Definately a step above other Dynasty Warriors games.
Firstly, the gameplay is what you expect of an Empires game; you are a ruler who needs to unite China under your rule. Optionally, you can play as an officer under the employ of your ruler, or a roaming vagrant looking for a suitable ruler to serve. There are various cards you can choose from to aid you in taking over provinces, like improving your attack or restoring troops to your officers. On the battlefield, gameplay is almost exactly like that of DW6: X is weak attack, Y is strong attack, LB is block, etc. There are a few new additions, like the four special moves which the player gets to choose, such as releasing a wall of flame to send everyone flying, or causing rocks to rain from the sky and crush enemy soldiers. The Renbu meter from DW6 was removed in favor of a weapon level system; the higher the weapon's level, the stronger the attacks become, as well as the number of attacks one is able to perform.
Secondly,graphics have been improved vastly over older DW games, and the motion capture attacks are very pretty to look at. There is a little slow-down during combat, but that only happens when you are in the thick of hundreds of troops, and it doesn't affect control of the player; it's more of a slo-mo scene than anything annoying. Voice acting is very mixed; some of the characters have good voices to match their characters, like the Villager or Cao Cao. However, some voices, especially the female voices, sound like over-enthusiastic anime fans who do not belong on the battlefield. Whenever I hear "Hooray, my plan worked! Now, lets really beat up the enemy!" or any other cheesy phrase, I just shrug it off, or even laugh at it, but it can get pretty annoying later on.
Now, onto the flaws of the game. There are several major ones that I've noticed, but it might just be because my disc is slightly damaged. Firstly and most majorly, if your created character attempts to interact with a major character, such as Cao Cao or Liu Bei, the game will completely freeze. This means attempting to use your created character in a scenario such as the Three Kingdoms or Chi Bi are impossible. Other than that major flaw, there are some slight battlefield dialouge bugs, like in a suprise attack, the subtitles for the guard captain of the base will read, "Th-the enemy! They're attacking us with a suprise attack!" but the dialouge you hear says, "You there, listen well! I want you to deliver this message to that officer there!" The first time this happened, I laughed at it, shrugging it off as a little bug. But it can get a bit annoying if you've played for a while.
Overall, this is a great game, especially for those who have played the series before. However, it IS a Dynasty Warriors game, and newcomers might either love it or hate it. It's a good game to play with kids around, actually, because of the lack of blood or swearing. The graphics and gameplay make this adition of DWE shine above the rest, but a few annoying bugs mar the performance of an otherwise great game.