phungus's Full Review: Dynasty Warriors 2 for PlayStation 2
Let me begin this review by saying Dynasty Warriors 2 is one of the coolest video games I have ever played. In it, you play a Samurai military general who goes out and leads your troops in hand-to-hand combat. Each level/battle of the game is a huge slaughterfest of warfare and swordplay. You have 100 minutes to complete each battle, and most of them can be done in about an hour.
The battles in DW2 are straightforward. You have a large map with a bunch of different colors on it. Red marks show where your enemy is and blue marks show where your men have conquered. Although you control just one person, there are literally hundreds of other warriors fighting along side you, or against you. I’ve never seen a 3D type game with this many different people in it.
Gameplay in DW2 is fairly simple. You have a third person view of a character and you run around slashing down enemies. Every 15 or so seconds, you can build up enough strength to do a special power move or a charge attack, which does more damage and hits more enemies. The coolness of this game is that you can strike more than one opponent at once. I couldn’t help but love the fact that I could swing one time and send 4 or 5 guys flying through the air.
One thing about this game that may get a little annoying is that it is highly repetitive. Enemies come at you in wave after wave and you just got to keep swinging. There are some bosses and harder characters, but mostly this game is about hack and slash. I couldn’t sit through an entire battle without having to save the game and take a break. Still, this game is quite fun.
The graphics are very nice and I was impressed with the sheer magnitude of this game. There were only a copy of occasions where things slowed down, and that was when several higher power characters were on screen doing special moves. At any given time you will have up to 40 or 50 different characters running around you, and that is impressive to me. Some of the animations are great, especially when you send somebody flying through the air after chopping them down.
The sound in this game is both good and bad. The ambient screaming and battle sounds really add to the frenzied atmosphere, but your own combat sounds get old quick. You have basically the same 3 sounds while attacking, and you’ll hear them over and over again until you’re sick of them. Everybody grunts and goes “uhhhh!” when they get cut down. During the first battle, I had over 600 kills, so I got to hear the “uhhhh!” sound over 600 times. Not cool.
There is currently a Dynasty Warriors 3 title out now, so you may be able to get DW2 for pretty cheap. I rented this one and have very much enjoyed it, but I don’t know if its something I would want to buy. Although you have different starting warriors to choose from, there probably isn’t that much of a different in actual gameplay from character to character.
All in all, I have really enjoyed playing this game. It’s the kind of title that puts calluses on your thumbs.
This is a new type of action game that allows you to relive first hand the experiences that made these men and women the Warriors of the Three Kingdom...More at eBay
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