Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires

Overview

DW5 is another addition to the seemingly never-ending Dynasty Warriors series, which take place during the Chinese dynasty wars. They accurately portray the locations of the battles, the generals who fought them, and the names of the battles, except for the fact that everyone seems to have superhuman destructive powers. But then again, maybe they really were that cool… Most of the DW games have been almost exact repeats of their earlier installment, but DW5 brings something new to the table: Empire Mode. Empire Mode adds a little bit of strategy, and a slightly card game-based mechanic. Before you go into a battle, you are shown a map of china, with all the different sections, and who rules over them. You can use orders, which are basically cards, to do certain things such as upgrade weapons, recruit troops, and much more. After that is done, you can move your officers and troops to different sections that you control, and invade enemy sections, or defend one of your own from invasion. Its an orgy of violence! 

Gameplay

The gameplay of DW 5 really hasn’t changed much from the previous installments of Dynasty Warriors. You basically choose what ancient Chinese war to participate in and which general you’d like to control. Then the battle begins. The basic point of the battles are to take control of the main enemy base either by taking over all the other bases, or by simply eliminating the head general of the opposing team.

As far as the boards you play, there are many battlefields to choose from. However they all tend to end the same way: You plow your way through enemies and officers taking over defensive and supply bases on the way. Although this may seem like mindless fun to most gamers, those looking for a unique twist or game mechanic not involving button-mashing might be a bit disappointed.

Graphics

The graphics really haven’t improved at all since the Xbox version. You can have a lot of troops on-screen at one time, but the graphics are more last-generation material, especially the game’s lack of good draw distance. Though, like I said before, there can be a lot of characters on-screen at once without any bit of slowdown, thus making it the aforementioned “Orgy of Violence.”

Sound

The sound effects in the game aren’t amazing, but they don’t suck, either. One thing that does suck, though, is the music. Aside from the techno-oriental music in the main menu, the battle music consists of almost MIDI-grade lame rock guitars, looping over about every minute. Other than that, the sound effects are basically weapons clashing, men screaming in pain, and voiceover acting. Most of them are done well, and there is a surprising amount of specific speech, which is especially surprising because each of the 200+ officers has their own unique-sounding voice set.

Final Word

Though there is the addition of the Empire Mode, Dynasty Warriors 5 is essentially just about the same as all the other games. Although changes have been made in the Edit Mode (Create-a-Character), as well as the addition of a few new units, most DW veterans would see basically the same game they saw on the Xbox. Though, if you’ve never played a DW game before, or if you’re a hardcore DW fan that doesn’t care how similar the games are, this is a great addition to your game library. Though the game does have a few minor flaws, it holds up well, and I haven’t seen a single glitch in the game.

Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 3
Audio: 3
Replay value: 5
Overall: 3/5

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