I don't know anyone in the Marketing Department over at Koei, so I couldn't tell you whether or not Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires’ masterstroke of movie tie-ins was cunning or a happy accident. The Chinese action/drama Hero debuts at the US Box Office in the #1 spot for the week, and then its followed by the US movie release of Warriors of Heaven and Earth. Smack-dab in between those two movies is the release of DW4: Empires.
I mean, how else would you expect to have the public rush out to buy a game that's nearing its tenth different version without a significant engine change? Koei seems to understand that every three to six months, the public is craving for a quick and dirty game that they can just pick up, beat the crap out of people, and put back down. So when the non-gaming world starts fanning those hibernating battle cravings amongst the populace with good movies like "Ying Xiong" and "Tian Di Ying Xiong", of course they're going to take advantage of it.
What's New?
This is normally the section where I'd go into the basic gameplay mechanics. But since they're practically the same as when Koei rolled out Dynasty Warriors 2, I'm not going to bother. I'm sure you can find a review that would provide that information for you without looking too hard.
Since that's out of the way, I'm just going to go into what's changed as far as gameplay is concerned. The most obvious difference is the "Empires" part of Empires. Instead of just controlling one of the three major Kingdoms that comprises the period, you're able to take control of any of the minor houses, and try to unify China underneath their flag as well. Instead of being given a scripted set of missions and a path to follow, you're got to attack and defend your provinces, and eventually conquer all of China.
This has its benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, it's a different direction for the series to take. It gives it a little bit more variety and spontaneity. As a bit of a downer, it takes away from some of the flavor of the game. In Historical Mode, there are events that pop up, like the Emperor requesting your help with removing the threat of the Yellow Turbans and trying to remove Dong Zhuo from the capital. However, since you can easily eliminate one of the major players after not too much longer than that, you'll soon run out of historical events that still apply to the landscape of China that you have reshaped.
Players familiar with the series are also accustomed to picking up items and weapons on the map and looking for them during battle. Not anymore. No longer do enemy generals drop swords and shields that raise your attack and defense. Items are produced at the provinces you've conquered. So, forge ahead into Nanman territory and conquer them and you'll find that your prize is the saddle that allows you to ride an elephant to start the map. Since the missions will either run 15 or 25 minutes by default, this allows you to spend more time trying to gain ground, and less time trying to meet conditions for an uber-powerful weapon to appear.
Gaining ground in the mission is also done a bit differently. It's very close to what Onslaught mode was in Unreal Tournament. You have areas that are basically viewed as being the territory of one stronghold. Each side’s number of troops in the immediate vicinity of the stronghold are represented by bubbles in the upper right hand corner of the screen. If you get rid of all the enemy bubbles, the territory is yours. If you conquer a stronghold and it is bordering a neighboring area you also have control over, the banners will turn blue, and that area will start spawning your troops. It will also start producing food. You don't bust open those huge earthenware vessels anymore, you'll just partake right off of the dining area of the stronghold.
At the beginning of each turn, four of your Generals will give you two action cards that will be played immediately, provided you have enough gold to perform the action. You will be able to do things like restore 2000 troops to all your generals, slow the reinforcement rate of your opponent, ally with another General, recruit unattached officers, etc. Your Generals will get whiny if you don't choose their plans after a while or choose not to allow them to fight in battles (you get to choose three Generals, and three Lieutenants per fight), so keep that in mind.
Generals are also a bit harder to defeat, as one encounter (unless it is a duel) will not remove a General from the fight permanently. They'll return and regroup, and come running at you to go at it again. So, if you've taken out Lu Bu, it's a good idea to charge, because you only have a couple minutes before he'll return at full health.
You and your Generals will level up based on conditions, and not just the number of points they've earned, but things like the number of provinces you've conquered, and the level of your weapon will also lead to leveling, and so you'll frequently pick up levels for yourself and your Generals in bunches.
There are also a few new maps. Of them, Xi Liang is my favorite, which is a desert map with no real boundaries to define where strongholds begin and end, and frequently ends up being a very speedy battle due to its wide open nature.
There's enough in there to make Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires play like a significantly different game, but not enough to leave a player with too steep of a learning curve.
Graphics
The look and feel of the game haven't been changed too much. You are able to customize your own officer much more than you have been able to in the past, and the game does have a longer draw distance than the previous versions, although slowdown in this game is a much larger factor than it has been in any of the DW games since 2. There's a neat little Gallery in the Archive section where you can take a look at the Officers, trinkets you've obtained, and your weapons, but aside from that, the graphics are basically what you'd expect after playing DW4.
I'm kind of disappointed by the intro, which looks really, really good, but is only about 15 seconds long. The same thing applies to the ending; while it's nice to see all the stuff play out with the Generals you've hired, it's way too little for how long you've fought.
Sound
Some of the voiceovers are really off. I don't know if the vocal director didn't know how to explain the lines to people or what not, but their emphasis is all off. For example, when coming to your aid, Sun Shang Xiang will shout something like, "I'll fight THEM, too!" but since she's coming to assist you, the sentence should just sound like, "I'll fight them TOO!" There are other instances like that where it's just...ugh.
Aside from that, the music and sound effects are still pretty good and do a good job of evoking both Eastern culture and the sounds of war, and they do leave the option for the Japanese voices in the game, although I was kind of dismayed they didn't have them in Chinese.
I'm glad that they kept the ending theme "Ever Free" by 2Hearts in Japanese, but the song doesn't really fit the mood for the game. I guess it's supposed to be all about the calm after the battle, but I feel like I'm listening to the ending theme of some J-Drama and not something like finally finishing the conquest of China. It is an incredible leap forward compared to the crappy Koyanagi Yuki song they had used before, but still not up to the level of my favorites in the Warriors games: "Be The One" by BoA and "Can't Quit This" by move.
Gripes
The slowdown is, first and foremost, the worst part of the game. I haven't even played this two-player split-screen mode yet, and I've been reduced to somewhere in the 10 fps range, just by having the main boss for the province show up. This is unacceptable, Koei.
The fact that the items are a one-time use deal is also a bit of an annoyance. I basically don't bother using them, for the most part, because I don't want to go into the next fight and not have anything to equip. If I have the saddle that lets me ride in with Hex Mark, I should still have it after the battle. The horse didn't die? Why am I not still riding it? I much prefer the old method of gaining items over the method in Empires.
For the most part, the cutscenes are just awful. You can skip all of them. You'll get an entirely separate screen to load up, and then two of your Generals will compliment you, and that's it. YAWWWWN. Please, Koei, put some more thought into these things.
My biggest petty beef, though, is with the manual and the localization. The manual will have captions like, "Red Hare is impressive even as a graphic!" Says who? You? Those kinds of things are littered all throughout the game and manual, where an obvious lack of grasp of the language is evident. People don't say that kind of stuff. I'm also disappointed in the way the game lists off all the random cards you could be getting; the cards in-game will tell you what they do, so why bother with telling the user what all the possible cards they can get ahead of time are? That just ruins the surprise and punishes the user for taking the time to tolerate the rest of the manual.
Overall
This isn't the best version of Dynasty Warriors, though it easily could have been. Instead of being this big of a jump sideways, if Koei would have just made it a sidestep, it would have been fantastic. Keep the items being something that you find in the battle, but specific to the area, and not one-time use items. If you get defeated, you lose them. That seems fair. Otherwise, the items lose a lot of their value. Also, I'd prefer having the 3 Kingdoms storyline in there from the beginning as "Historical Mode" and have Fictional Mode be like it is now, with the option to have the game shuffle Generals into random groups. The history behind the game is one of the biggest drawing points and to start going down a path that discards all of it is a bad idea in my book.
If you've got the itch for a huge brawl again, you may as well go ahead and pick this up. The $30 bargain price means that it won't cost much to scratch your itch, and it's a whole two months before Samurai Warriors Xtreme Legends comes out, so your itch will probably be gone by then. However, if you're just a casual fan of the DW series, I think it'd be best to just let this go until the new Samurai Warriors game comes out, and satiate yourself that way. This game isn't as revolutionary as I'd hoped, and what was changed for the most part was changed in a way that I didn't like so much.
