Madame Adequate
04-08-2009, 03:39 PM
I thought this was about that alright game based on an awesome movie.
That game wasn't "alright", it was one of the greatest games to appear on the X-Box. Fact.
As for Dynasty etc., I like them, but they really REALLY need to do something new with them now. The franchise peaked with DW3 and hasn't done anything new since then.
Crimson
04-08-2009, 03:40 PM
Yeah im a huge fan of the Musou series, all 3 of them, Dynasty, Samurai and Orochi, currently waiting for Orochi Z to grace my PS3.
Madame Adequate
04-08-2009, 05:50 PM
Actually, a friend and I wrote a letter to Koei a little after DW6 came out, which will serve here for my take on the series. I'll spoiler it because it is long-ass.
Ideas for improving the Dynasty Warriors series.
Dynasty Warriors is certainly a successful, and enjoyable series of games, but the truth is that it is also one of the least innovative series. This wasn't always the case. Dynasty Warriors 2 was highly revolutionary, with massive arenas for combat, vast armies, and incredible numbers of soldiers on screen at once. DW2 showed that the PS2 really was a big step up from the PSX.
The problem is that the games since have seen little improvement beyond the iterative. New levels, new characters, and usually some variation on how to get weapons and/or horses. There were graphical improvements, certainly, but little of note took place in the series ever since iteration 2, discounting the business in the Empires spinoffs. We are therefore submitting some ideas on how to improve the series, and to stop the decreasing review scores which the most recent games have received, something we feel is in large part attributable to the lack of originality. We don't submit these ideas to criticize, but to improve the series. It might seem like we're dissatisfied, but actually we want to see a good series of games become really great again, instead of being stagnant.
There is no real excuse for having draw distance and pop-in problems in this day and age. Look at games like GTA IV to see how far draw distances can be, and also how simple tricks can greatly enhance that. If Dead Rising can put as many zombies on screen as it does, then Dynasty Warriors should be able to have a lot of soldiers on screen. Now obviously, putting that many characters on a screen does mean that they suffer individually, but we believe that most players would find it acceptable, as long as there were a lot of them. It did very little harm to Dead Rising. Scale > Detail.
When it comes to individual soldiers, however, it would be great to see a lot of variation in them. Imagine having three different possible heights, three builds, and say five body parts where clothing options could go, plus hairstyles and faces. Assuming ten options for each body part, this would give over 600 possibly character appearances, before including army colors, weapons, and so forth. Getting more variation would help with immersion a lot.
Immersion is the key here. We are both aware of many games which have been questionable, but which we have considered successful because they are immersive. We gamers will forgive a lot of other stuff for an immersive experience, but Dynasty Warriors could combine immersion with both existing, and new, features and if it did so, it would get some highly impressive reviews.
The first point for immersion is quite simple. Improve the writing and certain design ideas. Playing through DW6, we have been more amused than anything else at the stories, because either the original writing, or the translation, is simply of poor quality. There is no sense of affinity with these characters because what they say is ridiculous and often nonsensical. Similarly, some of the character designs really need work. Dong Zhuo, for instance, is embarrassing to look at. He is a caricature, so fat and ugly that his fate is predetermined. Make him look human. Make him look normal. Look to RotK for what we mean here. Another example of this is Xu Zhu; why is he portrayed has having the mind of a child? More nuanced characters would be preferable, to be honest. It would help significantly with immersing the player if they weren't confronted with jarring silliness.
The tone as a whole could perhaps become darker. This was not a pleasant, colorful time in Chinese history. It was a time of sometimes brutal, sometimes petty warlords, of battles and wars which were sometimes difficult to justify, and the clash of the largest armies to be assembled until Revolutionary France, over 1500 years later. The loss of life in this time period was immense; perhaps DW should consider showing this reality? Perhaps it should move away from the almost anime approach it has had to date, and actually tackle the issues here? As part of this, it would really help if the music wasn't the silly rock business it was right now, but if instead it was a soundtrack of traditional Chinese music, sometimes seeming to be ambient, and sometimes rising in stirring military marches.
Allow us to move on now to discussing gameplay elements. One of the more enjoyable changes was the addition of renbu to DW6, which did change the dynamic nicely. Even so, combat in Dynasty Warriors is infamous for involving the use of one or two buttons. Adding more combat complexity would help greatly – not to the point where we're looking at a rival to Virtua Fighter, but enough that the player has numerous options for dealing with enemies, ranging from quick combos to individual heavy hits. (If you wanted to be REALLY awesome-crazy you could add a mode where, like in Bushido Blade on the PS1, a single hit could kill. That would be valid to see in Dynasty Warriors.)
Even without that, however, a character should need to be very high-leveled, and have some very good equipment, before they can charge off alone into enemy lines. We do feel that it should be possible – that level of power should be a reward for a lot of playing. But it shouldn't be possible with a new or moderately strong character.
Speaking of character development, we feel there are better ways of doing it than the current system. When it comes to leveling and making a character more powerful, that can be a very good way of getting someone immersed in the character's fate, and in investing in them, with two caveats. The first is that this actually has to be a choice, not a short-term temporary state. The 'sphere grid lite' from DW6 was a nice idea, and worked insofar as what it was for, but ultimately if you played through the campaign a couple more times with a character the grid was full, and they could only improve by collecting better weapons. Going down one route should cut off others. It might be the case that a character could undertake some quest or the like, and in so doing raise their maximum potential power level; but this should take effort and time to do. Building a character strong enough to take on a thousand enemy soldiers at once should be an investment.
The second caveat relates partly to a story idea, which is to include dynasties in the game. Let's pretend someone has chosen to play as Guan Yu, and they're play for a few levels, they're getting stronger, etc. - and then they die. Game over? No. Instead, everything Guan Yu has accumulated goes to his designated heir, let's suppose it's Guan Ping in this case. His weapons, armor, horse, retinue, all of it. Guan Ping has his own stats, and might need training to meet Guan Yu's levels of strength, but this would allow the story overall to be controlled, and would mean that Cao Cao can die of natural causes if that fits better, rather than living to be 130 or whatever it would take for him to survive until Wei unifies China. (Again, he might be able to undertake a quest to increase his lifespan. The fantastical elements are fine, they should just be a little more difficult to get.)
Now I mentioned retinues, and that's important to our overall ideas. The player would be able to recruit various people to be in his personal retinue over the course of the game – in between battles, the player would be in camp, as well as being able to visit towns and go on quests (More on which in a moment). These could be all sorts of people. A renowned blacksmith could attach more abilities to a weapon than a new one. A good warrior could be a personal bodyguard, or a sub-commander under you. A spouse could provide you with an heir. I know that we don't want to stray too far into Romance of the Three Kingdoms territory here, that is its own game, but there is no reason not to adopt some of the good ideas from that game.
When it comes to weapon and armor improvements, rather than picking those up on the battlefield, perhaps you should be able to capture various kinds of materials which you could upgrade your equipment with, rather than finding dozens of incredibly well-made weapons on the bodies of generals who are not even proficient with them. The more of a material you apply, the better the effect. The better the blacksmith, the more different effects can be applied to a weapon or armor. That sort of thing. Also, if a character uses two one-handed weapons, it would be great to be able to customize each one separately. Oh, and several seperate pieces of armor would be awesome. Just three or four, but more customization is great.
Now, your retinue would hang around your main camp, which you could freely move around to interact with them, as well as your forces. The main camp would be removed from the battlefield, but you would ride out from the camp with anyone heading to the front with you, which is where story discussions and the like could take place, as well as serving as a loading screen if necessary. When you arrive on the battlefield, it would be different from the previous DW games. You would receive battle reports depending on how far you were from your nearest base. You would not be able to see most of the map in real-time; updates would come in that change the look, but the player couldn't see the entire thing instantly and wouldn't hear of events on the other side of the map for awhile. The player themselves would occupy and operate in a smaller part of the map at any given time; it's unlikely that they would grab a horse and ride to some distant base. The battlefields would also often be larger, and more open, with fewer obstacles around. Also, if the map is not updated in real time, it might be nice to make a prettier, traditional looking map showing static locations using different techniques, perhaps in a classical style of painting or the like.
The overall battle should be a group of smaller battles, which flow back-and-forth; the player's character is not, until he's at the highest levels, a superhuman warrior who smashes the entire enemy army (As it stands you could literally put no allies on a battlefield and the player could still come out on top). He would work as part of his unit, and could give some commands to them from a friendly base. Nothing major, just things like “Attack this base”, “Hold this territory”, things like that. The number of units the player controls would depend on his character's rank. He could choose to be Cao Cao and command the entire army, or he could be someone much less important and have far fewer troops to command. The player should feel part of the world, not like a tornado that just tears through the place. Integral to the battle, but not the sole useful person on the field. Furthermore, note that battles in DW have (For the most part) had time limits of 90 minutes. I can't remember the last fight that took me more than 15 minutes except for one where I played very oddly on purpose. If you're going to have time limits, at least make the battles take up the majority of said limits. As it stands it seems like a highly unnecessary throwback to arcade games of yore.
Neither death nor loss of the the battle should be game over. Death was outlined above, whilst the loss of the battle should simply take the storyline in a new direction. More simply, if there's no passing on the mantle, you should still be able to lose without it being game over. It should be possible to have numerous possible endings for a given force, with victories and losses both affecting the length of the war and the final outcome.
Thank you for your time and consideration of our suggestions. We hope that, as loyal fans of the Dynasty Warriors series, you might be able to give some thought to our suggestions. Obviously we're not expecting the game to be made exactly to our specifications or anything like that. We just want to see the series take a particular direction, as we're sure all fans do, and hope that if we have provided ideas both feasable and which would add to the DW series, that they might be included. In short, we wish to see the series move away from the arcade style it has now to a more involved, immersive mood. It doesn't have to be dark and gloomy, necessarily, but more nuanced, more immersive, and with a more expansive world that the player really feels a part of.
Mister Adequate
Mike McLovin
PS: Make Cheng Pu playable. Please. He's totally awesome.
tl:dr - make DW less anime, include more RPG elements, and have a branching storyline where you can lose battles and carry on. Also being supersaiyenpowerful should need more work.
That's a very good letter you've got there MILF. I read all of it, and I can totally agree with you. The mood of the game is too light and cheerful, and the fact that it's an easy game ( I like how you put it, I feel like I'm a freaking thunderstorm ripping everything to pieces ) doesn't help.
I guess the creators want it to be a quick hack and slash melee game. But I have to admit, the instant PWNage you can deliver can be lots of fun at times. :D
I still love Dynasty Warriors. I haven't played any of the others though.
Lacarus
04-08-2009, 11:39 PM
That's a very good letter you've got there MILF. I read all of it, and I can totally agree with you. The mood of the game is too light and cheerful, and the fact that it's an easy game ( I like how you put it, I feel like I'm a freaking thunderstorm ripping everything to pieces ) doesn't help.
I guess the creators want it to be a quick hack and slash melee game. But I have to admit, the instant PWNage you can deliver can be lots of fun at times. :D
I still love Dynasty Warriors. I haven't played any of the others though.
Samurai Warriors has a higher difficulty, as opponent grow stronger when you level up. Also their final weapons aren't as overpowered as in DW.
LunarWeaver
04-11-2009, 09:26 PM
I played Dynasty Warriors 4 and enjoyed it. After that, I'd played all of them and never bothered with it again. Different number on the box, some new environments, same game. The series reminds me of R&B music: The person singing the song is different, but the song is the same.
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