Dynasty Warriors Online Review

Dynasty Warriors has been a relatively popular franchise for many years now; starting as an average run of the mill fighting game based on the historical fiction novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Lou Guanzhong the 2nd game Dynasty Warriors 2 completely changed the game from a fighter into a 3D action beat'em up similar to classics such as Double Dragon and Final Fight. The basic idea being your put on a battle field with a few thousand troops who you cut your way through killing enemy officers and generals until you win the battle. This simple formula can add up for many hours of entertaining good fun. Koei has now brought the game to its audience in the popular massively multi-player genre as a free-to-play game via the free MMO handler Aeria Games. Dynasty Warriors Online has been in beta for more than a month now and recently moved to open beta in the last few weeks. You can find a link to the Aeira games website in the supporting links for this article.

The Gameplay for Dynasty Warriors Online is pretty much the same as its predecessors, and this is why it got a low innovation rating; it has however changes that suit an MMO game and help to revitalize it. First, there are only a few story driven Romance of the Three Kingdoms missions which are essentially difficult challenge missions that reward you with the ability to watch story cut-scenes upon getting a S rank in them. Most of the missions in the game are played out through melee battles. Melee battles come in four types: kill troops, kill enemy commanders, capture bases, and gather treasure. Troop killing melee battles are won by killing a specified troop count, kill enemy commanders require you to score a certain number of player kills, capturing bases makes you attempt to take all bases or all enemy bases that are on the map, and gathering treasure is where you kill computer officers to gather treasure and bring it back to base somewhat like hide and seek.

The other type of missions in the game are quests; you can pick up quests from npc's in your factions capital city and complete them solo or with a party for various rewards. The other gametype to play is Arena which is essentially a controlled player vs. player event where you vie for best combatant. Like in other MMO games, you can gather materials and craft better equipment and items for yourself. The game doesn't have "levels" in the traditional sense but you do farm honor to increase your rank and higher ranks come with their own rewards.

Even if you have grown bored of previous Dynasty Warrior games, the online play really renews the fun aspect of the game and changes it up quite a bit. There are, however, a few problems with the game as is to be expected with a beta. I feel that the Mosou attack is too powerful for player vs. player and needs its damage reduced, and this for me at least, is ever a source of frustration that you can play wonderfully and almost kill a player opponent then when his mosou fills he just uses it on you and kills you with no more effort than it takes to press a single key. I would like to see the damage of Mosou reduced so that it is used to break out of combos more than as a insta-gib attack. The other problem is speed. Speed pretty much is important in every game type your playing to the point that it gives a massive advantage to anyone who realizes this over those who don't. I think these two facts are what make the kill troops melee battle the most popular online as its where speed and mosou have the least impact. Other problems with the game are the inability to leave a battle once you have entered, and the difficulty and time it takes to acquire materials for crafting.

I think if they prove to be huge problems they will certainly be fixed at some point down the line, and thus I would recommend this game to anyone who likes action or the Dynasty Warriors series in particular.