Good game + .....touch screen -_-.....
What's a duel? Well it's rather simple, if one of general who are marked for duel approaches you, you enter dueling mode. You basically slash your screen for fast attack, touch&hold for "strong" attack and if an arrow appears you just slash the screen in that direction to "deflect" an attack. It's alright i guess, however you get 1-3 duel in each battle each of which last around 1 minute AND there's huge set back. Enemy can finish you off in like 5 attacks, while you need 15-40 attacks to kill it. Further more, if the enemy counter attacks you it ALWAYS lands a sequence of attacks after which you only need 1-2 hits to be killed.
That aside, i also found the idea behind musou attacks really cheap. The new musou attacks (executed by touching 2 spots on the screen) are now controlled by violating your front/back touchpads or shaking your console. I mean it's not really a bad thing but unless i'm using the back touch pad i won't even see what's going on the screen.
Ofcourse, you're not forced to use those so that's fine. So they created a buch if minigames (which are forced on you) utilising those. Now once again it's not really a bad thing that they came up with something "new"! However it does feel incomplete. In 2 /3 touch pad games you can pretty much flick your finger along 1 line and complete them, while the one you can't complete like that isn't too chalanging either, you have to poke the screen from time to time.
In motion sensor mini game you just have to aim, and I for one can say it's really boring and i can't get the though of wasting time out of my head when i play it.
And finally the last negative thing is the character combo set. The game is claimed to have 65 unique characters and once you play it you notice..... well those numbers probably drop to 40 more or less "unique" characters and 25 clones with slighly altered special attacks. It was rather disapointing seeing all dual blade wielding characters having same moves.
The general gameplay is fairly nice if you like any standard dynasty warrior games. They've introduced few features I haven't seen in previous games.
For instance capturable bases, with unique bonuses depending on base type.
Another unseen thing is the ability to direct your officers into chosen bases.
Those are 2 biggest improvements i've noticed in the game.
Even though the game improved in some areas (especially considering it's on a portable console) and does deserve ~7/10, the enforcement of touch and motion sensor interfaces just makes it feel cheap and rushed. Due to that i don't believe the game deserves anything over 5/10.