Dynasty Warriors 7 (PS3)

Records of the Three Kingdoms is a historical text chronicling the conflict between three kingdoms that arose during the decline of the Chinese Han dynasty. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is based on that text but is a fictionalized account that tries to tell a more dramatic tale across the hundreds of principle characters involved. Dynasty Warriors 7 further exaggerates the events of the war though, something that becomes immediately apparent when the opening cutscene shows a character surfing down the side of a waterfall and slow motion kicking a galloping horse in the face. While that over the top intro shows this hack-and-slash video game isn’t afraid to hide its breaks from history, the exaggeration doesn’t seem to be purely for spectacle. In some ways, the historical heroes of the Three Kingdoms here are living up to the kind of legends spread about them in their time. A general could kill a hundred soldiers with a single swing of their blade, the fierce resolve of Zhang Fei allows him to blow scores of warriors away with a shout alone, and the very elements can bend to the will of a figure whose reputation is larger than life.

 

Even though Dynasty Warriors 7 is the kind of game where its wartime battles are backed with rock and roll music, its events do try to stay fairly faithful to the historical tale it’s based on. When the Imperial Court of the Han dynasty is called out for their corruption by a small rebellion, other forces begin to see their moment to rise up and demand change in the land of China. The Wei, lead by the cold and calculating Cao Cao, aim to preserve the Han royalty even if the hard power of military might ends up defining their kingdom more than politics. The Wu, lead by the members of the Sun family, see a chance to try and control their own lands and protect their lineage. Shu though seems to be the kingdom most favored by the game. Dynasty Warriors 7’s story mode has you play through four different stories, and while each one does try to paint things a bit in favor of the kingdom you’re currently fighting for, the Shu, lead by the sympathetic Liu Bei, desire a kingdom built out of fairness for all people, its members quick to defend peasants and others wrapped up in the war against their will. The final kingdom though, Jin, has their tale told as the aftermath of the conflict between the three kingdoms, their story meant to help show where China’s future lies after the many battles found in the three intersecting tales of the Shu, Wei, and Wu.

 

Dynasty Warriors 7 does pay a good deal of attention to actually telling the broader story of the battle between the three kingdoms, even if it has to make quite a few allowances to do so. Pivotal moments and conflicts are depicted with cutscenes or are interactive battles, but at other times the game feels the weight of history and has to have the narrator brush over smaller conflicts with a mere mention to avoid cluttering things or slowing the action down too much. While Dynasty Warriors 7 does try to find moments for dramatic story-telling, it also has to capitulate to reality at parts since some of the story’s greatest warriors would end up dying of illness or otherwise exiting the tale in less than thrilling ways. You can still have some strong send-offs for certain principle characters, but you can also have the unintentional strangeness of a level sometimes featuring something like a principle character’s son dying only for it to barely be mentioned due to the breadth of information that must be conveyed. Each of the four kingdoms has a story mode that takes about 5 hours to complete so sometimes a moment barely mentioned in one path is fleshed out in another and generally, despite the large number of involved characters, you can start to make sense of the true key players and follow along with the broader strokes of the plot as well. Even smaller characters can still be delightful additions to the plot depending on how Dynasty Warriors 7 decides to depict them though. While the cute budding romance between Liu Bei and Sun Shang Xiang is important and helps their characters stand out more, you also have minor characters like Zhang He whose flamboyance on the battlefield make him a delight to listen to. There are many named characters serving as officers to face in battle, but many of them are inconsequential beyond just giving you a slightly stronger opponent on the field. You will need to get used to the line “I shall return! Remember that, for yours is the first head I shall seek!” because while mid-battle conversations voiced in English help flesh things out a bit more, the generic lines for such bit players are constantly recycled.

Dynasty Warriors 7’s exaggerated depiction of the wars set in the 2nd and 3rd century does mean you won’t be managing armies but instead hitting the field yourself as one of the major commanders of the kingdom. There are over 60 players you’ll end up getting to select from, although story missions and Legendary Battles do require you to play as specific ones. Despite the wide spread of available characters though, battle styles and most attacks are tied instead to the type of weapon they’re wielding, and beyond a few gender limitations, a character can utilize most any of the weapons you’ve unlocked or purchased of that type. Swords, clubs, nunchaku, iron fans, axes, bows, spears, flails, and even weapon choices that stand out as strange among this eclectic set like paintbrushs and flutes all provide different battle styles and there is definitely room to find preferences. Some have greater attack range, others are slow but powerful, but one thing about every type of weapon is you only have two attack buttons to really worry about. Square executes quick attacks while triangle adds a strong attack that can break guards, and as you charge into waves of standard enemy soldiers, you’ll find you usually won’t need to mix up your attacks much. Mashing the quick attack repeatedly will easily wipe out the riffraff, enemy soldiers often more there to build up your power for special moves than truly pose a threat. Officers are the named characters you have to work a little harder to take out, at least nominally. They can defend against your attacks, unleash more unique attacks of their own, and are often playable characters or at least utilize the same weapon movesets that are available to you, but even without utilizing your strong attacks, it’s often easy to wipe out officers without much thought as well in the game’s story mode.

 

Part of the problem with officers is that they’re not often positioned to be too dangerous. Taking them out is often the most important task, it not only how you increase your character’s abilities by earning skill points for each one you take down, but most missions have successes and failures based on the movement of officers. An allied officer perishing is a loss for you and taking out the right officer can end a mission quickly, other tasks like potentially taking over enemy bases feeling a bit inconsequential when you can mostly look at a mini-map and run to the big dots marking officers. The way major characters are differentiated beyond appearance and voice are a few unique attacks they’re given, EX attacks giving them a unique weapon combo that isn’t always even worth the little effort it requires and the other being Musou attacks where you build up energy attacking enemies and then can unleash it in a flashy attack unique to your warrior of choice. Enemy officers can utilize Musou attacks, but they will come to a stop and glow with energy to give you the notification to run off, making it a bit too easy to avoid what could have been their way of turning the tables or punishing a player who has settled into the rhythm of mashing the basic attack all the time. One character does show a potential way more of the opposition could have been designed though, Lu Bu a warrior that is often depicted as much stronger than everyone else on the battlefield and initially living up to that reputation. He won’t flinch as much to attacks which allows him to strike back and he has a good sense for comboing his moves together, making him a foe you actually have to think on how to hurt if you do want to pursue him despite him being poised as a nearly unbeatable foe.

Much of the story mode battles are let down by how little teeth they end up having. Not only do you get to utilize the weapons you unlocked in one story in all others, thus ensuring you’ll be much stronger than you’re meant to be for most of them since you can play them in any order, but beyond facing Lu Bu you’ll find many conflicts don’t ask too much out of you. You may need to protect another character as they retreat, and sometimes a bit of novelty arises from moments involving manning balistas, but for many battles you can turn your mind off and hack and slash away, especially since you can only set the difficulty for the story at the start of one rather than being able to adjust it on the fly. Even that is a bit tainted by a plain approach to difficulty increases where you’re more likely to lose to a single arrow from a standard archer than a real fight with some danger to it. Spacing out when you tackle the stories will definitely help soothe the sometimes plain action, but Dynasty Warriors 7 isn’t without its moments even if you’re more likely to find them in the game’s other main mode, Conquest.

 

Conquest turns a map of China into a large set of hexagons, each one with their own mission or purpose. Conquest is where you can freely pick who you want to play as and start to unlock the characters who didn’t play a big enough role in the story, and while it still can have a good deal of battles where you don’t need to think much outside of mashing the basic attack button, there’s also more purpose and planning in how you tackle it. The hexagon grid allows you to unlock adjacent missions, and based on which battles you choose to tackle, you can work your way to new characters, legendary weapons, cities where you can buy resources like new mounts, and perhaps most important of all, battles with some real danger to them. Conquest is much more willing to be rough with the player, happy to cluster officer groups together so you can’t so easily carve your way through them as their attacks will better catch you off-guard. Level goals can be more demanding and even standard soldiers can be dangerous like archers poised to wear you down while you’re trying to manage the officers. Story mode definitely tells an effective tale with the historical figures it utilizes, but Conquests’s more free-form and player-lead play gives you much stronger motivation while also better opposing you despite it dispensing with much of a plot outside of character-specific Legendary Battles. Story mode can tap into this a bit with the Seal system where your equipped weapons can gradually unlock new abilities. In Conquest though, you can spend your time working towards cultivating battle bonds with specific characters, you can stick to the weapon and warrior you like for much of it, and success can sometimes be hard fought instead of handed over a bit too easily, and even when a battle is still too simple, they often end much more quickly in Conquest so you can see it more as a stepping stone rather than it comprising a significant chunk of a linear campaign.

THE VERDICT: Dynasty Warriors 7 isn’t repetitive because you’re slaying hundreds of enemies with ease. Slashing through armies is meant to comprise mere seconds of your time, but the more meaningful conflicts aren’t always up to snuff to compensate. The story mode especially feels reticent to throw the sturdier officers at you and your forces in a way that can consistently challenge you, so while the presentation and range of battle styles on offer mean there are things of interest in the story mode, the actual action can become quite rote if you want to see all four tales through to the end. Conquest ends up saving the day though, its more bite-sized design and range of enticing rewards giving the player not just more room to control the experience and shape it into what they want it to be, but it is also far less afraid to present some actual danger during its battles that can shake the player away from beating levels just by pressing square in the right direction constantly.

 

And so, I give Dynasty Warriors 7 for PlayStation 3…

An OKAY rating. Dynasty Warriors 7 isn’t the first game that I’ve played that uses the Warriors format of slaying scores of enemy with ease, but the action seen in Hyrule Warriors and Pirate Warriors had the benefit of coming later down the line when the series’ designers learned how to add more substance to normal battles. It’s not rare to find times in Dynasty Warriors 7 where you look at the mini-map, run to an officer, defeat them with ease, and repeat that process until the battle is over without ever needing to really pay attention to other supposed objectives. It can almost be a surprise when the game is serious about having you defend the allied base or rescue a certain character from danger, but those moments can at least help the story mode find a little footing once you’re strong enough that you never need to fear for your safety outside encounters with Lu Bu. Making the playable characters powerful and capable isn’t the problem so much as needing a wider range of objectives or better structuring the opposition so it can respond to your might. This is why Conquest helps to redeem the game in some regards. Rather than needing to commit all your attention to the four stories, you can dip into Conquest and find fights that will ask you to manage danger better while also making progress more rewarding. The story of the three kingdoms is well told even when considering the allowances it had to make despite how indulgent its presentation can be elsewhere, but Conquest is where the action needs to take center stage and it at least steps up in many missions to ensure you can’t just mash square to clear out all enemies from the entirety of China.

 

Many of the battles in Dynasty Warriors 7 can feel more like something for your fingers to do for a while. Mashing a button to wipe out an army has a simple sort of satisfaction to it, and that fills a certain niche for sure. When you do want something with more substance though, Dynasty Warriors 7 can sometimes struggle in figuring out how to offer that, but it’s not a completely lost cause. The dramatized tale of the three kingdoms does some solid work with the source material while introducing awesome and amusing fictional flourishes, but it’s truly the willingness to actually push back with something beyond damage scaling in the likes of Conquest that keeps Dynasty Warriors 7 from being purely repetitive. Conquest feels like it is designed better around providing both basic thrills and more involved challenges, so while Dynasty Warriors 7 is hard to recommend due to how it presents its play, there are still some battles worth experiencing once you better understand where the appeal can be found.