The Problem with Dynasty Warriors

Lucas Versantvoort / September 14, 2014

As a longtime fan of the Dynasty Warriors series (don’t hold that against me), I’ve seen the series change over the years. Granted, change isn’t exactly a word often used to describe the series, but nevertheless it’s easy to see small changes. For me, there are two that have proven detrimental to the series: combat sound effects and the ‘anime-ification’ of the series.

A typical minimap in DW3, filled to the brim with NPC's

            The first games I played in the series were 2 and 3 Xtreme Legends. This was when the series was still fine-tuning its combat system. One of the key differences I noticed between the earlier games and the later games was that the earlier ones had more impactful sound effects during combat. Whenever you hit the enemy you were treated to a harsh sound effect that made you really feel as if you were beating the shit out of the enemy. Now, this may seem like a very minor point, but remember, you hear these sound effects almost constantly in these types of games and they are crucial to giving you a ‘feel’ of the impact your fighting moves. Later games however don’t have this anymore. As the series went on, they changed these impact sound effects, lessened them to the point where it feels like you’re just waving through the enemy, as if your weapons were made of air. And that’s not what you want in an essentially arcade style of games. You want to immerse yourself into the game, go wild with the sensation of blasting through hundreds of enemies, but because the later games don’t emphasize the impactful sound effects mentioned above during combat, I feel the experience has been lessened.

Your typical minimap in DW7...

            Also, as the series went on, the influence of the world of anime was felt more and more. Now, I don’t have anything against anime, but one of the things the old games got right was the feeling of being part of an army. Playing through a level in 3 or 4 could take a lot of time, even if you maxed out your character’s stats. The map screen was filled to the brim with soldiers. Large portions had blue dots (allies) and even larger portions had red dots (enemies). As the level went on, the enemy formations changed. For example, in a level with armies clashing at multiple locations, the red and blue dots were constantly shifting, regardless of your influence. You could basically sit back and watch the battle unfold. There was more of a sense of a ‘real’ battle taking place, because troops were constantly engaging the enemy and moving around. It felt really dynamic. Now, there are still thousands of enemies, but the map doesn’t really reflect this. The amount of blue dots has decreased, a few small red dots now symbolize hundreds of enemies and about 80% of the map is completely empty. The older map gave you the feel of huge battles taking place, it felt larger than you which really gave you the ‘I’m merely one soldier’ feeling. Now, the fighting styles have changed. They have become more over-the-top, the character design has more overt anime influences, etc, etc. Because the series kept increasing the Army of One factor and the anime style, the series lost some of what I liked about it most.