ynasty Warriors returns again in Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires. The Empires franchise of Dynasty Warriors series is geared towards more political and strategic battles rather than your regular Dynasty Warriors game. However, it wouldn’t be a Dynasty Warriors game without dozens of enemies, bases, and officers to conquer on screen at a time. Empires is a bit more complicated than the regular Dynasty Warriors games, only because of its strategic and political nature, and with that being said I will be explaining the core mechanics of this game in greater detail.

Gameplay Structure

When you begin the game, you choose which officer you want to play as and conquer the kingdoms. There are more than 50+ officers you can choose from, each officer has a his/her own fighting style, some are very good at dealing a lot of damage, while others are super fast but deal a lot less damage and then you have the ones that are in the middle. If that’s not enough, the player can create their own custom officer in a mode called Edit. Edit mode allows you to create your own personal officer. The play may choose armor sets, voices, tattoos, customizable physical appearance and of course different fighting styles. Later in the game, you can also unlock and buy new armor sets and weapons.

Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires is an interesting beast, it combines role-playing as a nobody who can either join in with another famous ruler to conquer the kingdoms, or you can befriend someone and then backstab them later and take every kingdom for yourself. The whole point of the game is that you’re a Chinese general who’s main goal is to conquer the entire land, whether it be through an alliance, betrayal or of course all out war with everyone else.

The game achieves this goal by introducing a system called  Fame. Fame has multiple ratings that you can choose, the player may choose from Brave, Evil, Wise, Kind, Orderly and Affluent, each path grants you something called strategems. Strategems are these different abilities that you can unlock as you level up your Fame, each path of Fame has many different types of stratagems. You may use these stratagems when you are in an actual battlefield, one of the strategems lets you lock gates to your base so that the enemy won’t be able to assault your camp.

You can level up Fame rating by either political choices when you take a turn or on the battlefield depending on which kingdom you decided to defend or attack. There will also be times when a different ruler will ask you to join them on the battlefield to destroy an enemy officer and take over their main base, you have the right to decline or accept. As a general you can sign contracts with different people that grant you different bonuses to yourself and your troops. Players can also talk to other leaders in the world and earn more experience for their Fame rating based on which officer they’re talking too. During a scenario, there also will be a time when you will be able to change your main Fame rating to a different one.

However, if you’re playing on easy difficultly they’re not that important or really helpful for that matter, they were designed for harder difficulties and they can help out a great deal. It’s a good system, it’s interesting and it adds a  lot replay value to the game. One of my officers I went fully Brave Fame, once I was done with a scenario I made a new officer and decided to go Affluent the 2nd time around. Each Fame gives you a different ending once you have finished a scenario and there are trophies to be earned for each of the Fame rating.

The game is pretty deep, when I first started playing it I was really overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things you can when it comes to the political and strategic choices. Once you spend a decent amount of type with the game you will slowly start to understand how the game works and what benefits you the most.

Presentation

Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires has great Japanese voice acting, the soundtrack is as fitting as it always have been. If you’re looking for that good old Dynasty Warriors music, you’ll find it plenty of it here and that is a good thing. However, the has some graphical issues, as you play the game you will be seeing a lot of low-resolution textures, soldiers pop in the far distances along with the environmental objects. While the framerate is steady majority of the time, I couldn’t help but to cringe at the overall graphics of the game. There is no excuse for this game to look this bad, especially this late in the console generation cycle.

Overall

This is not a bad game by any means, if you can manage to look past the graphical problems of this game then there is fun to be had. Thanks to the great combination of politics, strategy, Fame system with its stratagems,  huge list of officers too chose from, Edit Mode and of course the classical gameplay of Dynasty Warriors on the battlefield. There is a good game to be played here, whether you’re a fan of the series or a newcomer. If you’re a loyal fan then I would strongly recommend you buy this game, if you’re new to the franchise then you should decide for yourself if you want to give it a whirl.

The game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.

Check out this new gameplay video from Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends.

The game is being published by Tecmo – Koei for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

For more on the game, please click here.

Tecmo-Koei have released a new gameplay video for their upcoming USA release of the new expansion pack for Dynasty Warriors 7, Xtreme Legends. The video shows some crazy footage of the game.

We reviewed Dynasty Warriors earlier this year and gave it a 7/10. Author Jim said “Dynasty Warriors 7 is the best in the franchise so far”, praising the new added features, but criticizing the co-op and the game’s repetitive nature. He ended his review by saying: “If your a fan of the Dynasty Warrior games, then this is the best yet, but I must note the series in itself is repetitious, not to mention the battles. If you are new to the franchise you will probably enjoy its massive battles and get sucked into collecting everything in the game.”

You can read our entire review through the link.

Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends includes new characters, secret weapons, the new “Legend Mode”, “Challenge Mode”, with Mixjoy and Japanese voice-overs. It will release on November 15 in US and November 18 in Europe for the PS3. Stay tuned for more info.

The game features newly implemented “Legend Mode” that allows players to tackle battles from both the past Dynasty Warriors series and brand new scenarios with all their favorite characters. In addition, players are able to make their castle town prosper and also employ a lieutenant from their favorite military commander. The lieutenant affects how the castle-town flourish in many different ways.

Special moves are cool.

The game has two modes with one being Story Mode and the other being Conquest mode.  In Story mode you can play through the same story, seen through the eyes of four sets of different characters or kingdoms rather.  Each mode will take you to different events as well as seeing and battling new characters.  Just playing through one of these four modes could take you 10-12 hours, which is fun the first time but can get boring or repetitive trying to complete them all.  You will want to complete them all as playing through the story unlocks many things including the 62 different characters you can choose from in Conquest mode.  The story or game series is based on a novel called the ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ in which three Kingdoms move to take over the Emperor of China through battle.  Some of the cut-scenes and even the gameplay is that Matrix style Japanese battle where Warriors look like can almost fly, but it’s just an average leap for them.  Keep in mind that this is all based in ancient China, where battles with blades on horses or on foot are what take place.  This is what the series has always been based on, like the novel which can get repetitive in itself but players will be happy to see that there is a new fourth Kingdom called ‘Jin’ in Dynasty Warriors 7 adding to the legacy of the story with the other three being ‘Shu’, ‘Wu’ and ‘Wei’.

In Conquest Mode you can choose any characters you have unlocked and battle away very similar to story mode only you battle on a map that you must conquer each section at a time.  Each character looks different as well as having varying stats which are health, speed and attack power.  You can level up character by adding points to the skill trees they have in addition you also have an energy bar that once filled (by performing the required attacks) you can use a special move on enemies that can be devastating.  There are power ups strewn across the map that will either heal you, give you a temporary boost in a certain skill, or can even give you a permanent one.  Enemies drop loot and weapons all the time but it is only the more difficult enemies like officers that tend to drop a more powerful weapon.

Each of the 62 characters are unique.

The weapons in the game are all pretty cool in one way or another as each one having a unique look to them some even giving you a special move.  I could almost compare the game to Too Human only set in ancient China, but would give you a good idea of the type of game you would be playing.  Another new addition to the series is the dual-wielding weapons; when I say that I mean you can have two weapons equipped at the same time with the ability to switch between the two at will.  Players can equip any two weapons they want with their character but certain weapon types will be nearly useless depending on the character type you are.  There are also now ‘Seals’ in the game where weapons will have empty slots for with each ‘Seal’ giving you a bonus to health, speed and many other things.  This definitely adds to the game as a whole being that hack and slash type game have to rely on other things now a days to be considered a good game.  There is even a tutorial system in the game that explains the combat system in depth which was helpful and you can also map attacks to whatever button you would like giving you complete control of the games attack mechanics.

There are no checkpoints in the game and even though you can save at any time it doesn’t do much it you are just about to complete a level and then die or a mission is failed.  The graphics are ok, but nothing jaw dropping but the cut-scenes are usually pretty epic.  All the audio is narrated which is especially nice when in battle.  General mechanics in the game seem to be more polished than previous games in the series, with everything flowing nicely.  If you are on foot you can call your horse at any time two move quickly through the large maps as long as you are not in battle.  Every battle is a slaughter of hundreds of enemies but not one drop of blood is spilled, but I can’t imagine how much there would be everywhere if there was.  Playing alone I was actual amazed at how much was fit on screen at once while playing online at time was the complete opposite.  I don’t know if the massive amount of enemies gave the online issues but it was hard to play in co-op online.  Luckily you can play the game split-screen and in system link.

Massive battles.

All in all Dynasty Warriors 7 is a good game and probably the king of button mashing.  This game is definitely the best out of the series with all the polishes to all the game aspects and the additions to the game.  I really can’t say that this is not worth buying because for one, there is a massive amount of gameplay on the disc between the four different Story modes and Conquest mode as well as all the characters or weapons you can make stronger.  If your a fan of the Dynasty Warrior games then this is the best yet, but I must note the series in it self is repetitious, not to mention the battles.  If you are new to the franchise you will probably enjoy its massive battles and get sucked into collecting everything in the game.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.

Dynasty Warriors 7 is already out in Japan but North America won’t get it until March 22nd for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.  If you are a fan of the franchise you will be pleased to know that there has already been DLC put out for the game with most of it being free.  Most of the free content is based on costumes and such from the previous Dynasty Warrior games with costumes from Dynasty Warriors 6 currently available at no cost with costumes from Dynasty Warriors 5 and background music from Dynasty Warriors 6 on the way. There also of course paid DLC which is a new set of “Senka” weaponry, otherwise known as Yue Ying’s original Scythe.

Yue Ying's original Scythe

More pics and info at D’toid.

Tecmo Koei have released this new trailer for Dynasty Warriors 7.

Dynasty Warriors 7 is a hack and slash video game and the seventh official installment of the Dynasty Warriors series. It is currently being developed by Omega Force and published by Koei. The game has been confirmed to be PS3 exclusive in Japan. It is based on the famous Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong.

The European leg of Tecmo Koei has confirmed during the London MCM Expo that Dynasty Warriors 7 will also be releasing for the Xbox 360.

It is the latest title in the popular Dynasty Warriors series and is being eagerly anticipated by fans worldwide.

Dynasty Warriors 7 will be releasing in March 2011 in Japan. The title will be supporting 3D. The title will be releasing exclusively for the PS3 in Japan.

The game is set to release for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 internationally by fall 2011.

Source

We have some nice looking gameplay footage for Dynasty Warriors 7, which is a PS3 exclusive title.

The game’s slated for a March 2011 release in Japan, no word about a planned international release yet.

Tecmo Koei have announced that they are working on Dynasty Warriors 7 and it will be PlayStation 3 exclusive.  No other information was released. We are still quizzed as to how the game will be different then the predecessors.