Shin sangoku musô 4: Empires (Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires (PS2))

Member Name: Goldensummit

Product:	Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires (PS2)
Date:	02/01/07 (475 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Strategy | Amount of playable officers | Co - Op | Edit Mode

Disadvantages: Graphics | Life Span | Repetitive | Same as every other Dynasty Warriors Game | Much more

Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires; the newest Dynasty Warriors game; the newest to the "Empires" Saga. After great success of Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires, KOEI (the company behind Dynasty Warriors) decided to continue with their "Empires" ideas and create yet another successful strategy game. Though this doesn't mean that the game is any good, nor does it mean it is the worst game spawned in our life-time. If you liked previous Dynasty Warriors games, you know, the basic hack n slash repetitiveness, and then you will be sure to love this game. It is the same basic "kill as many people as you possibly can" statue to this game, though with the "Empires" series, they add in a whole new strategy system to bring both action and strategy fun.

Game Features:
>> A whole new style of strategy for you and your friends to have fun with, from ambushes right up to making alliances and annulling them.
>> Over 200 playable characters, every officer is at your disposal.
>> Enhanced graphics engine to make the game run smoothly and in-depth detail in the scenario's and environment in general.
>> Actually order the units under your command what to do, you may order them to attack, defend, group to you or do as they wish.
>> Command your units from the battle menu, tell them to attack bases, attack units, defend bases or aid units.
>> Choose an existing kingdom or create your own, there is no limit to what you can do.
>> An enhanced Edit Mode that allows you to create detailed officers with 100's of options to make each officer different.
>> Before you go to battle, you can choose which soundtrack you wish to play in the background of the battle. Choose from every Dynasty Warriors game released!
>> A whole new Free Mode has been enabled so you can have fun with the levels you unlock in Empires.
>> Play a total of 5 scenarios, including the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Battle of Chi Bi.
>> Two player co-op mode in Empires.

Now some of you might be wondering "What the hell is Dynasty Warriors?" Dynasty Warriors is a hack n slash series, based on the Three Kingdoms period. You choose an officer, then you are thrown onto the battlefield, you and your allies VS the (normally) massive enemy army. It is pretty much left up to you to dispose of these pitiful enemies. You run around the battlefield and kill as many soldiers as you can, and try to kill some enemy officers while you're at it. The main ambition in Dynasty Warriors is to kill the enemy Leader, once he is dead, that's it, and you've won the battle.

Though it is a bit different in the "Empires" series, as it is more strategic, you take over bases in the game, taking bases can gain you strategic positions in the game that may be vital to winning the battle. You can win a battle by taking over the enemy's main camp, though if you're fighting the Ruler on their last territory, then you will need to kill the enemy Ruler so you can gain their land. Though it is just as easy to loose a battle then to win, if they kill you or take your Main Camp, then you have lost the battle. You also have the option to retreat if need be, this is useful if your army is taking severe blows. If you retreat, there is a chance some of your officers may be captured, so watch out about this. You can in fact capture enemy officers also, if you kill a Ruler you will gain all officers that were on that specific battlefield. You can then choose to hire them, release them or execute them. You will need gold to hire them, while releasing them means they could join the enemy while executing wipes them out of the game completely till you start again, do a different scenario etc.

Finally you get to play two players Co-Op in Empires mode, you're not alone anymore. You and your friend can both fight in a battle at the same time on each others team, and fight away the enemy together. That is pretty much all you can do in Empires though, also you can play Free Mode two players.

Now for the more strategic side to Empires. You are able to make alliances with enemy kingdoms, annul them, you are able to purchase strategy cards such as ambushes, fire attacks, bring tigers to the battlefield etc. You spend gold on strategy cards, and you use them each turn. You gain gold each turn also, each turn is 1/4 of a year. Each 1/4 you get gold, the more territories you own, the more gold you get. Strategy cards are how you do your strategic phase, you can buy cards that give officer troops, hire officer cards and all that. This makes the game a lot more in-depth and fun if you ask me. Though the game isn't all fun, after a while you will just find that the game gets extremely boring, and then you will start thinking about getting a new game, or just stop playing this one. It's also rather easy to complete, so don't expect much challenge in this game either.

You will have a lot of fun with this game at start, the strategy involved, the hardcore action and thrill of killing numerous enemy soldiers charging your way. Eventually though, you will realise that this game is nothing more then a simple button masher which is just the same thing over and over. Even if you have a second person playing with you, it will get boring rather fast, and then you will probably wonder why you bought this game. For me though, I don't get bored of it because it's repetitive, as I think the story makes up for it. The game is not very addictive; you will soon get tired of the lack of playability, and realising that it is the same thing. There's nothing really special in this game that makes it so different from any other Dynasty Warriors game, or pretty much any other game KOEI has released. It will probably last a few weeks or so, by then you would've completed it, and it will be then stacked up on your shelf with your other games being a dust collector.

The game is far not original; it is the same thing as the other Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors and the new "Gundam Musou" games. The only added extra is the Strategy system, which just makes this game shine out from the others, though it doesn't make it original as it shares too much of the same game-play as the other games. The graphics aren't very good, KOEI have never been too good at upgrading graphics, and it shows in this game. It's the same graphics, maybe a tiny bit better then all of the previous Dynasty Warriors games, though they try to mask the poor graphics with new character designs and attempted new soldier designs.

The soundtrack is one of the best things to this game, you get to choose from the entire soundtracks from Dynasty Warriors 2, 3, 4 and 5, and then which song you wish to have played in the battle. The voices are okay, though some of them are very irritating and don't suit the mood of the characters that they voice. But KOEI seem to slip up on the voices sometimes, but it's the best they can do, so the voices are quite good then. It's not so annoying that you just have to mute the volume or anything like that. I just don't feel the emotion in some of the characters that there should be.

This is one of the simplest games around to date. All you do is mash the square button, and that's all that's to it. Do a bit of running, and just kill, kill and kill. After doing this a few times, you would've completed the game. That is one of the major flaws in the Dynasty Warriors series. The game is good for the price that it's going at; I believe it's around £15 - £25, though I recommend getting this only if you're a strategy fanatic or a hardcore fan of KOEI. Other then that, this will just be another button masher game that will soon collect dust on your shelf.

Overall Rating: 6.8/10

Summary: Its' okay for a while, hack n slash gets very repetitive in this typical Dynasty Warriors game.