Dynasty Warriors: Hacking and Slashing till I drop

[Formalhaut]

I've really gotten into this hack and slash series. Since last year, I've had Dynasty Warriors 5 collecting dust and I never really played it. I then thought I'd give it a go and I was pretty hooked.

As games go, they all are pretty simple. It's a hack and slash at heart, and while it's been updated many times (it's at number 8 I think now) I've never played beyond 5. Which is fine, because 5 is pretty good.

It is mostly simple, but it can be fairly hard. Hard and Chaos mode are exactly that, and some characters are beyond terrible, upping the difficulty. It's loosely based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, very loosely at times. Zhang He is so improbable a character...

But I like it. If I'm feeling down, cleaving through hordes of enemy soldiers is a great pastime. What do you guys think about the series? Who is your favourite characters, and what not?

[NeoCracker]

DW 5 stills stands as my favorite, with Wei as the best kingdom.

Xahou Dun, Dian Wei, and Zhang Liao being the most awesome characters.

Though my favorite bits of DW 5 is the constant clashing of Sima Yi of Wei, and Zhuge Liang of Shu. Those are some intense fights.

[DK]

I love DW in all of its various incarnations. Me and Pauw spent countless hours smashing ancient China on DW7 and it was good times.

My favourite character tends to be different for each game, Zhao Yun was my first favourite, then Guan Ping and so on. in DW7 my Ma Chao was an ungodly killing machine, but I also liked Zhou Tai and Jia Xu in that game. I also seem to enjoy random spooty characters in that game, like whichever bird had the harp. I think it was maybe Cai Wenji.

me and a friend from work were just talking about DW on Saturday. God damn, I wish they could make a Song of Ice and Fire DW. Hell yes it would be the best.

[Hollycat]

Dynasty Warriors 4 is one of my favorite games of all time.

Lu Bu and SunShangXiang are the best characters.

[Formalhaut]

in DW7 my Ma Chao was an ungodly killing machine

Ma Chao on a horse has always​ been a ungodly killing machine.

[Hollycat]

We had a dynasty warriors mafia game a few years ago, I'm pretty sure I was the only one who didn't get the names confused.

[DK]

you were not

[Jiro]

I smurfing love Dynasty Warriors. Because of the regular new iterations and versions, it was never a series I purchased, but I would hire like every new game for a week and smash out as many of the campaigns as I could. I will probably pick up the next new released one and just sink my teeth into it forever. I always wished I had someone to play 'em with, though; co-op seems like a smurf load of fun.

[DK]

are you on the xbox dak? if so smurf yes, get DW8, when I finally get my 360 over here some time this month/next month it would give me immense and slightly immoral waves of pleasure to have someone in roughly the same timezone to actually do this with on a regular basis.

[Botchmun]

I still need to finish the book.

[Vyk]

My brother and I played the hell out of DW 2 and 3. And I eventually bought 4 on my own and enjoyed the hell out of it even more. Character creation, and private elite soldiers to help me plow through hordes of enemies. It was fantastic. Then I was done. Not a whole lot had changed and I'd had my fill for a few years

Then a visiting friend was desperate for something two player and cooperative. So we went to the local Family Video to get the newest Dynasty Warriors, which was, even then, really old. Somehow we ended up getting Strikeforce I think. We never figured out how to activate two player, and it was not one person against thousands. It was a handful of people against giant bosses or something. I don't know. We spent like half an hour dicking around and unsatisfied, we took it back. And I never looked back

Then I met my girlfriend. Who had picked up the series at 4 and went back to 3 and enjoyed every iteration since. She even got into the side ones. Extreme Legends, and Empires. and got me hooked on 7 Empires. And immediately bought 8 when it came out. Now we're waiting for 8 Extreme Legends to come out. So I guess I'm back in the series. She's a die-hard and will always give the company money for new additions. Even if gameplay and voice acting never change. They're always good fun for people who give them a chance. Just like getting a new Guitar Hero would still be fun, even though it's been done to death

[Psychotic]

how could this have happened

not to me

[Kalevala]

how could this have happenednot to me

[Tigmafuzz]

You guys need to play the Warriors Orochi series. Specifically the 2nd one. Warriors Orochi is basically a mashup of Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, pulled together into one world by a new threat known as Orochi, who apparently also created the world or something.

The weapons have effects that you can add to them (the most important ones being speed and... flash? I don't remember what it's called, but it stuns enemies when you hit them) and also have there slots for SUPER effects (the most important being Almighty, which basically doubles the value of your regular effects, if I remember correctly) and if you have maxed out speed with Almighty on a level 4 weapon with either Sun Wukong or Hideyoshi Toyotomi, you almost can't mash the button fast enough to get to the next attack in your combo. And as Sun Wukong, you already travel at about the same speed as Lu Bu's red hare anyway (possibly faster?) so you can basically run through entire levels absolutely wrecking people's trout before they even know you're there. And with the right weapons effects, even Chaos mode is simple when you're above level 70. As Sun Wukong, you can just speed through and kick everyone's butt on Chaos mode in a couple of minutes and farm for experience with your other characters (switch to them, kill some dudes, switch back to mister speedy cloud to move on to the next bunch of dudes) and for weapon effects.

I was addicted to Warrior's Orochi 2 for a while. I can't ever go back to Dynasty Warriors because I got so spoiled on how quick and intense it was. Had nearly every character at level 99, more than half of them had weapons with Almighty status and some other super effects, plus all their weapons were at level 4 and had almost completely maxed out stats (you have to pick and choose which effects you want, since weapons only have 8 or 10 slots maximum at level 4 and there are over a dozen different kinds of effects) and proficiency levels. I unlocked every character including Shin Orochi, had an insanely high record in the arena mode, etc.

Oh, and there are giant troll kind of enemies, and you can even unlock one to play as and run around as a gigantic monster dude. I think it's only for arena mode, though. Maybe. Or maybe that was a gameshark/armax cheat or something.

I really miss that game.