Preview: Dynasty Warriors 7 – Xtreme Legends

When blood and steel meet bone. Based on one of the Four Great Classic novels of Chinese literature, Koei’s game-series slowly but steadily discovers the potential of its source material.

The Dynasty Warriors-series is Koei’s undisputed cash cow franchise, alongside several less successful spin-offs. And yes, reviewers don’t get tired of pointing out that the games are mindless hack-and-slay fests, repetitive and simplistic. Either you love them, or they bore you to bits.

The well-armed heroes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms have long hacked and slain their way into my heart. And there’s over sixty of them by now, all playable and with unique special moves.

But this trademark of the series seems to become more and more of a problem as the creators of the series try to make room for the story of what is one of the most important historic novels of the world.

Dynasty Warriors 7 featured no less than 62 playable characters, the Xtreme Legends add-on, due to be released in Europe on November 18^th, will add three more. Fans of the series expect nothing less, because trying out all the different characters and their moves is part of what makes the series so enjoyable, but increasingly some of them feel half-assed, if not movement-wise then certainly in terms of their personality. They’re clones of clones.

DW7 took some courageous steps away from its predecessors, namely a new weapons system, but more importantly a story mode that follows the story of the novel more closely than any game in the series before. Suddenly there’s a hint of just how great this game could be if it focused its gameplay on the main characters, much like the story mode that only follows some of them.

The inclusion of just about every name mentioned in the novel or other historic records has started to dilute the game, resulting in disappointing executions of some of the series’ most important warriors.

Nevertheless Dynasty Warriors 7 is definitely one of the best in the series and DW7: Xtreme Legends will get rid of one of the most painful restrictions of the game: playing the story mode with two players.

Play it with a friend and you’ll quickly find out if you’re among those who couldn’t care less – or if you’ll be hooked forever to the soothingly mind-numbing repetitiveness of the eversame characters fighting the eversame battles to the screams of weirdly misplaced electric guitars. It just grows on you.