms era came when I acquired Dynasty Warriors 3 back around 2001 or 2002. Since then, my interest in the series and in the era that it covers has continued unstinted. Since I have both time and budgetary constraints which keep me from being able to stay as up to date with gaming as I would like, I only acquired this game last summer and got around to playing it this past month. What I found was, in my opinion, the best game in the series overall, despite its faults.
I. Graphics
Both Dynasty Warriors the fighting game on the original PlayStation and Dynasty Warriors 2 the launch title on PlayStation 2 were impressive for their time graphically. Dynasty Warriors 5 is no slouch visually and in fact represents by far the best looking Koei game on the PS2. Character animations are a little crisper, movements are a little more graceful and fluid, and most notably, it has become much more rare to see enemies and structures pop up out of nowhere. Though it can hardly be said to be visually innovative, it takes the first generation Dynasty Warriors art style and visual presentation to its highest peak of attainment.
One fatal flaw common to every Dynasty Warriors game that I have played still remains, however, and it is almost certainly the worst aspect of the series. The camera angles are often extremely awkward and can put you at a tremendous disadvantage when fighting enemy officers, especially when they are really on a tear. I can only hope that the problem has been fixed since this game was made. This problem is something that I regard as so severe that I will also have to dock points in the gameplay section since it really does provide unnecessary frustration.
Graphics Rating- 14/20
II. Sound and Music
For the most part, the game's sound effects are a slightly improved variant on those in earlier installments. While this might not represent much of an improvement, things were never bad and the mild tweaking strikes me as an appropriate response. As for the music, while I think that Dynasty Warriors 3 had the some of the very best tracks, the overall quality of the music in this title is better since none of the songs are annoying and all of them match the stage that they go with. Certainly the music in Dynasty Warriors 5 more than makes up for the competent but somewhat staid musical stylings of its immediate predecessor, Dynasty Warriors 4.
Sound and Music Rating- 19/20
III. Theme, Immersion, and Extras
In this category, Dynasty Warriors 5 is one of the most finely wrought games that you are likely to encounter. Since the storylines are based on Luo Guanzhong's classic novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the natural expectation of a gamer familiar with that work is that the game should reflect the personalities of the characters in the novel and follow its story faithfully. While many of Koei's myriad of titles about the Three Kingdoms era creatively stray away from the story, this title sticks to it very closely and only slightly tweaks it in places to make officers' careers in Musou Mode more interesting but not completely implausible or far-fetched. In Dynasty Warriors 3, for instance, each officer went to one or both of the final battles in 234 A.D., regardless of when they actually died historically and ignoring that had they still been alive, they would have been far too old to run around with a sword and kill a thousand men. Dynasty Warriors 5 not only makes each character start service under their original lord (many prominent people began their careers under a minor warlord), but has them essentially retire after just surviving battles that killed them both in the novel and in history. To give an example, the Shu officer Huang Zhong's story begins when he first joins Shu and follows him through five battles. Historically, he died at Yi Ling fighting Wu in 222 at the age of 70-75. Even had he survived, his expiration date was fast approaching. So, in the game, he retires after the Battle of Bai Di Castle in 229, watching Jiang Wei come home victorious from the Wu Zhang Plains in the capacity of a retired general a few years later. That to me is a very nice touch and a way to better explain the careers of these men than anything that I have seen in other Koei games. This fact combined with the narratives from your officer explaining his or her motives and relations with other players and factions makes you feel like you understand the character in a meaningful way and makes you want to continue.
All Koei games have a number of extras and Dynasty Warriors 5 is very much a standard product of its mother company in that regard. What it does is not so much trailblaze as simply improve upon earlier games. All Dynasty Warriors games have officer encyclopedias which gives a brief biographical account of what each officer, playable and unplayable, did during the era. This encyclopedia is better organized and more detailed than in previous entries, containing as it does detailed accounts of how each of the Three Kingdoms met its end and how China came to be ruled by the Jin Dynasty. As a historian, I can't help but be pleased by the fact that a beat-'em-up can be educational.
Theme, Immersion, and Extras Rating- 20/20
IV. Controls
All Dynasty Warriors titles save the first have very simple control schemes, as is only appropriate for a beat-'em-up. Dynasty Warriors 5 feels fluid overall and the fighting style of each character impacts how you have to adjust your tactics. This is of course not hard to figure out, but if for some reason you do not do it, then you will meet with death if you think that some slow poke like Dian Wei can be as aggressive as someone like Zhou Yu, who swings fast and hits with precision. The number of charge attacks has increased and weapon weight can help or hinder your speed, a small but cool innovation. It feels like other titles in the series, but is slightly tweaked and slightly improved.
Controls Rating- 18/20
V. Gameplay
Dynasty Warriors 5 is not intrinsically different than any of the other games in the series, so I shall be sparing with description of the basics. This series is so well-known that I feel confident that nearly everyone who will encounter this review will know how the game usually goes. If you are unfamiliar with the series, then I suggest going to youtube and looking up clips to get a feel for the game functions. New to this title are attack, defense, and supply bases, which affect the morale of the troops and are often tied in with the story of the battle. At the Battle of He Fei, both Wei and Wu scramble to occupy neutral bases and the way to win is to hem the other side in by taking its bases and reducing its overall morale so that your allies will also hold up and start making progress. Failure to take bases probably means that your allies will fold and that you will lose. Killing tons of men is also much less important in this title than in its predecessors in terms of scoring and managing the flow of the battle.
Each title in the series features a larger number of playable characters, the selection of which is no doubt a tough decision for the designers to make. Overall, they did a good job here. Wei got Cao Pi, the son of Cao Cao and the first Wei Emperor, an important figure by anyone's reckoning. Also joining Wei was Pang De, whose might as a warrior made him famous, even if his tenure at Wei was somewhat short and undistinguished. Both of the new Wei fighters have interesting fighting styles and are fun to play as. Shu got Guan Ping and Xing Cai. I have always found Guan Ping to be an underrated fellow, so I am glad to see him here at last, even if I don't like the fact that he is just like the random guy with the "Bastard Sword" from Dynasty Warriors 3 and is portrayed as an overeager teenager, despite the fact that we know him to be a competent and serious officer. Xing Cai is the daughter of Zhang Fei who is forced to take up arms in this storyline mostly so that there can be more female playable characters. In the actual story, historical circumstances did not permit women to serve in war, but at least their inclusion prevents the game from seeming like too much of a sausage fest. Wu only gets one character, but he is the best of the new kids on the block, Ling Tong. Other Koei games underestimate his abilities, but his achievements leading a detachment against Wei indicate that he was almost certainly among the top five most tactically talented men of the era.
The new stages and the redesigns of old ones are all excellent. While I prefer the He Fei Castle stage from Dynasty Warriors 3 and the Battle of Hu Lao Gate from Dynasty Warriors 4, in every other instance I think that this game has the best rendition of each battle, often being a more realistic depiction than what came before. Of the new stages, I am especially struck by Chen Cang Castle and Bai Di Castle, which are both challenging and interesting. Though the one was somewhat minor and the other is probable made up, they are now my two favorite scenarios to play through. Other new stages do a great job of providing context for the stories of some of the characters, such as the battle in Liang Province which was a part of the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Battle of Tian Shui, which was where Jiang Wei first made himself famous in the service of Wei before then joining Shu. Once again, I can't emphasize enough how almost all aspects of this game represent an expansion of the series' existing strengths in a way that seeks excellence even if it cannot be said to be innovative.
Of course, there are some serious gameplay flaws remaining in the series which this game does not address and in one case, exacerbates. As mentioned before, the camera angles in this game can at times be terrible and expose you to real danger that you cannot see coming. This problem is really brought home to you by the fact that more so than any game in the series there are really juiced enemy officers in almost every stage who are going to be extremely hard to kill. You will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to slay guys who historically did very well in a battle or were at least famous in the battle. For instance, if you play as Shu at Mt. Ding Jun, you will almost certainly die if you try to get the job done alone against Xiahou Yuan. Rather, the best that you can do is to pound him and then run to get health and hope that your allies finish him off. This points to two further comments which must be made. Firstly, this game has much more competent allies who will actually accomplish things for you, which makes the game feel more realistic though by depriving you of some of the kills, you do get fewer bonuses. Secondly, this game is really stingy with health bonuses, at least when you need them. You will have to revisit supply bases that you control or have captured, which is definitely a pain and will take a very long time. Get a bodyguard with the Heal ability unless you are a masochist.
The game does improve upon a number of things, but there are some serious unresolved issues.
Gameplay Rating- 16/20
VI. Conclusion
Dynasty Warriors 5is a great beat-'em-up and probably Koei's best outing in a game which does not involve strategy. If you have an interest in trying this series out, this is the best place to start for the reasons that I outlined above. However, this is definitely a genre game for genre fans. My rating reflects that of someone who enjoys this kind of game and I do not want to give the impression that this game will appeal to everyone. It is not one of the all-time classics that defines excellence in gaming, but it is a great example of its genre being performed at a high level.
Overall Rating- 87/100
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