Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends

The Good
Let's get started!

LET'S TALK GRAPHICS:

• Graphically this game is strong, hell, it looks a lot better than "Alone in the Dark" for Wii (Hayao!). There's not a lot of attention to lighting/spore effects, but the character models are detailed, the ground fuzziness is acceptable, the environments (water/buildings) are nice, and you never find yourself distracted by bad graphics. Even the 'infantry' models are nice to look at, the uniforms have ornamentation and tassels, and they all have little moustaches. Considering that you'll sometimes see up to 100 of these buggers at once, that isn't bad.

LET'S TALK GAMEPLAY:

• The motion capture for riding, attacking, flailing, etc. are very well done and look cool. When Zhen Ji kicks a nameless guy, launching him 40ft and slamming him into a wall, you feel good about yourself. Each playable character has a unique set of moves, voice acting, story, and a distinct personality. They aren't just different faces on the same person, it really does feel dramatically different. Add in customizable levels of health, strength, defense, and musuo (limit-break attack gauge) and you can definitely develop your favorite char's into something special. There are also a wide variety of weapons that can also have stats and upgrades applied to them.

LET'S TALK STORY/ATMOSPHERE:

• The cut-scenes in the "Legends" mode are well done, mainly succinct (unless you are playing as Zhang He, who gets a little carried away with aesthetics). Again we see very nice motion capture, as well as facial modeling (talking, squinting, smiling, frowning) using in-game graphics. The voice-acting is well above par, these are the pro's at work here. The music for the 'Legends' mode is varied and good, more on the music can be found below.

The Bad
Let's rename this part "What Kept This Game From Getting 5.0/5.0"

LET'S TALK GRAPHICS:

• Although I understand that this game was meant to be an ad-on to DW:5, and backwards-forwards compatible to boot, I would have liked to have seen some different costumes for the Characters.

LET'S TALK GAMEPLAY:

• The Bow-interface is silly, and here's why. In 1st person, you really should be able to see the bow, as well as your arm. The animation is there for it, when you leave 1st person you see your Char put away the bow, it would have taken very little programming to make that change. As-is it feels silly and cheap. Enemies that are close to you when in 1st person also have a tenancy to become invisible, this game has decent collision detection, and this feels like an over-sight.
• I liked the variety of horses. I don't like not having a horse that's truly 'mine', when you jump off a horse to engage sparse enemies (too hard to KO on a horse), sometimes you can't/don't want to bother finding the horse again. The ability to summon a horse with a whistle or something else would reduce a lot of frustration. No matter how nice/fast/tough a horse you have at the end of the battle, it's gone.
• The level of difficulty between "Normal" and "Hard" is astounding. An in-between would have been nice.

LET'S TALK STORY/ATMOSPHERE:

• Metal music is good DW music. Empires has a soundtrack comprised of many different DW games, it doesn't get old fast. Unfortunately Legends isn't the same, although there are tracks that are different sounding in the "Legends" component, the other music for the "Destiny/Challenge/Xtreme Mode" is much more limited, and many tracks follow a "main-theme" approach that can wear on the player.

The Bottom Line
When I first decided to purchase a Dynasty Warriors game I found myself standing in the local tyrannical games store holding both Xtreme Legends and Empires, both being ad-ons to Dynasty Warriors 5. Had the main version been available I would have simply bought that, but as it was I found myself weighing the options. Empires won because the box art was more representative of what I wanted.

Fast-forward three years and I snag a copy of Xtreme Legends along with an amazon order. I'd been playing Empires again and had seen the X-Legends teaser several times, and it was only $10.

Let's get to the Mongolian Beef though, if you aren't familiar with Koei's Dynasty Warriors series, the main part of gameplay is wiping out literal hordes of enemy soldiers, doling out the harshness via 'limit break' type attacks, and dueling with other charismatic figures from second and third century China.

"Why is this one Xtreme Legends?"

• X-Legends cuts away a large part of the frills and turns the focus to fun game-play. It plays in a variety of modes such as Challenge, Xtreme, Destiny, and Legends. Rather than play through the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" storyline as a single character, the focus is on the playing of key events via the "Legends" mode - You have a scenario, you have a choice of recommended char's to start with. Beat it and you can play it with whomever you choose.
• The "Challenge" mode is fun, hands down. From seeing how long you can fight without being hit to testing how many enemy KO's you can rack up in 10 minutes (3250 is my current record), this is a great way to blow off steam between longer forms of gameplay.
• The "Destiny" mode is a game in itself, I think that if you are looking for justification to buy this and already own DW:5 or Empires, this is it. You create an 'Edit Officer' and start at the private rank, just like the thousands of privates you've knocked out in the other modes. You choose a specific master from the three sides (Wu, Wei or Shu) You advance through the ranks, build your character, pick your skills and tactics, and define your fate. The greatest part of this is that you will find, and can use, any weapon in the game. Your fighting style/animation will change depending on which weapon you use. At the end of Destiny mode you can "register" your edit officer for use in other modes. At that point you will have to confine your character to a single weapon.
• Xtreme mode has been my favourite. It is a completely 'off-the-rails' mode where you pick a character and survive as many missions as possible before failing or getting killed. Each mission the troops get tougher and there are more of them. Your upgraded weapon may be scoring one-hit KO's on Peasants in mission 4, but by mission 7 it will take four hits to put them out. Here there is no Wei, Wu, or Shu. You can have Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Jian as your posse if you like. Defeated enemies will almost never drop heath for you, you need to survive the mission and find a store to buy food at. You can choose to raid villages or protect them, you can pursue the greatest challenges or skirt them. You can be a robber baron or forge a new nation... But you can't have a do-over. You can save, but it's deleted as soon as you load. When you come around a corner with little to no health and see Lu Bu in all his glory you've got to accept your ass whooping and start all over. If you like a challenge you'll love Xtreme mode.