Dynasty Warriors Online Review

This game came out a few years back around 2006 or so. It was based on the Dynasty Warriors 5 system with some tweaks and adjustments and limited progression (god i hated this). It still remains a fairly popular game in China and Japan due to its free to play status. There is no English version of the game although there have been numerous previews for it.

Story:

The game itself follows different events of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The difference is that this time the players decide the results. Every 2 weeks there is a competition for territory and if 1 group wins, the game moves on to the next era with a major game update. The update resets the territories as well and the new rulers and officers appear to match.

Graphics:

By today's standards, the graphics are still pretty good. They resemble the late PS2 era graphics. There is a nice amount of character customization so it is hard to find people who match you exactly. The variety in playable characters are nice but there is almost no variety when it comes to the enemies. Much of the character customization options are not available to new players and the items have to be obtained or bought by fighting in the game.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is rather simple like other Dynasty Warriors games. It starts off with you creating a character and a kingdom to go with it. The kingdom will determine which side you are on during the special combat events. Should your kingdom fall, you will be forced to move to one of the remaining factions. The side with fewer players will also receive a bonus when they have to compete against the other kingdoms so they aren't completely helpless. Overall, character creation has a nice selection of faces to choose from. Its not a wide variety, but there's enough in it to prevent everyone from looking too similar. Most of the character customization is not available until later on and tends to be rather expensive in game due to its rarity.

Players start off in towns where they can visit their officers to collect a salary based on their rank and visit NPCs to accept special quests and missions. All the towns look the same. The main goal of the game is to advance in rank. By participating in battles by killing enemies, killing officers or capturing bases, your character earns experience. Once you obtain enough experience, you can accept a special mission from the NPC in town. Once you complete the mission you advance in military rank and receive rewards that go with it. The problem with this is that the longer the game goes on, the harder it is to achieve the top ranks. The top ranks are only awarded to those with the MOST exp in their faction.

Each map in the game has a rank associated with it. The lower the rank, the easier it is and the less likely that a special enemy will appear. The higher rank maps have much stronger enemies where even generic enemies will have a aura boost (increases damage and defense greatly). However, the better weapons, clothing, and bodyguards will only appear on the harder maps. You can only enter so many maps a day and each time you enter one, there is a time limit to what you can do. Once the time is over, the side with the most points will win.

Once you are in a map, you can begin fighting. There can be a maximum of 8 players for a 4 on 4. The difference between other Dynasty Warriors games and Dynasty Warriors Online is that you always start off with 4 attacks. By killing enemies, you can collect some "power orbs" (i just call them that) and once you collect enough you can exchange them for various power ups. This allows the player to decide which one they want but you have to do it at the beginning of every stage. For the most part they're only useful when you're fighting other players or trying to take down a tough officer. If you're just trying to farm, its enough to just stick with the basic 4 string attacks.

Points are used to determine who wins in a fight should all the bases fail to be captured. Killing generic enemies and officers give points but the primary source of points are capturing bases. It is possible to make up for the difference of a base by killing mooks, but it is near impossible. The goal should just be to claim as many of the bases as possible rather than trying to fight unless you are searching for rare item drops such as weapons and armors. Generic officers have a much better chance of dropping those items.

Success and failure is very important in Dynasty Warriors Online unlike other games. Each faction has a certain amount of money and income each day. Each time you deploy on a mission, you consume from the treasury of your faction. If your faction wins, they will receive more than they spent. If you lose, odds are your side will lose a large amount of money. It is possible for a small group of players to screw up so badly they can cost their faction the war because they spent too much money and failed to bring any in. If a player is very good, there are times when special enemies will appear to challenge them on the map. Defeating them will yield bonuses such as the ability to hire the defeated person as a bodyguard or obtain a rare and powerful weapon from them.

Now for some of the things that make the game unique. The amount of experience you have determines nothing except your army ranking. Stats are only provided through equipment that you can wear and find. The better equipment of course also requires you to be a higher rank to prevent new players from arming themselves like mad. Direct fighting between players is also discouraged. Its very tough to defeat a faction's home base as well which is necessary for a complete victory. Although officers can be defeated for nice rewards, it is very difficult to do so. Instead capturing bases is the way to go. This is liked more by some but probably disliked by those who like PvP.

There are some functional items that are only available in the item mall. The most important of these is the weapon rack. A weapon rack allows you to hold 4 weapons of any type in the game. The problem is that without item mall you can't obtain any more and there are nearly 40 different weapon types at this point so you have to choose which weapons you want to use carefully. If these were readily available through other means it would have been much better.

The biggest problem with the game is lag if you are playing with people from other countries. If you are playing with other players within your own region, the game itself is very smooth. Once you start playing with people from a far away country, you start to feel the lag. If you lag, the game is difficult to play due to the speed of the game. Its difficult to hit enemies when lagging.

The second biggest problem is the scaling of difficulty. The game takes a huge leap in difficulty between maps of different ranks. The biggest leap is probably from C to B where enemies get an absurd boost in power. The lower ranks are not as bad but very few players will actually be able to advance far enough to the toughest maps due to the imbalance of it. The named officers from the Dynasty Warriors games are also extremely tough and can appear randomly. When one does, odds are you will fail that mission due to their insane strength.

Guilds:

The army is your "primary" guild. You can form your own "group" within it that is your guild but it doesn't really serve much of a larger purpose.

Overall:

If you're a fan of Dynasty Warriors you will probably like this. If not you might want to skip it and wait for something else. There is a lack of good action based MMOs out there but this is one of the few decent ones. Koei did a nice job of adapting Dynasty Warriors as an online game. The main problem is the towns are very bland and there needs to be a larger selection of maps. It would also help if some of the functional items could be bought through normal means.

Final Score:

7/10 - Its a decent game, but there are some noticeable problems and the scaling of difficult is a bit rough.