Liverpool Sund and Vision Rating 9/10
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is a third-person musou hack and slack action role playing game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita with compatibility for PlayStation TV, while having previously released on PS4 and PS3.
The Dynasty Warriors series started as a spin-off from the Romance of the Three Kingdom series in 1997 in Japan before receiving an American release later that year and an English release in December 1997 as a PS1 exclusive. The first Dynasty Warriors was actually a fighting game comprising of a series of 1 vs. 1 fights reminiscent to Soul Calibur and Tekken with the introduction of weapons to the combat, while a sequel released in 2000 changed the formula to being in combat up against dozens of enemies at any given moment which is the format the series has stuck with and built upon ever since. Dynasty Warriors games began receiving an expansion release from Dynasty Warriors 4 onwards sub-titled Empires which does not require the original release of that entry in the series as Empires introduces enough additions into the mix to be considered a unique stand-alone game. Dynasty Warriors is Koei Tecmo’s most popular franchise having sold at least 18 million copies worldwide including spin-offs combined across all platforms up until 2011.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is developed by Omega Force who is part of Koei Tecmo’s development teams having developed the prequels in the Dynasty Warriors series and is also known for developing games in such well respected series as Dragon Quest Heroes, One Piece: Pirate Warriors, Samurai Warriors and Toukiden, Warriors Orochi and which are usually games set within the musou genre, therefore Omega Force delivers a huge amount of experience of not only the series but also the fine balance of what makes a game set within the musou genre actually work for the latest Dynasty Warriors release.
Empire Mode challenges players to living the life of an officer progressing through the ranks over a period of many years by capturing bases which will in turn change the control of entire territories to the kingdom when defeating an opposing force which takes the player a step closer to unifying China, although there are also personal elements to Empire Mode such as meeting allies, swearing an oath of loyalty to a sibling or settling down to marry the love of your life and having children which could even be chosen for the following playthrough, while customisation includes creating an officer to play as in Empire Mode as an alternative to choosing an existing officer. There are generally a plethora of important gameplay mechanics within Empire Mode which makes gameplay so different from other modes and games in the genre such as a War Council taking place every few months in which if the player’s character is a ruler then a kingdom policy must be set, although a player whose character has not become a leader will receive an invasion policy from the ruler of the kingdom. A strategy phase takes place every month in which commands can be carried out depending on the fixed strategy of the officers within the kingdom and the title the character has obtained all in the ideal of completing strategy objectives.
Free Mode allows players to choose from 5 game modes including Invasions, Defensive Battles, Event Battles, Quests and Raid Scenario with Invasions and Defensive Battles providing the customisation of difficulty, allied and enemy force levels between level 1, 5, 10, 20, 55, 99 or random, any of 24 battlefields, the positioning of invading and defending officers and choosing who the commanding officer is. Event Battles and Quests need to be unlocked by meeting certain requirements in battle in other modes, while Raid Scenario allows players to choose between 4 modes including Dauntless Conqueror in which bases must be defended from generals and defeat the enemy commander within a time limit of 30 minutes. Enemies Abound tasks the player to gather every man to capture enemy bases within 90 minutes despite being up against far larger quantities of enemies; Swift As Lightning in which enemy generals must be defeated in order to gain a steady increase of time as the time limit is challenging at only 2 minutes despite enemy bases being needed to be captured along the way to the main enemy camp and Elusive Knave requiring players to fight off hordes of enemy forces who are attempting to invade and capture the base for an entire 15 minutes, alongside the capabilities of choosing any of 24 territories to fight within and selecting any marching officer to fight as.
Custom Scenarios allows players to create a scenario by editing a territory, title, description and the participating officers which is an exceptional design choice as players who create scenarios can share them with players from around the world by uploading them to the PlayStation Network for other players to download resulting in an endless amount of unique gameplay.
The combat possesses what players would anticipate for those familiar with the musou genre in regards to button bashing to perform a quick chain of combat manoeuvres on enemies through a variety of combat attack categories such as normal, strong, EX, rage, musou and more besides, although there are some combat moves which require a sequence of buttons to perform special and combination attacks and from launching into a certain type of attack directly into the next which certainly adds a layer of skill for players who wish to learn all of the attacks. Battles also including intense deadlock encounters in which the weapons of two opponents will clash together that define who will gain the upper hand in their battle by presenting the opening for the first attack to the officer who is victorious in the deadlock with a tie resulting in both officers having an opportunity to attack.
There is an abundance of weapons which officers can wield with weapon affinity defining the efficiency the officer has when utilising the weapon. There are three types of weapon affinitiy including Heaven, Earth and Man which all have their own focuses such as the Heaven weapon affinity being at its strongest against Earth, while Earth is strongest against the Man weapon affinity and Man is strongest against the Heaven weapon affinity with the weapon affinities purely serving the purpose of inflicting more damage on an enemy who has a weakness to the advantage of your weapon which will also make all enemies of that specific weakness back away from aggressively attacking, therefore providing a strategic advantage when in battle.
Achieving certain conditions during battle will allow players to utilise stratagems which are capable of changing the course of battle in a moment when used at the most appropriate strategic time of opportunity, although it will drain the stratagem gauge and will take a set period of time to replenish depending upon which stratagem is used, alongside the strength and scale of the stratagem also playing huge factors.
Every officer has their own unique special skills including new attacks or increasing the power of attacks with officers being able to perform two types of musou attacks upon levelling up. Skills can be upgraded by collecting bonus points which can be invested at the item shop to acquire equipment to increase the power of abilities such as the Pearl of Awakening which adds a bonus to ability boosts during rage mode or the Focus Belt which refills the musou gauge albeit at the cost of decreasing defence, although some items will not have a negative some of them do, therefore strategy is even involved in which items are purchased using the bonus points and equipping the suitable items in preparation for battle with careful consideration for the negative side of each item.
XP and levelling up is achieved by completing strategy objectives to earn merits which allow players to level up or obtain a promotion to a higher position with merits awarded for such strategy objectives as completing quests, forming an alliance with a kingdom, participating in invasions, executing raids, capturing bases and maintaining total troop strength, although the merit rewards vary as they depend upon the specific strategy objectives completed.
The character design is pretty good as the ally and enemy characters have their own unique look, shape and size in the sense that all of the ally characters look apart, while the same can be said for the enemies as there are regular and higher ranking enemies such as bearers and captains with special and boss enemies also making appearances, alongside a change in armour or weaponry such as archers, guns, shields, spears, swords and even some riding which collectively provides plenty of variation and even sets apart the groups of regular enemies encountered during battles in each battle.
The Edit Mode comprises an extensive array of general customisation including custom officers, units, banners, warhorses, soldiers and even scenarios with the ability to create q character which in the same manner as Samurai Warriors 4-II can be as unique and diverse as the player wants them to be as there are hundreds if not thousands of potential combinations including a choice of male or female, name, facial options, body shape; a huge amount of armour; a large armoury of weapons with a vast amount of EX type attacks, two sets of musou attacks comprising of aerial and rage attacks, type and pitch of voice and a variety of ability types, a way of life and four sets of stratagem abilities.
Other elements of character customisation include creating a banner with an insignia, design and colours to uniquely represent the unit; creating a warhorse by choosing a name, hair colour and body type, and selecting an ability type as well as creating soldiers including a range of equipment options and their body type which collectively combine to allow players to create their own units and organise them appropriately. The character customisation features are absolutely stunning in their genuine attention to detail and approach to provide players with the freedom to make their own attempts at character design by encompassing a rich amount of customisation options across the board.
The environment design sees battles take place in large spacious environments on different surfaces such as rock, grass or snow and during changeable weather conditions such as snow and rain which must be explored on foot or horseback to travel from one base to another as battles rage on throughout the entire map against various enemies with areas connecting to each other via large doors, bridges or steps.
The gallery features a wide variety of items with some unlockable items but mostly unlocked from the beginning including every officer with a character model which can be rotated and zoomed in or out showing their alternative costumes from previous Dynasty Warriors games, displaying their move set and the ability to view their expressions in images and play their lines of dialogue from political and multiple categories of battle focused speech and movies from the opening of Dynasty Warriors 8, XL, Empire. Event scenes allows players to watch unlocked videos from the Empire mode after having entered battle in certain territories, models of each weapon which can be rotated and zoomed in or out to show each weapon in detail and provide information about their attack and attributes, multiple wallpapers for every character and the timeline of the officer, way of life and starting year of the player’s chosen characters from the Empire Mode.
The encyclopaedia features an in-depth history of each phase of The Three Kingdoms, character biographies for all of the officers which appear in the story with every character biography included and shortcuts to related characters imcluded, historical information of battles a glossary of important terminology and a year by year timeline of historical events.
There are multiple downloadable content packs available comprising of a Castle and Scenario pack which adds three residences, three scenarios, nine historical scenarios from Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires and eight hypothetical scenarios from Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires for £4.99* each and a Edit Parts Equipment pack which adds two sets of costumes for males and females to be used for customising characters in Edit Mode for £3.29* each which is even better value taking into consideration that all downloadable content is available for cross-buy purchase allowing players to play additional content for a single purchase on Vita, PS4 and PS3.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires can import save data from Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires – Free Alliances which is a positive design choice as if players are happy about the quality of the game after playing the free version, then any progression achieved during the trial can carry over into the full game, while Edit Mode data can be imported from the PS3 version of Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires directly into the PS3 version of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, then into the Vita version. There is also support cross-save functionality which allows players to sync the progression of the save file from their Vita to the PS3 or PS4 and vice versa, so players can start the game on their Vita on the way to and from work, sync the saved game when returning home and then resume where they left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS3 or PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading the save file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other.
The controls are appropriately mapped to the Vita with customisable button configurations and the options of assisted controls, normal or automatic targeting and automatic or button combination required to perform a storm rush resulting in players undoubtedly finding their own set of controls and options that are perfect for each and every player. The default control scheme consists of pressing R to switch attack or switch counter, pressing L to perform a block, strafe or somersault, pressing square to perform a normal attack, pressing triangle to perform a strong attack or two variations of EX attack, pressing O to perform a musou attack, pressing X to perform a jump, climb ladders or even mount and dismount from a horse, button bashing square during a deadlock to decide who gains the opening in attack, pressing up, down, left or right on the d-pad to issue one of four available commands, while under certain circumstances the d-pad also selects and utilises a stratagem, changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move the playable character, changing the direction of the right analogue stick to pan the camera, pressing select to toggle the map and pressing start to display the pause menu.
Touch screen implementation features tapping the touch screen in the location of the playable character to engage rage mode for a limited duration when the rage gauge has filled. Swiping across towards the left of the touch screen to present the stratagem cards followed by double tapping the touch screen to utilise stratagems, swiping across towards the right of the touch screen to issue commands to officers within the player’s units, tapping the top right of the touch screen to switch between a zoomed out map providing an overview of the battlefield and a zoomed in map showing only the immediate area and tapping the bottom right of the touch screen to call a horse and tapping it again to mount the playable character onto the steed.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires on Vita rivals the performance of the home console PS4 and PS3 versions by maintaining a high quality of performance and graphical detail across all of the character models, foreground environments and combat manoeuvres throughout the entire game with a fluent frame-rate especially given that there are hundreds of enemies in battle on screen at any given moment with only minimal frame-rate drops during overly chaotic gameplay, although there is pop-up and slight fogging of the distant background scenery in certain areas but again nothing of any major concern.
The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, empire mode, free mode, edit mode, online, gallery, encyclopaedia, options and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, d-pad and face buttons, although there is no support for navigation via the right analogue stick, touch screen and rear touch pad. The background of the main menu consists of bright lights manoeuvring around interconnected shapes with a characters appearing to the right of a game mode title to represent each game mode.
There are no English language voice-overs, although there are Japanese voice-overs with English subtitles as the talented and experienced Japanese voice-over artists are retained to bring life to their characters in the build up to battles and during gameplay through another round of collectively amazing performances such as Yasunori Masutani as Guan Yen and Wei Yan, Masaya Onosaka as Zhao Yun and Zhuge Liang, Hideo Ishikawa as Jia Xu and Zhou Tai, Hirohiko Kakegawa as Zhang Fei and Taishi Ci, Ai Nonaka as Bao Sannian. Sound effects include playable characters aiming and performing combat moves on enemies, enemies retaliating in attack, running on foot from base to base and the horse galloping across terrains from base to base, while the music ranges from rock riffs to the theme of Feudal Japan.
The trophy list includes 48 trophies with 36 bronze, 8 silver, 3 gold and 1 platinum trophy. The majority of the trophy list is earned through natural progression such as the First Mission bronze trophy for completing the first mission, the Goal Orientated Leader bronze trophy for completing 4 Battle Objectives in a single battle, the A Special Gift bronze trophy for receiving a weapon or item as a gift for the first time, the Architect bronze trophy for building a facility for the first time and a variety of bronze trophies for attaining a specific title such as the Appointed Marshal bronze trophy for being appointed as a marshal for the first time. Harder trophies include the Beyond Invincible silver trophy for using any custom character to defeat all of the famous officers, the Decorated Veteran gold trophy for achieving all titles the Many Ways To Live gold trophy for completing all lifestyles and the King of Chaos gold trophy for clearing any scenario on the Chaos difficulty level. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 50 to 75 hours to platinum the trophy list.
There are five difficulty levels including beginner, easy, normal, hard and chaos with the major differences being progressively more aggressive enemies with each step up in difficulty which attack more regularly as they inflict more damage to the playable character, while simultaneously receiving less damage from the playable character’s attacks. Raid Scenario is extremely hard at a difficulty which has no easier alternative and may result in an embarrassingly quick defeat.
The performance of online multiplayer is exceptional as it produces an identical level of graphical fidelity and maintains the same consistent frame-rate and performance of the single player despite being just as frantic in its on screen action and showing the second player whenever their character is nearby within the same base of the battle, while producing a major step forward by allowing players to play online multiplayer via cross-play which results in a multiplayer experience between a Vita and a PS3 or even a Vita and a PS4 which certainly elevates the multiplayer component onto another level, alongside Ad Hoc multiplayer allows two players to connect wirelessly for a local multiplayer experience which offers exactly the same functionality as the online multiplayer.
Online multiplayer effectively offers a co-operative experience for two players throughout any battlefields in the Empire Mode and Free Mode during single player gameplay, while allowing players to join an existing multiplayer battle to join another player’s game within the appropriate difficulty level, while recruit allows players to search for other players who are looking to join an online multiplayer game with the further ability to invite a player.
As great as the online, cross-play functionality, playing alongside players who are playing the Free Alliances version and Ad Hoc multiplayer components are, it would have been better if it included competitive multiplayer such as a player playing as a good character and the other player playing as an evil character or known rival which clash in battle on opposing sides, while the competitive multiplayer could be extended into a part competitive, part co-operative mode in which players can form two teams consisting of up to four players on either team, alongside such improvements as the host or joining player being able to continue if the other player leaves the session.
There are no online leaderboards which is surprising as Samurai Warriors 4-II had weekly online leaderboards for a variety of survival challenges, therefore something along those lines for how many territories had been claimed within the fastest time in a single playthrough of Empire Mode and for each of the territories in every mode within Free Mode to have the same sort of challenging online leaderboards.
The replayability stems from a variety of features such as the Empire Mode, Free Mode and Custom Scenarios, while the online multiplayer including cross-play multiplayer between Vita, PS4 or PS3 and Ad Hoc multiplayer components offer co-operative multiplayer for two players, five difficulty levels, extensive character and unit creation and customisation as well as dozens of gallery and encyclopaedia items including biographies, event scenes and timelines which will collectively keep players returning for a substantial period of time, especially given that Custom Scenarios effectively provides infinite replay value.
Overall, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires delivers an exceptional portable effort which captures the essence of the chaotic gameplay of the Dynasty Warriors series; therefore if you are a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series, the musou genre or Omega Force games in general, then Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is a must play game on Vita which can be enjoyed in short bursts or even long gameplay sessions.
Jason Bonnar
Analysis
- Title: Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires
- Developer: Omega Force
- Publisher: Koei Tecmo
- System: PS Vita
- Format: PSN Download
- Cross-Buy: Yes (Downloadable content)
- Cross-Play: Yes (PS Vita, PS4 and PS3 – Online Multiplayer and Cross-Save)
- Players: 1-2 (Online Co-operative Multiplayer/Ad Hoc)
- Memory Card Space Required: 3.2GB (PSN Download)