If you've played Dynasty Warriors 4, then this game is not a must have. If not, then this game should be enjoyable.

User Rating: 6.3 | Shin Sangoku Musou 4 (Treasure Box) PS2
Dynasty Warriors 5 is a good game if you haven't played a single Dynasty Warriors game to death in your life. Not much has changed from the previous game, and if any, the changes involve taking away some features. The gameplay is exactly the same from the previous game. Also the new material isn't something to get worked up about. DW5 is fun, but has been played already before.

First off, the series has left out a couple of material from the last game. One will be the create-an-officer mode. Yes you can't do that now. Another would be in game cutscenes. There are cutscenes, but there are not as many as there was in DW4. Plus each characer in the game only has about 5 stages for their Story Mode. That's it. With additional 2 or 3 stages for the more important people in each kingdom (Sun Jian, Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, etc.). While the last game had more than 10 in their Musou Mode. Although now that each officer now has their own individual story, the levels that they play are all the same to other officers. All the stages plays the same no-matter who you play as. Which brings up a another point. Some of the stages have been cut out. There were more stages in the last DW game than there are in this game. I believe that this game is actually a downgrade from the prequel to this game.

The gameplay has not changed one bit. It's still square for attacks and combos. Triangle for charge attacks, which makes additional combos when pushed after pushing square. The circle button for Musou attacks. And blocking and strafing is still L1. Ri for arrow. Yes it's ALL the same. No new moves, No new buttons, Nothing new at all. Why would they not change anything to this. That's one of the reasons why it feels all the same.

The new material sounds good, but there are drawbacks. The better graphics shouldn't come to anyone's surprise. The individual stories are great, but as said before, they are too short and play the same from most of the officers in there kingdom. There are additional items in this DW that wasn't in the last DW, but they were in the DW4: Xtreme Legends. So for those who played the Xtreme Legends for DW4, the items are nothing new. Actually they are not new if they were in the previous games expansion. There are new officers in this game, but there are only 5. There are about hundreds of officers mentioned in the games of DW, but we only get 5. Only 5, and that's not all. There's only 1 in each kingdom except Wei. Wei gets 2 officers. So Wu, Shu, and the Other option only get 1 officer each. Plus the officers aren't as great as the officers that were already there. Maybe some will like them, but they aren't great at all. That's all the new improvements that made it to the game.

In conclusion, DW5 is not a great sequel. It would be fun if you hadn't played the previous Dynasty Warriors game. There were things taken out of the game that could have made this game funner. The new improvements weren't much of an improvement. Nonething really changed about the game. The story mode is compelling, but too short for all the officers. This game is not a must buy for those who had played it before.