Dynasty Warrior 6 proves to be very entertaining

Dynasty Warriors 6 will deliver the massive scale and realistic atmosphere that players have come to expect from the series, but will redefine the Dynasty Warriors' Tactical Action experience.

The lack of any major innovations does not hamper this game from being entertaining. You still play as some warrior from China's Three Kingdom's era, making your way across the land by cutting down scores of nameless soldiers along with their named Generals.

You build up your warrior's abilities by participating and winning in battles based on several criteria, such as number of men killed, targets acquired, etc. Your rank as a warrior increases based on the experience you earn at the end of the battle.

Furthermore, at the conclusion of a successful battle, considering how well you did, you might have the option of getting skills. Each skill slot on the skill tree is worth one acquired skill point and will give a boost to your warrior in various ways like more attack/defense power, more health, or some special attribute. I believe this is the same way you level up in one of the later Final Fantasies, cannot remember which. This skill-tree system is one of the new features in Dynasty Warriors.

The gameplay itself is very similar to the previous 4 dynasty warriors (the first one being a one-on-one fighting game). There is a newer way to fight, the Renbu system, that has replaced the weapon as being what determines the length of a combo. Essentially, the Renbu system gives you the option of making ridiculously long combos. It is not unheard of getting combos up to and over 200, whereas something like that would be far more difficult to do in previous editions. I find it less personal than the old way, but that is more a preference; it does not at all detract from the fun. Perhaps thanks to the PS3 hardware, it is much easier to get insane body counts. I was able to get over 2200 in one battle, which I have never done before in any other Dynasty Warriors. I suspect this will be the norm for larger battles, though I averaged out around 1000 (this is when I am not looking for enemies to kill).

Health boosts are harder to come by in this game. Towns, gates, and other bases are more crucial in this game to recover your energy. These places are captured based on the body count needed to capture it; the body count falls faster when you kill corporals or generals associated with the base. Larger bases, larger body count. In order to get into an enemy base, you have to knock down the gate. For larger walls with larger gates, you may get the option of climbing up a ladder. Another new thing not seen in previously. And health boosts in bases do regenerate, as long as the base remains on your side.

There are also no body guards in this game, them being replaced by a more detailed horse component. You begin the game with the option of riding a horse or not. You can choose one of several horses, and level them up by taking them into battle. Most horses on the battlefield belong to the more major generals, and not all of them will have one. This makes picking a horse before the battle begins a good idea You will be able to win more horses by picking up saddles within a battlefield. These can give you access to more powerful horses (though, I have not found out yet how to gain more famous horses like Red Hare). Gaining a new weapon is the same as the previous editions; find a weapon box and there you go. The strength of a given weapon is based on the difficulty of the setting and battle.

Technically, the game is of course superior to any of the previous installments. The music sounds as good as you expect from a Dynasty Warriors. It is not great, but it does the trick. Thankfully, the voice-overs are not as bad as the series is known for. But it looks like the sound effects have taken a hit; musou yells and other dins of battle were not as apparent.
The PS3 does a great job in putting bodies on the screen to be knocked down, which is great on single player. Two player, though, there is some lag when you or your partner are within large groups of soldiers. Although, clearing out the bodies will return the speed of the game to normal. The graphics are pretty good, though for some reason the characters seem a little smaller than on previous editions. Even on non-HDTVs, the graphics are decent. I was not impressed, however, with the musou attacks. They did look as devastating and battle-turning as some of the previous editions were. The crunch of laying a musou out on a large group of enemies was not as satisfying as I wanted it to be.

One major gripe, however, is the lack of a bearing point when you flip your battlefield map from the whole field to what is around you. You will constantly be switching to the start menu to gain your bearings. It is easier to see your arrow on single player, near impossible on two player. This may change with a larger screen tv.

In conclusion, if you are a fan of the dynasty warrior series like I am, then you will buy this game and enjoy it. It will be worth the money just to get through the story of each of your characters, and it hardly gets old (at least for me) to constantly cut through throngs of hapless, ill-paid soldiers. Even though the game did not blow me away and regardless of some of the minor drawbacks, this is a must have for the hack-n-slasher PS3 owner.
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Source / Author / Credit: Anonymous