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A boring addition to a boring series

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: September 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

There was a time where I was a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors series. That time has long past. I didn't actually buy this game, instead played it with my friend who did purchase it.

While I was unable to see every feature there was to see and experience the game as an owner, I was far from satisfied. It's the same, boring button smasher from a long line of games exactly the same. True, there are more characters, the graphics have improved somewhat, and the voices are less pathetic, but it just isn't enough to buy it while there are 9 other games which are pretty much the same as it.

Your allied generals do pack more of a punch and their AI has improved noticably though, a big plus in my rating system. But the idea of being in an army is completely stupid. You might as well just be your own character versus the entire enemy army. Your allied peons do virtually nothing. When they actually do fight, they attack every seven seconds and half of those attacks are parried, and those that do hit are noticable but insignificant.

I was a huge fan of the series for a while though, and had some nice experiences. I really liked the third dynasty warriors, especially the Battle of Hu Lao gate which really did require some allied help if you were playing as the allies. It was quite spectacular to have 8 grizzled, elite soldiers in shining armor as your bodyguards for some players, but it also took out what little challenge the game had. In a few of the games, which I can't remember the exact titles, you had no bodyguards which I heavily disliked though, and it's nice to have a bodyguard with respectable AI in this game.

While this game has it's appeal, especially for people who enjoy pure action with no strategy whatsoever. I don't mean to be sarcastic, this game really is quite enjoyable. It just isn't for people who want a videogame that has more realistic and laid back action, where you aren't so invulnerable, where it actually means something to kill a soldier, where your allies do make a difference. DW4 certainly was entertaining, DW4XL had it's positives but was certainly not worth it's price, and DW4 Empires was just a horrible game where the 'strategy' involved meant absolutely nothing and where the one-man army hack-and-slash gameplay was greatly reduced. The first Samurai Warriors was entertaining and the replay value was quite high. The second was a pointless waste of time that added nothing to the game.

In short, this game is quite entertaining and will be enjoyed if you're someone who likes to mindlessly cut their way through an army to kill the enemy leader and win the battle with virtually no strategy. The officer battles are an exception, but with the duel feature missing, it's lost much of it's challenging nature. I personally am just waiting for Spartan Total Warrior to release where your health is significantly limited and where the common soldier will be of actual value to the army. I hope Koei either makes significant changes to the many Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms games to come, or crashes and burns. Both of my hopes are unrealistic and probably will not be fufilled.

Dynasty REPEAT

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 16
Date: May 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

DW. 2, 3, 4, all great. But this is the same hack n' slash gameplay we've seen! I'm sick of this game! I could buy DW 4 and save some damned money!!! I'll leave it at this. It's like watching the same movie over and over and over and over and over and over and over again! The camera angles sometime get annoying. If your a DW fan, pick it up, otherwise, this game isn't going to turn you into one.

Boring! Worse than DW4 Empires.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: September 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is pretty much the same as Dynasty Warriors 3 and 4 but without the lag. DW4 Empires dont have lag either and is a much better game than this Dynasty Warriors 5 IMO.

In Dynasty Warriors 5 each character goes thru about 5 stages then you see the ending. The stages are boring, small, and all look the same. The strategy of capturing bases is pathetic, DW4 Empires's design is better. To make things worse all stages are available from Free Mode. After awhile I got tired of playing the same stages, geez all the characters share stages, a big let down. There are NO witches, soccresses, battering ram, catapult, fire breathing cart, etc.... I was expecting all this and more. The stage design is truly sad.

Overall I don't recommend buying this game. Get DW4 Empires instead or Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks.

BORING!!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 22
Date: August 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Ive never been a big fan of dynasty warriors. But this game is just bad. First off on easy mode you can defat an entire army by yourself. This is because the enemys never attack. once i ran into the center of a group of enemys and i stood still. I didn't get attacked for ten minutes. Also all of the soldgers look identical. there are about three enemys that dont look the same.and there are only 4 hard fights in the entire game. Also THIS GAME IS REPETTATIVE. you have 6 attacks per character but they all do the exact same thing. And one hit kills petty much all enemys. Now this game is long but so what. If you have a huge pile of garbage, is it really any better then a small pile of garbage. and either way it is still garbage. just like this game.

A droning and lifeless series continues

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 18
Date: May 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Koei has made several games for the series Dynasty Warriors, 7, if I remember correctly. The games in the series and Koei's new Samurai Warriors series have all been very fun games. However, so many games in this line have been made, the series is becoming stale.

The entire game is some linear button-smashing killfest where you run to enemies for them to attack you, such horrendous AI. You fight along an army, however the soldiers rarely attack and are quite stupid. It is impossible for your allies to really do anything and to win the battle, you seriously have to design some quick, blitzkrieg battle 'strategy' to kill the enemy commander by cutting a thin line in the enemy troops. True, killing masses of enemy drones around you is fun, but it just gets old rapidly.

In each series, there is a sort of graphic improvement and is a large factor in my favor of a game. There is a better storyline for your character, another major factor for me. There are also many bodyguard options, that is rare for this series. You can also learn some history from the events which this game is based on, but there are several inconstincies in the story and I found it much better if you want this information, to buy a cheap book, this story is popular in China.

Still, this game is a complete disappointment. The sound is awkward, the gameplay is old, and there is little the preivious games did not have. Someone who continuously buys the games in this series and still is addicted to this game has a very weak taste in gameplay.

It's not bad, but how much more can the fans take?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 18
Date: October 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

We all know about Dynasty Warriors. It's gameplay is pretty cool, and while a lot of people say it's the same thing over and over (and they're right to an extent) they never seem to notice the quirks in gamplay (Dynastay Warriors 3 is a HUGE step above number 2 and there are a lot of people who--for God knows what reason--didn't see that). Dynasty Warriors 5, on the other hand, is a step down from Dynasty Warriors 4. Dynasty Warriors 4 was not much above number three anyway, so seeing number five take a step down from it is pretty daunting. I warn you now, if you've never played Dynasty Warriors, this review won't help you out as much. If, however, you've played previous installments, you'll really be able to decide on number five after this.

First, let's go about the things that are different. There are more characters, one added to each group. Not as rewarding for those who went from Dynasty Warriors 2 to 3 (in which you were rewarded with 22 new characters), and those who played Dynasty Warriors 4 first won't notice at all. The maps of course, are also different, and there are a few new missions.

But let's talk about the step back. The thing that hurts Dynasty Warriors 5 the most. First of all, there's no complexity in raising your characters. There never was in Dynasty Warriors, but number four did incorporate a level up system, and KOEI had something going with it. Unfortunately, they decided not to experiemtn with it again in number five, and that's a damn shame because it made raising characters much more complex and much more exhilirating. You know, you felt like you were actually getting something done! You were hacking and slashing for a reason! Now you're just... hacking and slashing.

Second thing that takes them back; the musou mode. Each character now only has five levels, and they're short. In previous installments some had ten levels, and they could take you a while. Some missions have also become one sided. If you need to say, get a fire attack going, you have to do it. If you don't get it going it's almost an instant loss of the mission. In previous installments it was not a problem. It helped your morale, but if they somehow managed to thwart your plan, it didn't mean you were sure to lose the battle. In this version it does, and it's particularly annoying. Likewise, if you actually do the mission as they specified it makes taking down all the enemy generals (save for those who have like two bars of health and an insane defense, which I'll talk about later) severely easy. The only exception are the playable ones.

In addition to that, the maps are terrible, and to an extent, difficult to read sometimes, such as when there's a river in front of you, and it isn't depicted on the map. That, and there's not much free roam anymore. There's always a path you must take instead. So you can't cut through the level anymore by running across the map in a battle field fashion. In order to run around a fortress, let's say, you have to follow a path around the fortress. In previous Dynasty Warriors, you didn't have to do this!

The new "weight" system introduced by the weapons is also a setback to this game. Heavy, weapons, for example, make some characters useless. Characters that are already slower than a snail, are reduced to seeming like statues! Take a character like Xu Xhu (if you've played previous installments), who is already slow and already carries a fairly heavy weapon. Now give him an even heavier weapon and he's slow as all hell. It's annoying, time consuming and makes you reject what could be a better weapon because you want to get a mission done quickly. In other words, this make some characters nearly useless. Even speedy characters (Lu Xun for example) have a tough time with heavy weapons, and it leaves them open for attacks. It's embarassing when the soldier you're trying to kill gets a cheap hit in there because your weapon is too heavy to carry.

Likewise, enemy generals do a ridiculous amount of damage to you! This takes the fun out of DW5. The playable generals not only have an insane defense, but an insane attack. And they've gone back to era of DW2. If you happen to knock a general on his back he'll gain some sort of power up (and it could be the dreaded musou for ten seconds, even!). Most of the time it's an Attack X2 and that surely means you're in trouble. It's no fun with that kind of rule in place.

Not being able to switch generals didn't bother me too much, but you'd think they'd keep up with it after how well it worked in number four.

What I'm trying to say is, what was working for the series they neglected when they created this game. The gameplay remains unchanged, and that's a good and bad thing. The gameplay is fun in Dynasty Warriors, but I just can't help but admit it's the same hack and slash we've played a million times. Dynasty Warriors 3 was a huge step above number three. Dynasty Warriors 4, however, was only a babystep above number three. Now, sadly, number five seems to think moving in the opposite direction seems best.

The music is also not great. Dynasty Warriors always has mixed results with music, but I think in this one we can all agree that the music is nothing above sub par. The series hasn't had the best music, but it has had tolerable music. This one doesn't have as much. The voice acting, as with every KOEI game, sucks the big one. And you can't switch to more emotional japanese voices either (again, something that only number three did).

Graphic wise, it looks no different than Dynasty Warriors 4. However, I will say that they did manage to do something about the "pop up" enemies and how the game slows down when the screen becomes overcrowded with people. However, when the screen does become over crowded, you can barely even find yourself.

The extras are also not worthwhile. How many more games do I have to suffer through that have "Sound Test" as an unlockable secret? Whatever happened to the days when you could find "Sound Test" under "Options"? When did "Sound Test" suddenly become an unlockable secret in video games? At least we're saved by some tunes not being worth listening to anyway.

The Challenge Mode isn't very exciting either. Endurance isn't much fun. You must defeat each and everyone who comes at you looking for a fight. The goal is to last as long as you can. Until you die. In Dynasty Warriors 5 that death will be pretty quick. This is simply because when the enemies crowd around you, they all begin swinging at once. The moment you're lifted off the ground, you know it's over. Generals, as noted above, do incredible damage to you as it is. In Endurance, generals are the only ones who drop health, and that's if you're lucky enough to survive. Time attack is no better, being just like Endurance, only you must kill one hundred enemies as fast as you can. This would be fun if there were enemies. And when there are, it ends up being just like Endurance.

So here's the big let down of Dynasty Warriors 5. The gameplay mechanics take a step down from previous ones and at some point in time even sink lower than Dynasty Warriors 2 (which really IS just nothing more than "tap square", at least in the ones following we got to raise characters). At the same time we're faced with terrible maps and mission objectives; generals that are way too strong to take down, and more additions that were taken away from the game rather than added.

The new characters added are hardly worth it and only seem to be there to mock other characters. Speaking of which, the characters aren't all that unique anyway. Almost every character who uses a sword for example, has the same basic structure to his attack. Likewise, many of the musous (special attacks) look the same for many characters

If you have Dynasty Warriors 3 (which is the best one in the series) stick with that. If you've got Dynasty Warriors 4, stick with that. If you don't have a Dynasty Warriors game at all, I'd suggest you get number three or number four. Number three was, by and large, the best in the series. Dynasty Warriors 5, however, should be the end of the series. There's nothing more you can do with it, and it shows because instead of moving the series forward, they've begun moving it backwards.

Don't waste time with this game. Unless you really haven't played Dynasty Warriors, and you're looking for an intro. Otherwise, it's better to leave this on the shelf and shop for a different game. Dynasty Warriors 5 was it, there's nothing more to do with the series than put it in the recycling machine. It produces something that looks different, but it's virutally the same thing. Dynasty Warriors 5 is no different than the three before it (Number one was actually a Street Fighter like game), and unfortunately there aren't enough tweaks to make it better.

More dumb fun, but a bit hackneyed now...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: May 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

CAVEAT: I love the DW series, having purchased all of them (even the original for PS1). I love this game as well, although it seems to be the most shallow of the bunch.

48(!) characters join the fray this time as you once again take control of a personality of the time of the Three Kingdoms and do battle with your nemeses. Each character has their own storyline, complete with events seen only in that character's story (this is a plus, as it was quite tedious to fight through each kingdom multiple times in order to see all the characters in DW4). Weapons no longer need to be upgraded (another plus), and orbs are now rare items found by playing on hard mode. A "chaos" mode has been added, and it is NOT for the faint of heart (the difficulty is more like Very Hard mode in DW3:XL, as opposed to DW4:XL, but no one drops any meat buns!). The graphics are much better in this installment, and True Musou is actually more valuable than Musou in this game.

However, this game suffers from the same slowdown issues as the previous games (which is really unforgivable now, as this is the same game engine that has been used for six previous installments of DW). The siege weapons are even more useless here than in DW4 (unfortunate, since I thought that this could add a bit of depth to the strategy portion of this game). The camera is incredibly frustrating (not as much as, say, Samurai Warriors, but it's still pretty bad). Character balance is rather poor, though not as bad as previous installments (Lu Bu and Zuo Ci are incredible, Zhang Jiao and Meng Huo are horrible, the rest are OK). While large battlefields are nice, the game is frustrating until you obtain a horse saddle (another rare item).

All in all, I love the game. Why 3 stars? Well, I'm trying to diminish my bias. The fact is, if you are a fan of these games, you've probably already purchased this. If you didn't like the others, you won't like this one. And if you have never played a DW game before, this is probably the best of the lot. Still, I would have enjoyed a bit more originality and variety in this one (really, it plays exactly like DW2, which is five years old).

Notable features

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 15
Date: April 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

*game varies by the character you play.
*characters can own multiple weapons.
*no coustom player.
*more or less the same as other DW games.

Huge leaps and bounds, major improvements in gameplay.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 62 / 65
Date: April 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had most definitely not expected this. I had a love/hate relationship with Dynasty Warriors 4, and Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires was so bad that I popped in for two days and then sold it off. Dynasty Warriors 5, however, seems determined to correct every flaw about the two above games and the results are surprisingly impressive.

DW4: Empires was a stinker to me because of endlessly respawning enemy generals, a tiresome "stronghold" system, worthless allies, and an inability to build up your fighters since they start at Level 1 at every new game. Much to my delighted surprise, all of the above problems were fixed.

PROS:
- The gameplay is now a hybrid of DW4 and Empires where enemy generals stay dead when you kill them (thank heaven), checkpoints and supply bases can be realistically captured without having to wait at one location for 10 minutes to defend it against endless enemies. The system of taking down enemy supply bases works very well; you actually see a marked turning of the battle in your favour as you proceed.
- No more levels where you kill a dozen enemy generals only to have a single, artificially enhanced enemy reinforcement pop up next to your commander to ruin your game. Your commander is no longer a dummy that can die with a poke. Obviously, this allows you to do more fighting and less running around saving your allies' butts.
- Fighter training is back (which was impossible in Empires), though a little more difficult than before because now your weapon doesn't go up in levels at the same time the character does; you have to find these weapon items while playing the levels, and the quality of weapons you find is proportionate to the difficulty of the level. Tougher than DW4, but manageable, and the system is logical enough.
- The biggest surprise: Allied AI became far, far superior. DW4 players will remember this hyper-annoying situation where if you slaughter every one of the enemies except their commander, your allied soldiers will run towards the commander like idiots, not attacking, and pushing the commander around so much that you can't get at him. That is, happily, history. Allied generals are now almost as skillful as enemy generals, and your bodyguard (now only one, rather than a team of eight at once) is now very helpful, aggressively attacking, healing themselves and you, getting you out of jams. About time!
- Happily, they kept the control system from Empires so that now you can fully control where your combos face. This was like a breath of fresh air. Now if you miss a hit, it is indeed your own fault, and not the computer messing you up.
- Marginally better voice work. Some of the changes in voice actors were for the worse -- Zhou Yu, Cao Cao and Lu Bu had good voices in DW4; now they sound silly. And new character Xing Cai is abysmal, sounding like a six-year-old reciting bad dialogue. But the overall quality of voice work has improved, with fewer stiff deliveries. Diao Chan, Yue Ying, Sun Ce, and Lu Meng all sound far better than before, and Jiang Wei's character lost that horrible accent and is now quite nice to listen to.
- Improved graphics. Seems like they added some shadowing, and the look is now more textured, a little grittier.
- Improved map design. You still have to do some running around, but aside from the labyrinthine "Battle of Chen Cang" level, no more levels like that insufferable He Fei map from DW4, where you had to run along the length of the map six to seven times to beat the level.
- The "peons" -- enemy footsoldiers -- are more numerous and less hard to kill. The later soldiers in DW4 were so hardy they were tiresome to fight; no such problem here, at least at Normal difficulty level.

CONS:
- No more duels. I personally don't miss this feature, but I know that one of the top requests from DW4 players was the ability to challenge computer enemies to duels. Instead of refining the duel system, they've dispensed with it altogether.
- No more customized officers of your own design. This was one of the more fun aspects of Empires -- gone with the wind.
- The new Musou Mode will not be to everybody's taste. Now, instead of choosing a side and having all of the officers of that side available to you, you choose a character who has a specific story arc, and you can't swap fighters midway. There are advantages to this -- more varied storylines, deeper gameplay -- but the downside is the inability to switch characters, and now you *have* to master every single character to finish the game.
- Enemy generals do an insane amount of damage. It's just not fun in any context to face an enemy that can take half your life bar with one single combo. It's nice that enemies do less of the "block you to death" trick, but to have to pay for one mistake with half your life bar is excessive. It doesn't ruin the game, but it mars the enjoyment.
- Cao Pi, Pang De and Xing Cai are all pretty unappealing as new characters. Cao Pi's moves are pathetic, Xing Cai is slow and unremarkable (terrible voice, too), and Pang De looks like a nameless general. It's as if they ran out of character-design ideas. Ling Tong's nunchaku are neat, but why not have a character use a mace ("liang ya pang", or "wolf's tooth club"), a whip, a quarterstaff, or tri-sectioned nunchaku?
- Character balance has actually suffered. The new weapons system, where each weapon has a "weight" rating which affects how fast you attack, actually skews the game even more -- the fast, powerful characters become overwhelmingly strong (Jiang Wei is almost unstoppable with the new weapons system), while "alternate", more joke-like characters like Zhang Jiao, Xu Zhu, and Diao Chan are now nearly feeble -- the slower characters are crippled by heavy weapons, short-ranged characters get overwhelmed by the increased number of peons, and slow-moving characters will get pummeled by the insidious enemy AI. They should have given these harder characters a little something to balance the odds.

Overall, this game has successfully restored my faith in the series. It was more appealing to pick up than DW4, and leagues above Empires in design and gameplay. Highly recommended for fans of brawler games -- not perfect, but the best example of this game series I've seen and played yet.

Yea its a lil different. But its the BEST in the series

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: March 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'ma keep this real simple. Dynasty Warriors 5 is better than the rest. YES, if you've played 4 than you'll notce some changes. I suggest you accept them {u may even come to like alot of them} that way you can actually enjoy the game for what it is.

Pros - Better graphics
Bodyguards who actually save that'az for a change
Stronger Allies {if the moral is high, they can pretty much take care of themselves}
Folk DIE {every officer is not in every battle. Remember they all have their own story. Example- Cao Cao is dead before the battle of Hei Fei castle. When you beat the game, the speaker tells of your characters LIFE, not how many enemies he killed per battle. {Story is superp this time around}

Cinemactics {EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER has a brief {fully} cinemactic scene when you complete the game. The game saves them for you and you can watch em anytime. Thats MUCH better than DW4, where the endings were the exact same things with different colors or officers.

Cons - You find weapons via DW3. I used to like DW4 level up system better.
No more duels. ......{personally I think its a plus}

Difficulty - This games HARD. I'ma DW vet and I play on easy. {Unless my character has been seriously built up} They ain't playin wit'cha.

Overall it does what it should. Its the best yet. Same old with minor upgrades. If you have DW4 and are still unsure, heres a thought. Wait for DW6 .....we KNOW its comin.

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