![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce
There were three kingdoms here before you (that’s what I said now)
Kingdoms, kingdoms that fought over you (just go ahead now)
One has Guan Yu and his halberd (he’s got some beard now)
This one, said Cao Cao’s gonna rock it (he’ll have your head now)
The latest variant on beat-em-ups based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, this one swaps out the army vs. army battles for one super-warrior (or four) against an army, along with new rpg elements and a bunch of new battle mechanics.
Goddamn it, Koei! Say it with me now: “Local multiplayer.” It’s what we want from this series. (Hell, it’s what we want from your games in general, along with pressing the attack button over and over.) Why the hell do you keep not having it, or only having it is a crappy limited form?
The game’s real gimmick isn’t unlocked until the second chapter, which almost made me give up on the game after only a couple of hours: If you’re not playing with network multiplayer, you can set up a party of up to three CPU-controlled characters to back you up. They’re actually pretty competent, on par with higher-level bodyguards in some of the other games.
Unfortunately, you need to get through a nasty boss stage at the end of the first chapter to see that. And it seems like every chapter ends with a nasty boss stage, much harder than the available missions and even the other story stages in that chapter. Which means you end up grinding on the easier missions, trying to make your character(s) strong enough to handle the bosses. (Even in Easy mode!)
The combo system isn’t nearly as rich as other games. There appear to be special moves that get assigned to weapons, but the old standard “combinations of pressing square and triangle” will get you pretty much nowhere.
Musou attacks have been changed to a new “fury mode” that you enter by pressing circle, that makes you all glowy and super saiyan and seems to increase your speed and attack power while it’s active. Your musou bar slowly decreases during that time, or you can press circle again to release a super-attack that eats up a lot of the bar.
Only the bosses / named enemies and the traps (catapults, fire-spitting lion heads, lightning-shoot statues, etc.) show life bars. Mooks, including archers and wizards, don’t have life bars, so they’ll just keep getting knocked down and getting back up until you’ve pounded them a seemingly-arbitrary number of times. Because archers weren’t annoying enough, they gave us new flying wizards (which are insanely resilient) and many new types of artillery to kill you from a distance. There are also giant enemies in some stages, that you can use items or chi skills to reveal the weak points of.
The maps are divided into areas with loading screens between them; each battle has 4-10 such areas. Often you’ll need to complete an objective (kill certain enemies or destroy certain structures) to unlock the gate to the next map.
I suspect this is the fault of my TV more than the game (since most PS3 games are pretty much assuming you have a giant HD TV at this point) but there can be a lot of trouble seeing what’s going on, especially in darker areas. I also haven’t quite mastered the camera controls, which when combined with the sheer amount of stuff that can be going on at once can get really frustrating. Which means of course I’d think there was too much platforming in the game: The system isn’t terribly well-designed for it (especially without any edge gravity) and it’s hard to see where you’re going and what you’re doing.
The “home screen” is a town where there are item vendors (yes, you can carry and use healing or buffing items during battle), skill trainers, and blacksmiths. You need to gather vendortrash items during battles to use to improve your weapons or forge new ones, create orbs to power up your weapons, learn skills you can equip, and upgrade the buildings so you can get higher-level versions of all of these things.
Overall: I see what they’re doing here; I’m just not in a position to really appreciate it. The game is beautiful, if you have the right TV. The online multiplayer seems like it would be really fun, if you had an internet connection that could support it and a group of interested friends. The abundance of weapons, skills, characters, tactics and rpg elements seem like there could be all manner of customization and variety to play; but I don’t really have the skills or the patience to take advantage of them. I don’t think this is a bad game, it just wasn’t what I wanted.
Kingdoms, kingdoms that fought over you (just go ahead now)
One has Guan Yu and his halberd (he’s got some beard now)
This one, said Cao Cao’s gonna rock it (he’ll have your head now)
The latest variant on beat-em-ups based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, this one swaps out the army vs. army battles for one super-warrior (or four) against an army, along with new rpg elements and a bunch of new battle mechanics.
Goddamn it, Koei! Say it with me now: “Local multiplayer.” It’s what we want from this series. (Hell, it’s what we want from your games in general, along with pressing the attack button over and over.) Why the hell do you keep not having it, or only having it is a crappy limited form?
The game’s real gimmick isn’t unlocked until the second chapter, which almost made me give up on the game after only a couple of hours: If you’re not playing with network multiplayer, you can set up a party of up to three CPU-controlled characters to back you up. They’re actually pretty competent, on par with higher-level bodyguards in some of the other games.
Unfortunately, you need to get through a nasty boss stage at the end of the first chapter to see that. And it seems like every chapter ends with a nasty boss stage, much harder than the available missions and even the other story stages in that chapter. Which means you end up grinding on the easier missions, trying to make your character(s) strong enough to handle the bosses. (Even in Easy mode!)
The combo system isn’t nearly as rich as other games. There appear to be special moves that get assigned to weapons, but the old standard “combinations of pressing square and triangle” will get you pretty much nowhere.
Musou attacks have been changed to a new “fury mode” that you enter by pressing circle, that makes you all glowy and super saiyan and seems to increase your speed and attack power while it’s active. Your musou bar slowly decreases during that time, or you can press circle again to release a super-attack that eats up a lot of the bar.
Only the bosses / named enemies and the traps (catapults, fire-spitting lion heads, lightning-shoot statues, etc.) show life bars. Mooks, including archers and wizards, don’t have life bars, so they’ll just keep getting knocked down and getting back up until you’ve pounded them a seemingly-arbitrary number of times. Because archers weren’t annoying enough, they gave us new flying wizards (which are insanely resilient) and many new types of artillery to kill you from a distance. There are also giant enemies in some stages, that you can use items or chi skills to reveal the weak points of.
The maps are divided into areas with loading screens between them; each battle has 4-10 such areas. Often you’ll need to complete an objective (kill certain enemies or destroy certain structures) to unlock the gate to the next map.
I suspect this is the fault of my TV more than the game (since most PS3 games are pretty much assuming you have a giant HD TV at this point) but there can be a lot of trouble seeing what’s going on, especially in darker areas. I also haven’t quite mastered the camera controls, which when combined with the sheer amount of stuff that can be going on at once can get really frustrating. Which means of course I’d think there was too much platforming in the game: The system isn’t terribly well-designed for it (especially without any edge gravity) and it’s hard to see where you’re going and what you’re doing.
The “home screen” is a town where there are item vendors (yes, you can carry and use healing or buffing items during battle), skill trainers, and blacksmiths. You need to gather vendortrash items during battles to use to improve your weapons or forge new ones, create orbs to power up your weapons, learn skills you can equip, and upgrade the buildings so you can get higher-level versions of all of these things.
Overall: I see what they’re doing here; I’m just not in a position to really appreciate it. The game is beautiful, if you have the right TV. The online multiplayer seems like it would be really fun, if you had an internet connection that could support it and a group of interested friends. The abundance of weapons, skills, characters, tactics and rpg elements seem like there could be all manner of customization and variety to play; but I don’t really have the skills or the patience to take advantage of them. I don’t think this is a bad game, it just wasn’t what I wanted.