Months ago I would've scoffed at the prospect of playing a Dynasty Warriors game. I hadn't touched one since DW3, and it was alright, but nothing spectacular. It was ultimately the glowing IGN review that got me interesting in trying this one out, and boy was I surprised.
Now the game wasn't incredible or anything, but let's just say I found it a lot more addictive than I thought it was going to be originally. I knew there was something magical happening when I found myself playing the game for hours on end, and not getting bored (story mode!). Though the story was 'cheesy', compared to DW3, the voice acting and story direction was like an Oscar nominated film... I was actually quite impressed. There's bad cheesy and omg-this-is-awesome cheesy, and I found DW8 to be the latter.
The character roster is huge and the weapons/combat system is fun. They made horses easy to access, and you do feel that really fun mass-slaughter/character progression that the series is known for. Also, the game is quite pretty, and the musuo attacks are flashy.
Ultimately, however, as time continued I did notice one glaring flaw: replay value. This may seem counter-intuitive since this is a DW game, but this was just my personal take on it. After I beat Story Mode, I discovered that I had the option of grinding Ambition mode for Tier 4 weapons so I could beat the game on Chaos mode. But then...what?...And why would I do that, what do I get out of it? There's nothing special to unlock.
The Ambition mode was incredibly disappointing; it's so poorly done that I would even mark it as being 'bad' rather than OK. It was essentially what I was playing towards (after Story Mode), but once I got there and found out there it was not fun,the game started to become unattractive and monotonous as a whole.
So all in all, how is the game? Finding myself playing hours on end during story mode, I simply cannot write off the game as not being good. A game this addictive simply cannot be; it was just way too much fun.
It was a shame though that the game couldn't be 'above and beyond', however. With a well fleshed out ambition mode or something a little extra, I suspect this game could've been something really special.