Dynasty Warriors 7 goes back to it roots and brings back the magic that the original dynasty games brought...
Dynasty Warriors 7 offers much more than it's predecessors. It brings back the old style combat system and improve's ontop of it. Unlike the lackluster (excuse my hate) Dynasty Warriors 6 with the Renbu system that tried to bring the series on top of ground but failed in doing so.
The gameplay feels much more fresh and new, it still features elements like swimming and climbing but feels more interactive than ever. People who mostly enjoy action games will indeed love this game. The weapons comes in several types like previous games, each having at least 10 weapons of variants and 36 types making it over 360 weapons. Finding new weapons become addictive and adds more replay value. It contains that unique feeling when a player finds a really rare weapon by doing a very difficult mission.
The game offers two main modes -
Story Mode
Conquest Mode
Story Mode:
Story mode in single player only (bit of shame) which is now faction based rather than the player choosing a character and going to play all the way through. The story mode pits you into the three kingdoms (Shu,Wei,Wu) and lets not forget the new 'Jin' faction. The storyline itself goes further than any other games, going through the Jin Dynasty - bringing out something new to players. When playing any faction, the player has to play that specific character in that specific level which the story follows by. Unlike the major fault that the series had before, it didn't make sense before playing a character who has died early on, later on in the story. So if that character dies in the story, that character is obviously unplayable later on in that factions chapter.
To resolve the lack of choice, it is where conquest mode falls in.
Conquest mode is itself a massive portion of the game. Not only conquest mode is the biggest mode but also features brand new elements to the series. In conquest mode you are to complete every mission and level in a map-grid sequence, once a level is beaten the adjacent levels will be unlocked so the players can advance through each part of the China map. The further you go, the more difficult the levels will become - and the more better weapons you will recieve.
Conquest mode in general replaces Free Mode, it allows up to 2-players to play either online or offline. In conquest mode you gain fame and gold for completing levels. This is the mode to also unlock the rest of the character rosters by completing their legendary battles. You can visit different cities which puts the player into a limited free-roam experience which allows you to interact with NPC's and even the warriors themselves. Conquest mode is a great addition to the series.
Then new features in gameplay is that you can carry two different weapons depending on the its compatability. Players can now be less dependant on what the character weapons are and now switch to their prefered choice. This major feature has fixed several problems and makes the fans less worried about the chosen weapons that are assigned to a character (i.e Sun Shang Xiangs Bow weapon in Dynasty Warriors 6 which dissapointed many fans as it replaced her well-known wheel type weapon)
The game also features a Gallery Mode which allows players to view characters, movies, achives and such. Players who love grinding weapons and leveling characters to max will enjoy this title easily.
Many reviews suggest the game to be rather repetitive, which in reality is not so much. Before each character had almost the same move-set, now each character has at least two different mousou's, different fighting styles and the weapon has it's own attack style. Everything in the game has it's own originality in terms of gameplay.
The game does feature slight flaws like the long loading times to cutscenes, some frame-rate issues and the huge gap in difficulties from normal to hard to chaos.
The difficulty of the game is not as difficult as the previous games. Playing on normal is like playing on easy difficulty, enemies die much faster. The hard difficulty is what normal should of been but it is slightly more difficulty than it should be where as Chaos difficulty is just way over-the top in difficulty (3 hits and your dead types).
Other than the cons, the game has brought the series on the game and now Koei can revive their lost fans which Dynasty Warriors 6 knocked off. Lets hope for Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends to increase the game potential even higher. If only if Koei would listen to their beloved fans.