The Dynasty Warriors film is up next in this marathon, so why I am reviewing Dynasty Warriors 5 and not the first Dynasty Warriors? Well, the first was a pretty poor 1v1 fighting game rather than the series that film is based on that started with DW2, and DW5 was the first game in the franchise (and indeed the first Warriors game in general) I ever played, so it made the most sense. It’s not like they don’t all share the same story anyway! So let’s take a look at Dynasty Warriors 5 as well as its “XL” expansion, given you needed the original game to play it anyway so it’s more like DLC, to use modern terminology…
Background:
Tearing up the battlefield as Lu Bu. Satisfying!
Dynasty Warriors 5 was first released in Japan as “Shin Sangoku Musou 4” (as they put a “Shin” in front of the title when they switched for versus beat ‘em up to the series as we know it) for the PS2 on February 24th 2005, before it made it to the US on April 1st 2005 and PAL regions June 24th 2005. An XBOX version was released in Japan August 25th 2005, US September 13th 2005 and UK/Europe September 23rd 2005. Oddly an XBOX 360 port was released in March 2006 in Japan and the US, with PAL getting it June 23rd that same year. The game also came to PC in Japan only on June 22nd 2006.
The Dynasty Warriors 5 XL expansion on the other hand was PS2 exclusive and released in Japan on September 15th 2005, the US November 15th 2005 and UK/Europe on February 10th 2006. Just a few months after the main game’s release… It really was a “DLC Season Pass” before such a thing existed, wasn’t it?
Gameplay:
New character Cao Pi takes out a Private of Guan Ping’s army for pronouncing his name incorrectly as “Cow Pee”.
Obviously the core gameplay will be familiar to anyone who has played any kind of Warriors game, but for the uninitiated: you play as a general on a large battlefield full with weak generic soldiers and stronger captains as well as a few friendly and enemy generals, with victory coming normally from defeating the main enemy commander but sometimes you have the goal to escape a level instead or some such added objective, and you lose either by dying or your Commander or another person of interest dying, plus there’s a morale gauge based on how well each army is doing that will effect how well the AI fights and how many grunt units spawn. The gameplay is pretty button mashy, you can get by normal difficultly by “just pressing square” but you’ll be missing out on making the game, you know, actually fun. You can mix up adding triangle to the square chains to do different stronger attacks and you have a special flashy move known as a Musou attack that does a lot of damage but you have to wait for the Musou gage to fill up. When facing competent rival generals it’s best to actually block in-coming attacks as well, plus you can jump around the scenery and ride horses, pick up items for more health and that sort of thing.
New in Dynasty Warriors 5 (which is fun to read about given in my eyes these features were always part of the series!) is the Musou Rage system, where you can pick up an item that allows you to go into a special state where all your attacks are stronger, you’re faster and if you press the Musou attack button you do a “True Musou” attack, which is even more flashy and does great damage. Also making its debut in a mainline DW game is taking enemy bases, which can be done by slaying the Base Captain, and doing so helps swing the momentum and morale in your army’s favour, but you can lose them as well if you’re not paying attention. They come in three flavours: Attack Base (full of annoying archers if you’re trying to capture it, but they help your army’s strength when you do!), Defence Bases (full of shield soldiers and help with defence, in case you couldn’t guess…) and Supply Bases (which have breakable pots inside with power ups in and increase your army’s morale). You also have several Gates around the map where the generic soldiers file in from and new to DW is the ability to slay the Gate Captains and turn that gate into a friendly one that spawns your soldiers instead. They all add a good variety of things to do as you play the various maps on offer. I also have to mention that each officer has a specific weapon and has several different weapons of increasing strength to unlock and it was DW5 that introduced them having different categories of Light, Medium and Heavy weapons, which do different amounts of damage compared to how quickly they attack.
I remember first seeing this screen and being really intimidated. Turns out you really don’t need to do anything here to actually play the game…
In terms of modes on offer, the main one is Musou Mode, where you relive the story of Romance of the Three Kingdoms by picking your playable commander and playing through all the battles they took part in, plus sometimes ones they didn’t for the sake of making their story a bit longer and more interesting (It was 7 that really doubled-down in the keeping it close to the source material thing…) If you enjoyed a specific stage you could then replay it as any character you want in Free Mode, and then finally there’s Challenge Mode, which features Time Attack (Defeat 100 enemies as fast as you can); Rampage (Defeat as many enemies as you can before you die); Sudden Death (One hit kills you and your opponents, see how long you can last!); and Bridge Melee (Knock off as many enemies off a large bridge as you can before getting knocked off yourself). Lots of variety, especially given there’s 48 characters to play Musou Mode with! I also have to mention that Musou and Free modes can be played split-screen co-op, though it’s not the smoothest experience, frame-rate and draw distance-wise…
As for Dynasty Warriors 5 XL, it adds Legend Mode, which is like Musou Mode but are full of What If stories instead of anything closely resembling the novel; Xtreme Mode, in which you have to go from stage to stage with the same health bar and resources, with greater rewards the higher stage you can reach; and finally Destiny Mode, where you create your own officer and serve as part of the one of the factions in the game, levelling up, earning weapons and that kind of thing. So you do at least get a lot of content for your add-on, that’s for sure.
Graphics and Sound:
That 0 K.O. count is milliseconds away from going up quite dramatically!
The graphics are fine for a PS2 game with this many character models on screen. Obviously the clothing lacks detail and the faces get worse the lower ranked you go, plus there is quite a bit of drop in and “fog” to the levels themselves, especially, as mentioned, in split-screen co-op! Overall though, not bad for a mid-2000s game.
Sound is fine, well, the soundtrack is really good but the voice acting is pretty bad, and not just how they incorrectly pronounce most of the Chinese names. Some of the officers are fine but some are really… not, and the less said about the emotionlessly dry delivery of some of the generic captains the better. Once again it was Dynasty Warriors 7 that really stepped up the voice cast and got correct pronunciation, if I ever review another older DW game it’ll be that one, it still sticks out in my head as possibly the best.
Story:
Historically accurate, especially Zhang He fighting with a giant set of claws!
As mentioned the Musou mode retells the events of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which itself is a, well, romanticised account of the real period of Chinese history) and does so up to the Battle of Wuzhang Plains due to this game lacking the later Three Kingdoms characters that were added beginning with, yes you guessed it, DW7. Basically the Han Dynasty falls due to a combination of a local populace uprising known as the Yellow Turban Rebellion and later the corrupting effect of the tyrant Dong Zhou and this leads to the country being unofficially split between three major factions: Shu led by Liu Bei and later his main strategist Zhuge Liang (otherwise known as ya boi Kongming!); Wei, led by Cao Cao who is in control of the Emperor himself; and Wu, led by the Sun family. During the course of the many battles various famous warriors make their impact, like the “God of War” Guan Yu or the infamous Lu Bu, and it followed Romance’s idea of Shu being wholly good and benevolent, Wei being straight up evil and Wu being something in the middle. Once again this was something that was dropped in 7 to show all sides from various angles, though Shu does always come out looking good overall.
DW5 introduced six new officers to the line up: son of Guan Yu Guan Ping and daughter of Zhang Fei Xingcai (incorrectly called Xing Cai in the game) for Shu, Pang De and the son of Cao Cao himself Cao Pi (allowing this game to correctly show the moment the land actually officially became Three Kingdoms at last…) for Wei; Wu got Ling Tong who at least has a good side-story in the book where he came to terms with his father’s killer (the already-in-the-game Gan Ning) after he joined Wu as well; and finally Zuo Ci the mysterious sorcerer was added into the Other section, which is an odd choice because even in Romance his contribution wasn’t really worthy of being added, but hey-ho.
Thoughts Then:
Creating your own character in XL was fun… the first time or so.
I saw Dynasty Warriors 5 on a little-known TV show that used to air here in the UK called Cybernet, and when I saw the footage I couldn’t help but think how it looked like a good 3D take on the sadly now dead scrolling beat ‘em ups genre that I loved so gave the game a go and I became addicted. Not just because of the fun combat but at the same time I looked up the actual historical characters and events the game was based on and that made everything even greater. I love history though I’d never really looked outside of Europe at that point, but trust me by the end of that year I was fully invested in the Three Kingdoms era of China and was already on message boards posting who I’d like to see made into a playable officer in the next game! Due to that picking up XL for an extra hit of DW5 was a no brainer the following year as well, even if I didn’t play it as much. This was my first Warriors game, but boy-oh-boy was it not the last…
Thoughts Now:
Oh yeah, wild animals are a thing in some maps. Forgot about that bit…
Goes without saying but Dynasty Warriors 5 / XL is a bit rough in 2023. Smaller levels, fewer characters on screen, far fewer playable officers, covering less of the historical period, poor voice work with incorrectly pronounced names and just-about-passable graphics means beyond the nostalgia of the menus, music and character designs there wasn’t a lot to keep me hooked. Obviously if I wanted a traditional Dynasty Warriors game now I’d pop 8 on, though as one of the few people on planet Earth who actually likes Dynasty Warriors 9 I’d be more inclined to play that. Either way though, due to being an earlier entry in a series that’s gone on so long I’m afraid DW5 is a very much relic of the past.
Hogan Reviews 