Warriors Orochi 2
Jan. 20th, 2010 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroJust for the record, I love the Warriors series, and I think the two Warriors Orochi games have been my favorites of the lot. They clean up a number of the gameplay issues that earlier games had, have tons of characters and unlockables, and though the plots are mostly silly, they're not retreading the same material for the 6th time. And the biggest advantage I've always felt was that the series remains, as guadium_et_spes described DW3, "The most fun you'll ever have pressing the attack button over and over." There's a fair amount of the combat system really, but it's easy enough as a game that your non-gamer significant other will enjoy playing it with you.
Big advantages over Dynasty Warriors games: Zillions of characters to choose from. Being able to switch between three characters per stage. Unlockable "Abilities" that power up every character, not just the ones you focus on. No bodyguards stealing your kills. No duels (the biggest drawback to DW4). When you fail a stage, you can save the character-specific experience you earned (though not items or unlocked Abilities).
Additional advantages over Samurai Warriors games: Retains more of the "kill 1,000 mooks" large-battle feel of DW. No castle stages. Musou attacks are generally more useful. (Though I'll admit, I miss the mission system from SW1 a little, it made individual stages a little more hectic and put more emphasis on teamwork to get everything done.)
The weapon fusing system was fine; and worked better with the "zillions of characters" thing than trying to unlock special weapons for everyone would. It also makes characters somewhat more customizable.
In WO1, most of the unlockables were characters and side-story stages. Jethrien generally preferred this. I was just as happy with WO2 switching over to making characters very easy to unlock (which meant that you could play pretty much anyone fairly early on), but adding the Treasures and Dream Mode stages.
The new characters are each more broken than the last, though Sun Wukong is the biggest winner there: Crowd-clearing reach, strong moveset, automatic horse-speed movement (he's got a magic cloud to ride on), a jump attack that can scale cliffs (making two stages much, much easier) and some funny lines (he's the Monkey King, after all). If they make a Warriors Orochi 3 (and it makes it to the states) I'm not entirely sure how they'll top this.
Complaints: The sheer number of generals in any given battle is occasionally problematic. When a lot of your allies attack a single enemy general, the enemy will occasionally blink out for a few seconds and your hits won't register. When three or four enemy generals are gang-beating you, nothing of this sort will ever happen. (Also, especially in Hard mode, this was our #1 cause of deaths.) At least in the PS2 version in 2-player mode, there's occasionally some slowdown or enemies that spawn from nowhere. And though they improved the movesets and voice acting on many of the characters (Okuni's voice acting is vastly improved, Hanzo and Goemon are much more playable), there are still some that are downright painful (Xaio Qaio's faceplant charge attack, Kunoichi's squeaking, Meng Huo's incredible slowness).
I don't bother trying to keep track of the number of hours we spend on games in this series, especially since they lack a play-time clock. It just gets recorded on my sheet as "lots".
Overall: A++ Would Buy Again.
Big advantages over Dynasty Warriors games: Zillions of characters to choose from. Being able to switch between three characters per stage. Unlockable "Abilities" that power up every character, not just the ones you focus on. No bodyguards stealing your kills. No duels (the biggest drawback to DW4). When you fail a stage, you can save the character-specific experience you earned (though not items or unlocked Abilities).
Additional advantages over Samurai Warriors games: Retains more of the "kill 1,000 mooks" large-battle feel of DW. No castle stages. Musou attacks are generally more useful. (Though I'll admit, I miss the mission system from SW1 a little, it made individual stages a little more hectic and put more emphasis on teamwork to get everything done.)
The weapon fusing system was fine; and worked better with the "zillions of characters" thing than trying to unlock special weapons for everyone would. It also makes characters somewhat more customizable.
In WO1, most of the unlockables were characters and side-story stages. Jethrien generally preferred this. I was just as happy with WO2 switching over to making characters very easy to unlock (which meant that you could play pretty much anyone fairly early on), but adding the Treasures and Dream Mode stages.
The new characters are each more broken than the last, though Sun Wukong is the biggest winner there: Crowd-clearing reach, strong moveset, automatic horse-speed movement (he's got a magic cloud to ride on), a jump attack that can scale cliffs (making two stages much, much easier) and some funny lines (he's the Monkey King, after all). If they make a Warriors Orochi 3 (and it makes it to the states) I'm not entirely sure how they'll top this.
Complaints: The sheer number of generals in any given battle is occasionally problematic. When a lot of your allies attack a single enemy general, the enemy will occasionally blink out for a few seconds and your hits won't register. When three or four enemy generals are gang-beating you, nothing of this sort will ever happen. (Also, especially in Hard mode, this was our #1 cause of deaths.) At least in the PS2 version in 2-player mode, there's occasionally some slowdown or enemies that spawn from nowhere. And though they improved the movesets and voice acting on many of the characters (Okuni's voice acting is vastly improved, Hanzo and Goemon are much more playable), there are still some that are downright painful (Xaio Qaio's faceplant charge attack, Kunoichi's squeaking, Meng Huo's incredible slowness).
I don't bother trying to keep track of the number of hours we spend on games in this series, especially since they lack a play-time clock. It just gets recorded on my sheet as "lots".
Overall: A++ Would Buy Again.
