Viewing Single Post From: Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends Review

Viewing Single Post From: Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends Review
yeticowman	Jul 11 2008, 10:36 PM
Soldier Posts: 3 Group: Members Member #16,616 Joined: July 7, 2008	Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends was a little bit of a disappointment for me, (especially the edit mode...I mean 3 clothing options? Are you F-ing kidding me?) Also, I like being able to build on my victories in battle. What I mean by this is simply that I get more satisfaction out of completing a mission if I know that the reward for completing it has a direct impact on the next level I'm going to play. Now, DW 4 XL's Legend Mode is basically 42 campaigns that are only 1 mission long and all you get as a reward is a ranking and a written epilogue. And sometimes the epilogue makes the end result of the mission pointless. Take Pang Tong's Legend Mode. It's a damn good thing I beat Zhuge Liange and managed to become a trusted advisor, because that would serve as a spring board for-wait for it-getting killed by an archer on his way to a battle. I mean WTF? I spent 10 minutes killing peasants and trying to defend my siege ramps long enough for them to get set up for that? I mean the only ending that could be lamer that this would be "Pang Tong would go on to become one of Liu Bei's most trusted advisors before he died of an infection caused by a hang nail two days later". However, I suppose this might have been okay if I had owned DW 4 and already had a high level weapon going into XL so I could get a level 11 weapon within a few tries. But since XL was my first DW game, I had to level up every character from level 1 with no items. Thankfully, Xtreme Mode is excellent, and since items earned in DW 4 don't cross-over into Xtreme Mode, it allows new players to start off at a level where they can focus on building up their characters stats without having to worry about having a lvl 1 character and weapon. I liked how the fact that you couldn't replenish your health after every battle required you to decide between risking all of your current progress in order to get a new weapon, item or high rank or to call it quits and start over with all your items and weapon experience intact. It's this little bit of strategy that make Xtreme Mode have replay value while at the same time remain true to it's noble button masher roots that drew me into the series in the first place. However, I would have preferred if the two hidden attributes like your "Good-heartedness meter" and your relationship level with other officers wasn't hidden. Also, having an allied unit that just stood there, waiting for you to approach them wouldn't be so bad if they actually did something after you got there. (ie\ Guan Yu-Hey there, would you like to help me destroy this person that you were going to help me destroy anyways?) as opposed to just asking you if you were going to fight them waiting for you to hit them first OR in the case that you got an incredibly useless generic officer, just wait there, doing nothing and not interacting with you at all. I mean it would have been so easy to have displayed an officers relationship level with you on the unit info screen as well as the good-heartedness rating. Also, in Xtreme mode, I think your officers gets stronger and get higher stats the longer they are with you, which is nice as it gives you a reason to try and keep them alive. All-in-all, Xtreme Mode represents the best aspect of the Dynasty Warriors franchise: Repetitive mutton-mashing goodness. However, while I should end the review there, I feel it is necessary to rant about just how little effort went into the Edit mode of this game. For the create a body guard section, you get to choose between one of 5 character models for your body guards (male, female, nanman male, nanman female, and yellow turban male) and name them. That's it. And that's not that a big problem since body guards are really pretty useless to begin with. However, the create an officer mode is as bad if not worse. After choosing your name and gender, you get to decide what your officer will look like and what he/she will wear. Then you will have a dozen options to choose from. Note how I sad "a dozen options" and not Dozens of options. There only are about 5 different parts of your officer you can edit (Color, Head, Chest, Arms & Legs [together they are 1 option] and Hip). Now you only get to choose between 6 colours, 3 hair styles and 3 different types of clothing for each of the remaining categories, unless you are a female, in which case you get 4 options to choose from. Also, by color I mean skin colour, hair colour and the colour of your armor. For skin colour, you only have really have two options white and black. And if you do choose to go with black, you have to wear purple armor and have white hair. Now because of this, you can't really create yourself in DW 4 XL, unless you look like one of the 5 generic character possibilities available to you. After creating your character, you can which type of weapon he/she will use (out of 4 possible choices) and what their move set will be. There are a bunch of options you can choose from, however every single one of them happens to be the move-set of one of the other 42 character available that also wield a spear, pike, sword or great sword. So at the end of this process, your created character winds up being nothing more than a clone of an already existing Officer.* Oh and after you have finished creating your officer in edit mode, learn something else about edit mode. Not only is it crappy, but you can't edit anything in edit mode either. If you want to change something, you have to delete your character and start over from scratch. So the character creation section fails to live up to its name, which is a pretty sad accomplishment when you realize that it doesn't even allow you to do the very basic function and one you would expect to find in something named "Edit Mode" Please feel free to state your own opinions and feelings about DW 4 XL and discuss which DW sequel has managed to fix the flaws I have listed in this review. *the only way around this is if you create a female officer and give her a rapier. That's it.


Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends Review · Dynasty Warriors Series Reviews