Dynasty Warriors 4 with the new Empires expansion features!
The story in Dynasty Warriors games have always been mostly the same. A bunch of lords are fighting over China to rule it in a huge war. While it is mostly the same as always, I reccomend that you play the normal Dynasty Warriors 4 game first so that you understand about the battles that actually happened in real history, and to learn about the characters. The main mode of Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires is the Empire Mode. In Empire Mode, you can either play the game based on real history, or just play the game fiction based. You start out by choosing a leader who has a single piece of land. You take over land by invading an enemies land and taking over the enemy bases or by defeating the enemy ruler. When attacking you have 30 minutes to defeat the enemy or you lose that battle. Before a battle you choose which officer you play as and who will go into battle with you. Once the battle is over, if you have any captured officers from the battle, you can choose who you hire to serve under your command and who you dismiss. This cost a bit of money though. By hiring officers, you have more characters to play as in battle and more of a choice of who fights with you. Every turn your officers will give you choices of what they are offering to do for you. Sometimes they will reccomend that you make an alliance with another ruler, to trade certain items, to train your officers, or regain troops. This will cost you money but you can decide to not do anything for a turn to gain more money.
Occassionally you may be attacked by an enemy army. So of course you ahve to defend your land. When defending your land you choose who you play as and who goes into battle with you just as if you were attacking. When defending you must defend your bases and survive for 15 minutes before you win the battle or by taking over all of the enemy bases, or defeating their ruler. When you are attacked the enemy can capture some of your officers and if the enemy wins the battle they get the piece of land they attacked.
You win the Empires mode by successfully taking over every piece of land. After that you get a funny ending! The ending is different depending on which officers you recruited throughout the game.
Their are also 4 types of VS modes which can be played against a friend or agaisn't the computer. You can chooseany of the characters that were in Dynasty Warriors 4. It is pretty cool that you can play agains't the computer in VS Mode because in the original Dynasty Warriors 4 you couldn't play VS Mode agains't the computer. Either way that you play these VS modes it is still pretty good.
The character creator is still here and it has been improved. While it still sin't great, it is better than before. This time you have 6 character models to choose from. You can choose their weapon, helmet, outift, outift color, and special abilities. The character you create can be played as in any of the modes. While the character creator isn't great, it is better than it was in the original Dynasty Warriors 4.
If you have saved data of the original Dynasty Warriors 4 on your memory card then when you create a file on Dyansty Warriors 4 Empires, you will start with extra content then you would if you had no saved data of the original Dynasty Warriors 4.
Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires should be enjoyable to fans of Dyansty Warriors especially now that it has the new Empires features added too it. It is a good game but I would reccomend playing the original Dynasty Warriors 4 first. While it is a little different then the orignal Dynasty Warriors 4, don't expect alot of differences in the actual combat. If you are a fan of Dyansty Warriors and you areone of those people who like strategy games then you should enjoy Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires.