It's something none of us really expected to happen: Expansion packs...on a console? How are you going to get away with doing that? Well, apparently the folks at Koei figured it out, because last year, they sprung Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends (Sanshingoku Musou 2 Mushouden in Japan) on us, and it was pretty good. It picked up where 3 left off, and even found a way to build new content into the old game.
Well, Koei knows a winning formula when they see one, and lo and behold, Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends shipped. With a price comparable to what you'd expect for a PC game expansion pack, Koei's expecting everyone who got into DW4 to be getting into this.
What's New In Ancient China?
For those of you who haven't played any of the Dynasty Warriors games on the PS or XBox, here's the rundown. You're a general in medieval China. You'll fight for one of four sides: Wu, Wei, Shu, or None of the Above. You will then be thrown into the mother of all beat 'em ups, namely a large scale battle with some minor tactical objectives, but mostly just you stabbing the crap out of everyone.
If you want futher details on how the game works, I've reviewed the last 2 versions of the game here, so, feel free to peruse those for a more in-depth explanation of the system.
For everyone else who's already played DW4, you're probably wondering what new value the game brings. First off, you can unlock the level 11 weapons for your favorite characters in DW4. There's also Legend Mode, a mode that provides a story for each character; instead of having you play through an army's story arc, this one is your own. With one mission for each of the playable generals, that makes 42 new missions to play.
The more interesting mode for veteran players will be the Xtreme Mode, which turns into something like a large-scale 3D version of the old classic, Gauntlet. You gain very, very few health items from soldiers in this mode (a very limited number of levels have *1* 50 Health recovery meat bun), but you will earn gold at the end of the level. At the end of each short battle, you'll head to the shop and purchase items that regain health, increase your attributes, hire a group of soldiers (the shaman and sorcerer detachments are VERY cool...until you have to fight them) or hire another general to be your sidekick.
There's a catch, though...as you buy Meat Buns or Ointment or other items, they start to get more expensive. It isn't like supply and demand, it's just a constant upward trend. So as you start getting more gold, and increasing your life attribute, it gets harder and harder to fill the darn thing back up. Around every 5th mission, you'll be confronted with a choice of missions called "Kingdom Creation" or "Kingdom Defense". These missions will establish a home base for you, if you will, where items will be cheaper for purchase. They're generally MUCH tougher missions, but the payout is better, and if you’re stuck between choosing a difficult mission with a full health bar, and a medium difficulty one with a 1/3 full health bar, you might want to factor the cheaper items into your decision.
If you're running low on health and you've managed to secure yourself quite a lot of nice merchandise, you may want to just bail. The game will save the progress you have made with your character and the items you've garnered along the way, and you can jump in all over again with the new items, your buffed up general, and built up weapon (to a max level of 9).
Fully Integrated? Eh...Not quite.
DW3:XL let you load data for your DW3 characters, and take on the new missions with the levelled up characters. You also had access to the full range of inventory that the other characters had. I guess Koei must have thought that would either knock game balance out of whack, or that it required the buyer to have DW4 to make it worth the purchase, but in any case, the only way these games tie together is that you're able to load up the original by swapping discs, and you can now play both of them. You have access to the general's 11th level weaponry, but you can't use that general in his levelled up state, or his weaponry in any of the new modes of DW4:XL. DW4:XL doesn't add any new characters into the game, so if you felt that DW4 was getting a little long in the tooth, you may want to give this a rental before deciding on a purchase.
Graphics
There hasn't really been much done to update the graphics engine. They've added some new maps and the like, but this engine needs to be put out to pasture now; you can only see grass pop up right in front of you so many times, and enemies disappear just out of sight before you too realize that this just isn't up to snuff. The character models and animations are nice and all, but I'm really hoping that Koei holds off on DW5 until the next-gen systems. This game is fun, but it would be so much better if I didn't notice all this pop-up and could actually have all the enemies on screen that I was going to have to hit, instead of seeing them come into view as I start my attack.
Audio
There really isn't a full "ending" as far as I can tell, so I don't know if they got a different theme for the ending, but it seems like much of the music for DW4:XL is the same as DW4, and so are the rest of the sounds of battle. Unfortunately, the voices could still use some work.
Gripes
Mostly, my issues with DW4:XL stem from two things. First, the fact that they call it Xtreme Legends, when "Dynasty Warriors 4: Remix” sounds better, and doesn't make you look like a fool. Even "Dynasty Warriors 4: Unlimited" or "DW4: Legends" would suffice in the all important "not looking retarded" category.
Second, the fact that I have to build up all my characters and pick up all those items again is a bad thing. The game recommends you start playing on Easy, but honestly, why do I want to play the SAME mission over and over to try and get my level 11 weapon, when I already built all these guys up less than 6 months ago? That's just not good design. I should absolutely be able to load my data. The game still has merit on its own with Xtreme Mode, and saved data can't be carried over into that mode anyway, but this is a big oversight on Koei's part.
Another little quirk with the game is the way all the missions in Legend Mode have totally different difficulties. Play as Ma Chou and all you have to do is score more kills than the other generals, which is fairly easy because the spawn points keep reopening and Ma Chao has an awesome area attack. Play as Xiao Qiao and you have to fight Cao Cao immediately, (who has a stunning range attack.) and kill a bunch of other pretty powerful guys. With the default level of the characters, I honestly don't know how you're ever going to beat some of these missions.
Overall
I like DW4:XL. It's great fun, and I don't know how Koei does it, but they manage to keep this series fun and entertaining without really changing the overall mechanics all that much.
However, for the person who's already plunked down $50 on DW4, I would recommend renting and not owning this. Based on the limited connectivity with the two versions, I don't really see all that much need to own both DW4 and DW4:XL. Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends is worth a few plays through for the excellent Xtreme Mode, but I wouldn't recommend hustling out and buying it.
