Dynasty Warriors DS : Fighter's Battle

[Noize]

Got this little game recently, and I wanted to share with you the results of my hours of gameplay time with this DS cart.

First, the game isn't all that great looking. It's okay, nothing really bad or wrong, it's just that it's far from being impressive. I know it has to do with hardware limitation, as Dynasty Warriors games usually tend to feature TONS of ennemies on the battlefield, and clearly, the DS wouldn't have been up to the task if everything was all 3d. Instead, all the backgrounds are in 3d, most of the special attacks are rendered in 3d, but every ennemies on screen (and the player) are scalable 2d sprites. It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look special either. It may even make the game feel a bit dated.

On the audio front, nothing special either.

Where the game shines though, is in the gameplay area. Those familiar with the franchise will be quick at easy with the game. But, there's still many differences with the other games in the series.

First, you choose a character to play amongst the 3 available. You guessed it, a quick but weak character, a strong but slow character, and a more balanced one. Pretty cliché. I would've liked a bigger selection of characters, I admit.

Then, the game starts by showing you a map divided into 11 territories. All of which represent a "battle" or "stage" or "level", whichever word you like best. After selecting the territory you want to conquer, it switches to another character selection screen where you'll choose generals for your army who will protect your bases and other buildings you'll take (armory, depot). There seems to be an insane number of generals, although you mostly have to unlock them all while killing them in battle (or as bonus, when you, for example, conquered a territory in a record time or complete other tasks). All of those general have particularities. Some of them boost your army stats, other carry on special attacks and spell you may use in combat, some do both. The vast number of generals you can choose kind of contrasts heavily with the only 3 player controllable characters of the game.

Anyway, once you selected your generals (the number you can select varries from map to map, according to the number of bases you have to defend), you start the battle.

The top DS screen shows the actual battle, while the lower screen shows the map, the various roads to take through each area, and your position, as well as the position of the ennemy main commander, who will plow (or try to) through your army and try to take over your bases and fortress.

The main gameplay is quite simple. Move to a zone, kill the requested number of ennemy soldiers (quota) and then you'll be able to either move to the next zone, or, if there's a base in that zone, challenge the soldier your ennemy has appointed to defend it. If you kill him, the base is yours.

When you have taken all the ennemy bases, only then you can try to take over it's main fortress, guarded by it's main general.

Of course, you also have you own bases and fortress to defend, even if you appointed generals to all of them. When you land in the same zone as the ennemy commander, the game switch to a versus battle where the loser will respawn at one end of the map.

Along your battles, you can collect money and food, and raise your Musou Gauge each time you kill an ennemy soldier. When you have enough, you can use special attacks. Some will affect the ennemy soldiers on-screen, other will affect the progress of the ennemy commander.

It may sounds a bit complicated, but trust me, it is not.

The overall game is pretty fun, and even if it's only sprites, it's fun to see a bunch of ennemies fly off when you plow through them with your sword and special attacks. It's a very nice mix between an action game and a strategy one, a mix that have been rarely made this well, thanks to the DS second screen that let you watch the map and progress of the ennemy while you battle soldiers.

I admit though, that the game can get repetitive after a while, but I've played at least a good 10 hours with it and I still find it fun.

I give it a good 7.5/10

Worth checking, especially if you liked the other titles in the series (I only played one briefly on the PS2 - but still, I very liked this DS game).

[Sambob]

I agree with the majority of the review, but id give it a slightly lower score, theres a lot with the game that they could, and should have done much better, so that knocks points off for me.