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yeonchi · 14 days ago

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Koei Warriors Retrospective Part 17: Dynasty Warriors 7

Dynasty Warriors 7 (真・三國無双6) Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Release dates: Japan: 11 March 2011 (PS3 only) USA: 29 March 2011 Europe: 8 April 2011

After helping their interdimensional friends in Yabuverse PM10, it was time for Alec and Shanna to return to their assignment for Azuma. But what does their assignment involve? The answer will be revealed soon...

How is it that the Warriors series can be more popular in Japan despite their covers looking more minimalistic than the covers of the Western releases?

For those of you who are wondering: Yes, I'm aware that Dynasty Warriors Origins comes out next week. I reviewed the demo in the last instalment. No, I won't be able to do a retrospective on it anytime soon. I'm going to continue the retrospectives from where we left off last year and at the rate I'm going, we'll hopefully get to Origins in July, rounding off the series perfectly.

The beginning of the 2010s marked the tenth anniversary of Dynasty Warriors 2, or if you want to be pedantic, Shin Sangoku Musou, aka the Dynasty Warriors we came to know and love. Koei's merger with Tecmo followed the release of Dynasty Warriors 6 and in the midst of all these half-cocked releases and attempts at damage control, a new game was in the works that would return to the series' roots and bring back fans for the special occasion.

Although the modern era of Warriors games got off to a slow and bumpy start, this was where it began to take off. While I wasn't able to play any of these games for a few years yet, I had been hyping myself up by watching gameplay videos on YouTube back when the first few games were released. Now that I've been able to properly play everything, let's look back at this era of Dynasty Warriors just as I've been doing with other eras of Warriors games.

Dynasty Warriors 7

When this game was announced in late-2010, it was initially announced as a PS3 exclusive. This was because this game was rendered to be compatible with stereoscopic 3D on 3DTVs, which were the rage at the time. It should also be noted that according to producer Akihiro Suzuki, it was a struggle trying to release DW6 for the Xbox 360 and that they were more familiar with developing games on PlayStation. Days later, however, it was announced that there would be an Xbox 360 release, but only for the West, making it the first game since SW2E and the first mainline game to receive such treatment.

For the first time in the series, Dynasty Warriors would go beyond the Wuzhang Plains and cover the events surrounding the fall of Shu and Wu in the leadup to the establishment of the Jin dynasty under the Sima clan. As such, a new Jin kingdom was added, with Sima Yi being moved to it from Wei. This is something that was foreshadowed in DW6 with Sima Yi's final Musou Mode stage against Cao Cao (and Cao Pi's final stage against Sima Yi in Special), and WO2 with Sima Yi continuing to side with Orochi in partnership with Masamune Date even as Wei reestablished its power.

While numerous new characters were introduced for Jin, the other kingdoms also received new characters as well:

Wei

Jia Xu

Ding Feng

Lianshi

Shu

Liu Shan (initially spelt Liu Chan while generic)

Ma Dai

Guan Suo

Bao Sanniang

Jin

Sima Shi

Sima Zhao

Deng Ai

Wang Yuanji

Zhong Hui

Zhuge Dan

Xiahou Ba

Guo Huai

Cai Wenji makes her mainline series debut alongside the reintroduced Daqiao and Jiang Wei, who reuse their designs from Multi Raid 2. Meng Huo returns as well from DW6E while Xingcai and Zhurong return from DW5. The only weird thing about the reintroduction of the Nanman is that their generic officers use the regular models instead of their unique models. For fuck's sake, I know you don't appear in Story Mode, but come on. Even DW6E had unique models for the Nanman when Meng Huo was reintroduced.

The introduction of Cai Wenji and Bao Sanniang marks the beginning of Omega Force introducing redundant characters who don't have much relevance in the Three Kingdoms story. Typically, these redundant characters are single-issue characters that are known for one thing and nothing else. In this game, that seems to apply to the female characters; at least with the other female characters up to now and Lianshi, you can argue that they're related to major characters, but these two? Cai Wenji was only known for being a poet who was captured by the Xiongnu tribe before being ransomed by Cao Cao over a decade later, while Bao Sanniang, who doesn't even appear in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, was only known for having the hots for Guan Suo, who isn't even a historical character anyway, and his responses to her don't come off like he reciprocates her love for himself. He doesn't even mention her by name for crying out loud! Hell, even the other Guanbabies or Shu officers never seem to acknowledge her existence at all. This is just pitiful. The same could also be said for Cai Wenji, but the only up she has on Bao Sanniang was that she was in Multi Raid 2. That's it.

So anyway, how much relevance do those two have in this game? Very little. They don't appear at all in Story Mode, but they do appear in various stages in Conquest Mode, including their Legendary Battles. Well, at least they might get some more relevance in Warriors Orochi and... wait, is Omega Force introducing redundant characters in other games so they can feature them in Warriors Orochi? Hmm...

Musou Mode, now renamed Story Mode to be in line with other Warriors franchises, is a radical departure from previous games. On top of returning to the kingdom-centric approach as used in DW2 and 4, Story Mode is presented cinematically, with the game seamlessly transitioning between battles and events as required.

Instead of the usual battle preparation screen, most stages start in your main camp, where you can walk around, talk with people and make preparations before you begin the battle. Two stories have a soldier who has a mini-arc in the story; the soldier in Shu was saved by Liu Bei in the Yellow Turban Rebellion and he will give updates on his own life as time goes on, identifying himself to you by "It's me!" when you talk to him; the soldier in Jin just gives updates on what he heard about Sima Zhao and Wang Yuanji's relationship.

Each stage in Story Mode gives you a specific character to play as, and most stages also have another character with unlimited life who will follow you as you play. Some battles are split into two parts with the first part restricting you to a part of the battlefield before moving onto another part or opening the rest of the battlefield for the second part. The final battle in Jin, the Capture of Chengdu, takes a different approach as it is split into three parts set on different battlefields. Each story has 15 stages, but the splits expand this to 22-24.

This game contains the biggest example of autoerotic assetflipsiation, with as many as 32 battlefields recycled from the DW6 era. Some stages like Xiapi, Chengdu and Hefei reuse their direct counterparts, while some battlefields are named for a location near where the original battle took place in DW6 (eg. Yong'an 6E > Mt. Niutou 7, Jieting 6 Special > Tianshui 7, Wuzhang Plains 6 > Taoshui 7). Of course, original maps have been made for notable conflicts as well, so there is a mix there. I made a post about this in March 2022.

With the new Story Mode format and expansion to 15 stages for each kingdom, smaller warlords do get some prominence. Ou Xing's Rebellion and the Battle of Yangping Gate are promoted from being Legend Mode stages to Story Mode stages, there's some stuff about Yellow Turban remnants, Cao Cao gets a stage where he attempts to assassinate Dong Zhuo, Tao Qian and Xu Province make their debut in this game and the Battle of Wan Castle gets a second part following Dian Wei's death where Cao Cao's forces fight Zhang Xiu and Liu Biao. Guandu is also included into the Shu story to show Liu Bei's reunion with Guan Yu.

There is no Free Mode in this game and as such, there is no way to play as another character, nor is there a way to play Story Mode with two players. Because of the way Story Mode is structured, the new characters in Wei, Wu and Shu don't really get a chance to be played. For this game however, things would improve with this next mode.

The modern era of Warriors games would introduce an additional mode that isn't Challenge Mode or Versus Mode, the former apparently being relegated to Xtreme Legends expansions. Conquest Mode, or Chronicle Mode in Japanese, has you playing battles all across China, liberating cities, making friendships and earning rewards.

There are 10 types of generic battles, which either reward you with a weapon, gold, fame or an upgrade to your abilities. These battles typically use part of a map (if not the whole map) and different officers with each playthrough:

Rescue Mission - Save ally from enemy

Conflict - Normal battle between two sides

Conquest - Seize bases before enemy commander arrives

Extermination - Defeat Yellow Turban remnants (translated into English as "new threat" lmao) and save peasants

Solo Battle - Defeat enemy commander alone with another character giving you a mission to occupy an enemy base

Pursuit - Prevent enemy from escaping

Fierce Warriors - Fight against other characters in the arena

Alliance - Mini-arc battles with kingdoms

Assault - Assist ally to the escape point

Defensive Battle - Defend main camp from enemy

There are also Treasure Battles, where you face off against an officer and obtain their weapon. Three battles towards the south of China will unlock three horses, Shadow Runner, Hex Mark and Red Hare.

Sandwiched among all these reward and upgrade battles are Legendary Battles. Each character has two or three of these mini-battles similar to Legend Mode of DW4XL. Some battles have fixed officer lineups while some battles have randomised lineups similar to the generic battles. This does give characters who didn't appear in Story Mode a little relevance, but that's it.

Two characters from each kingdom and Zhurong are initially available for use in Conquest Mode. To unlock other characters, you need to have played them in Story Mode or clear that character's Legendary Battles. The latter condition kind of defeats the purpose of Legendary Battles, especially because characters have special lines in those stages that are only heard when you play as them. Why not have it so you need to unlock a character's Legendary Battle section in order to unlock them?

In cities, there is a Weapon Dealer, Blacksmith, and Teahouse. Sometimes, a Merchant and Scholar may visit a city every 3 wins until you've liberated all the cities. The Merchant has weapons and guardian animals for purchase, plus depending on the region, you can select a character to reinforce you in battle. The Scholar will give you a five-question quiz (out of a total of 500) about the history of the Three Kingdoms and answering at least four of them correct will award you with some gold.

Clearing a character's first Legendary Battle will allow them to visit cities. Interacting with officers in cities or in battle will increase your bonds with them. Increasing their bond to level 2 will allow them to be selectable as your companion officer at the teahouse. Level 4 unlocks a conversation with that officer that gives you a response choice, of which one of them will cause your bond with them to increase. By the time you're at level 9 with them, their in-battle encounter lines will change, then maxing your bond out to level 10 unlocks all Conquest Mode lines in the Gallery that haven't been heard yet.

When you clear battles in Conquest Mode at a particular difficulty, all the difficulties below it will be also marked as cleared. That's actually a pretty nice idea and I wish it were implemented in the rest of DW7 and in DW8 as well because why should you need to clear any lower difficulties when you've already cleared a higher difficulty?

Although the format of Story Mode makes it difficult to implement multiplayer, two players can play on Conquest Mode, whether locally or, for the first time, online. It's so good that people can rely on the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live to play with someone from another corner of the world that has a copy of the game in the same language or region. But seriously, you can invite a friend to play online, as is the standard.

The Gallery, formerly known as the Camp section, has been massively revamped from previous games. As is obvious, you can view the models of the characters, weapons and guardian animals. Character movesets can also be viewed here, plus you can see the six different expressions for each character that are shown with their dialogue box. You can also preview the characters in their different costumes, which are detailed with names. Initially, characters have two costumes and some characters like Xiahou Dun, Sima Shi and Xiahou Ba have different model variants with and without eyepatches or helmets. Also, for characters who initially served another faction or would go on to serve another faction, their alternate costumes will be seen in the game. You can also hear their voice lines from the game, complete with subtitles and dialogue boxes. General voice lines for characters are unlocked by unlocking all of their skills, and as stated, Conquest Mode lines are unlocked by maxing out friendships with officers. Although you can't hear them in the Gallery, a lot of generic officer voice lines have been rerecorded from DW6, and it shows if you take the time to compare.

Something I also want to highlight with the voice lines is that aside from the officer defeated lines, the 1000 KO achievement self-complimentary lines have also been jazzed up in the English dub so practically nobody just says "I am a True Warrior of the Three Kingdoms!" anymore. Remember this point for later.

The pre-rendered movies shown as part of Story Mode can be viewed as always, but for the first time, you can also replay the events shown during battles. If you made changes to the characters' costumes, they can be reflected in the replays just as they would in the game. There are also wallpapers that can be viewed just like in Warriors Orochi; of note, there are two ending wallpapers for each faction, a story wallpaper with drawings of their main characters, and a Legends wallpaper (also known as 10 Year Anniversary in Empires) that features characters in their DW6 outfits. Despite appearing in Multi Raid 2, Cai Wenji doesn't appear in Wei's Legends wallpaper while Daqiao and Jiang Wei appear in the ones for Wu and Shu. Jin only gets a story wallpaper and Other only gets a Legends wallpaper.

There is also a tutorial available in this game for new and returning players. You control Guan Ping as you go through some drills with Xing Cai and Guan Yu involving the various mechanics of the game. But if you're familiar enough with the series then you don't really need to do the tutorial, do you?

Beginner difficulty, originally an Xtreme Legends exclusive, is now made available to the vanilla games from this game.

The battle mechanics have gone back to what they were in DW4, but with some obvious changes. Characters can switch between any two weapons like in Strikeforce, with the switch performing an attack preceding it known as the Switch (Variable) Attack. Each weapon follows a 6-hit system for Normal and Charge attacks. All characters are assigned a favourite/EX weapon and when they use a particular Charge Attack with it, they will perform an additional attack at the end known as an EX Attack which is exclusive to the character. Because of this, weapon movesets are both cloned and shared between characters, with the only variations being the EX Attack. Generic officers use the sword, spear, club and iron fan and their associated movesets.

Musou Attacks have been reworked to be one-burst finishers of varying effects unlike in the classic series and 6. Characters start off with one Musou gauge bar, then by using skills, they can have up to four. Musou Attacks take up one bar of the Musou gauge each but they can no longer be charged manually. In addition, each character can unlock a second Musou Attack which is performed either in the air or while pressing R1. I tried looking for a correlation between which types of characters use R1 or Aerial Musous; my hypothesis was that Dash-type characters using lighter weapons would have Aerial Musous while Whirlwind-type characters using heavier weapons would have R1 Musous, but ultimately, it's all over the place and there are too many exceptions for the rule to even hold water. All Musou Attacks are fixed per character and True Musou Attacks are now just increased power with an added fire element and no additional attacks. That's it. Because of this, the Wine fills one bar of Musou while the Imperial Seal fills all bars of Musou without the 10 second unlimited effect.

Targeted attacks make a return in various forms, including Charge Attacks, Musou Attacks and Switch Attacks. Dash Attacks (but not strong Dash Attacks) and Jump Attacks are also available, but not Jump Charges. Um, why? What was the rationale behind leaving them out? Granted, the Jump Attacks for some weapons become the Jump Charges in the next game, but leaving it out just makes the movesets feel incomplete and the gameplay slightly jarring.

Your attacks can also knock back your allies alongside with your enemies, making it a friendly-fire type of situation, but your allies don't suffer any damage. See, if these games were to have realism, then your allies would suffer damage as well, and that would mean killing your allied commander and tanking the game lol.

There are different gimmicks to each weapon, some that can be seen in the descriptions for them. The Great Sword can only be wielded by male characters and the Chain Whip can only be wielded by female characters. These are the only weapons that have such limitations which, aside from being sexist, is absolutely fucking stupid because why even bother to put limitations on weapons when you're only going to do it for two of them, one for each gender?

If you want to learn more about the different weapon movesets in this game (and the next one), feel free to check out the Dynasty Warriors Weapon Moveset Power Rankings. They are more suited for the next game, but they still do apply to this game.

Summoning horses is now done with L2. I didn't realise this when playing the PC version and mapped that function to the down button on my controller because it was like that in 6/7 Special. Oh well.

The Pause menu and the Battle Info menu are separate from each other and accessible through the Start and Select buttons. Subofficers are no longer listed under officers and instead are listed individually in the battle lineups. There are no third-party armies like in DW6.

Rams and arbalests among other siege weapons receive a redesign in this game. On top of this, you can also ride on ballistae, juggernauts and pyrocannons on select stages. It's a good way to clear out enemies, but if you defeat an officer while you're on one, you won't hear the officer defeated line for your character even though the kill is still credited to you.

Bases are also a thing in this game and you can conquer bases by defeating all the guard captains inside them. This doesn't happen on all battles and conquering bases doesn't really affect the battle unless the story calls for it. It's not the same experience it was during DW6.

Character growth is barely defined in this game because there's no levels or ranks to achieve. You just defeat officers and obtain items that can increase your life, attack or defense. That's it.

Weapons can be purchased at the Weapon Dealer (or the Merchant in Conquest Mode), but they can also be picked up in battle and you can see the name and type of weapon obtained. Some weapons can only be bought using Lu Meng, Zhuge Liang or Guo Huai with the Smithing skill unlocked (as they are the only ones who have them). One copy of each type of weapon can be obtained, but they can be customised through the use of seals.

Seals can contribute to your stats, enhance your abilities or grant mastery of a particular weapon before you have the appropriate power or speed stats for them. Each weapon contributes progress to obtaining a particular seal, which does encourage you to use weapons of different levels. The thing I don't like about it is how they all contribute to obtaining a particular seal and not contribute a level to a particular seal. At least that way the game would make you use all the weapons. Depending on the weapon, up to five seals can be equipped. You can also leave your weapons at the Blacksmith in Conquest Mode to allow it to contribute progress towards obtaining the weapon's seal.

Speaking of those stats, I mentioned before about Dash and Whirlwind type weapons. The power and speed stats are tied to your character's compatibilities with particular weapons. There are three levels of weapon compatibility; low compatibility means you are unable to wield the weapon competently (though it doesn't mean that you can't), high compatibility increases your attack speed with the weapon and master compatibility allows you to perform Dash and Whirlwind with said weapon. Dash is basically being able to move (double-jump) through the air and cancel attacks, while Whirlwind creates wind around you to deal damage to surrounding enemies.

Some weapons don't give you master compatibility until your power stat is higher, for example the halberd can only perform Whirlwind at 100 power whereas the twin rods can perform it from as low as 40 power. While many characters will have a skill that increases their power or speed stat, characters can also have a skill that grants them mastery of their EX weapon (because sometimes it might not be enough) or equip a seal on their weapon that grants mastery of a particular weapon, and those methods can bypass the stats.

Higher level weapons will have elements on them. Aside from Fire, Ice and Lightning, the Light and Shadow elements return from DW5 and are known as Wind and Slash. Unlike the Light element however, Wind deals damage through guarding enemies based on their HP.

Moving onto skills now and the skill tree works similarly to how it did in 6 Empires. Characters start off only being able to perform up to 4-hit attacks, but here, you can unlock the fifth and sixth Normal and Charge Attacks along with a second Musou gauge and second Musou Attack. Skills require skill points to unlock, and each character initially obtains 10 skill points (bukou 武功) for each officer defeated, which can be upgraded to 12, then up to 16 by equipping the Skill Points Up seal on both weapons.

I hate how skill points are implemented in this game. Skill points are individual to each character, but while playing through Story Mode, I got the impression that skill points are carried throughout the whole story. Apparently on the wiki, if you use skill points to obtain skills for a character in Story Mode, the next character you play will still have the skill points you used initially. See for yourself and tell me if I'm wrong:

敵武将を撃破して得た武功は、次に操作する武将に引き継がれる。武功を消費して特技を習得しても、消費した分が次に操作する武将に戻ってくる。

If this is true then this explains another weird phenomenon I've noticed with skill points. Take Wei's Story Mode for example. Throughout the story, you'll play as Xiahou Dun, Cao Cao, Xiahou Yuan and Xu Zhu regularly, so Xiahou Dun or Xiahou Yuan getting enough points to unlock all of their skills by their final appearance would be understandable. However, Zhang He is the last character you can play in Wei's Story Mode and he's not playable until Part 2 of Mt. Dingjun, the penultimate stage of Wei's story. By the time I arrived at this battle and checked his skill tree, I swear I had enough points to unlock most (if not all) of Zhang He's skills and still have heaps left over. I don't know where half of those points came from, but I swear I was getting a bonus after clearing each stage.

Then in the end, because skill points are individual to each character, I'm left with thousands of skill points with bloody nowhere else to use them, plus I'm earning at least 12 points every time I defeat an officer so that's more skill points going into the tax hole. Hell, Sima Zhao and Lu Bu have skills that require 2,240 points to unlock while others go up to a maximum of 840, if not 420 blaze it. This might not seem that big of a deal to some people, but I hate it when games don't let players make effective use of their resources. This would be less infuriating if skill points were, like gold, shared among all characters. Have bonus points for clearing stages and 16 points per officer defeated all you want, at least that way I'll know that they can go somewhere and even if I've unlocked every character's skills, I'll know that it was all worth it.

Guardian Animals are selectable in Conquest Mode. Aside from the mounts (including elephants and bears), you can also have support animals, namely tigers, wolves, pandas and harriers, but it means that you'll be stuck on a default horse if you use them. Remember DW5 when you could have a tiger and ride on Red Hare at the same time? Good times. Stat boosts can also benefit mounts as well, particularly the Winged Boots, which can make Red Hare actually feel like Red Hare.

Dynasty Warriors 7 is the first game to implement DLC on a large scale. The common types of DLC sold in Warriors games usually include Japanese language options, character costumes, BGMs, wallpapers, weapons and battle stages, and a lot of the DLC sold is a prime example of Koei Tecmo rehashing content from previous games in their money grubbing "autoerotic assetflipsiation".

Two sets of original costumes have been made for the characters, with one set designed around a modern-day school setting and the other set designed around fairytales, myths and legends (eg. Cao Cao as King Arthur, Xiaoqiao as Little Red Riding Hood, Zhuge Liang as the Kurama-tengu, Xiahou Ba as Peter Pan and Diaochan and Lu Bu as Beauty and the Beast). The 16 new characters debuting in this game also get a fantasy-themed version of their outfits.

The character costumes from DW3-6 also make a return in these packs. In their respective sets, Daqiao, Jiang Wei, Xingcai and Zhurong's fourth costumes from WOZ are included as their 6-esque costumes while Cao Pi, Ling Tong, Xingcai and Guan Ping's third costumes from the same game are included as their 4-esque costumes. DW2 costumes are not included for some reason despite this game celebrating its tenth anniversary.

Koei Tecmo has also partnered with other businesses to provide exclusive pre-order bonuses as well. Some bonuses do eventually become available to everyone else as DLC later down the line, while others apparently don't and they're not included in ports or DE releases. Among these bonuses, DW1 costumes are available for Zhao Yun, Xiahou Dun, Taishi Ci, Diaochan and Lu Bu, but for some reason, Koei Tecmo never had any plans to release DLC for other characters who were in the first game. Remember this point for DW8.

While multiple characters share weapons with each other in this game, future games would make efforts to declone them, with some declone weapons being introduced initially as DLC. In this game, there is the Dagger-axe, Bombs, Short Pike, Mace, Great Axe, Pugil Sticks, Spike Shield, Lightning Sword, Yacht Arm Blade, Boomerang and Circle Blade. Only the first five weapons receive their own weapon icons in the menu, possibly because they were released as part of the vanilla game's DLC and they didn't have time to make icons for the XL DLC.

Six alternate weapon skin packs were also provided, giving weird and modern takes on the weapons. The first four packs would come with battles that allow you to unlock the weapon when cleared, while the last two packs, would directly add weapons (which are also weirdly overpowered) to your inventory.

And then we come to battle packs. For the vanilla game, all the stages from DW2 are available, with each pack featuring the main battle, the battle from the other side and an original scenario. Of course, the inclusion of battlefields from DW2 means that we get remake throwback battles from past games. I'll explain more later.

Also in the vanilla game, two original scenario packs, namely Sanjiang Castle and Jianye (later reused in XL as Taoyang) are available. There's not a lot of information on Sanjiang Castle (三江城), but it's mentioned in Chapter 90 of the original RO3K book as "the city of Three Rivers" and also in the final episodes of My Fair Princess III (還珠格格3 天上人間). Given how the Nanman region is in the southwest of China, and Sanjiang Castle is in Myanmar according to MFPIII, I speculate that the actual location could be one of the capitals of the Konbaung dynasty, like Inwa/Ava. Of course, Myanmar as we know it today didn't exist back in Han Dynasty China, so maybe we'll never know.

PSN avatars featuring the characters and custom PS3 themes featuring Xiahou Dun, Lu Xun and Wang Yuanji are also available. The themes are available for free, but why not the avatars as well? What's to stop people from pirating them and changing their PSN avatars that way?

Dynasty Warriors 7 Special (Shin Sangoku Musou 6 Special)

Dynasty Warriors 7 Special (真・三國無双6 Special) Platforms: PlayStation Portable Release dates: Japan: 25 August 2011

Koei Tecmo's PSP ports of their Warriors games feel like another bridge between the classic and modern eras, like DW5S to WOZ, doesn't it?

Another Dynasty Warriors game comes to the PSP, and technically this is the first Warriors PSP game from the modern era to do so. How can a modern era game originally made for the PS3 fit onto a UMD that holds up to 1.8 GB at most? Why, by splitting it into two UMDs, of course.

Like how DW6 was split into two discs for the PS2 in Japan, DW7 Special is split into two UMDs. The first UMD contains Wei and Jin's Story Modes along with Conquest Mode while the second UMD contains Shu and Wu's Story Modes. If you select something that's not in the UMD, it will obviously prompt you to swap them. Is it possible to merge the two UMDs together? I tried and it didn't work.

Changes have been made to Story Mode as a result of the port. There are fades between cutscenes and battles instead of direct transitions. Even when you talk to the guard to begin the battle, there's a loading screen before the battle begins. Between each battle, there's a screen showing what the next battle will be and who you'll be playing as.

In this port, you can play any stage in Story Mode as any character you've unlocked, making it a pseudo-Free Mode per se. You'll still get the camps at the beginning of each battle, but when you start the battle, both the character who was meant to be controlled and the officer following them will appear as your unlimited life allies. You can also play Story Mode with another player wirelessly.

A new multiplayer mode has been added to Conquest Mode. Aside from the usual two-player co-op format, you can play in showdown battles with up to four players. Each player plays the same stage individually and they compete to earn the most points by defeating enemies. A player can use their Musou gauge to summon copies of themselves on the other players' battles so they can (indirectly) defeat them. Once all players finish the battle, the winner of the showdown can earn a weapon and 2.5 times the fame and gold, with the other players receiving a reduced reward multiplier based on how they finished. I wonder why they weren't able to implement this on the PS3, even if it's just online gameplay instead of local gameplay, since it can be hard to get separate battles going on the one system.

When the Merchant visits your town, you can buy War Manuals (upgrade items) to increase your health, attack or defense by 50 or obtain 300 skill points for that character. Buying skill points can be helpful for characters who aren't playable in Story Mode, but again, unless the pool is shared among all characters, it ends up being more waste. But wait.

This port adds the ability to reset the stats for characters. You can choose to reset the stats or skill trees for each or every character. That way your skill points can continue to be used. In XL, both the stats and skill trees (along with titles) are reset at once.

Transferring the PS3 save data from the vanilla game to the PSP allows you to play Conquest Mode with all characters unlocked. The only DLCs available in this port are music packs, which are free of charge.

So yeah, this is another game that didn't see a Western localisation, probably because Sony of America didn't want players juggling two UMDs. Through quick research, I discovered that while there are games that are split into two UMDs in Japan, the only American releases with two UMDs are those that are made of two separate games (The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky/SC, Mega Man Powered Up/Mega Man X Maverick Hunter, Capcom Classics Double Pack - Remixed/Reloaded).

Apparently, it's been said that DW7XL is the PS3 version of this game, so since I've covered everything there is to cover about Special, maybe we can move on.

Dynasty Warriors 7 Xtreme Legends (Complete/Definitive Edition)

Dynasty Warriors 7 Xtreme Legends - Complete/Definitive Edition (真・三國無双6 猛将伝 - with 猛将伝/DX) Platforms: PlayStation 3, PC Release dates: Japan: 29 September 2011 (PS3)/9 March 2012 (PC - with) Taiwan: 24 November 2011 (PS3)/21 June 2012 (PC - with) USA: 15 November 2011 (PS3)/6 December 2018 (PC - DX) Europe: 18 November 2011 (PS3)/6 December 2018 (PC - DX)

After not receiving one for 6, Xtreme Legends expansions return to Dynasty Warriors with 7. You know, with the seventh generation of game consoles embracing internet connectivity, online services and DLC, you'd think Koei Tecmo would learn to release expansions as DLC. I mean, after all, they released the expansion content of SW2XL as DLC for the Xbox 360. Xtreme Legends expansions are upgraded versions of the vanilla games, plus they're a staple of Koei Warriors games at this point, so maybe Koei Tecmo had the foresight to plan ahead and code the vanilla game in a way that they could easily add in the additional modes when the expansion comes out, and-

Yeah, they released it as a separate game again. Now that I think about it, I'm kind of glad that they released it as a separate game physically, given the recent closure of the Xbox Games Store for the 360 and the attempted closure of the PSN store for the PS3, Vita and PSP, only to backtrack on the first two soon after announcing it.

So how does "importing" work with the PS3? Same as it always does, you still need the vanilla game disc to unlock its content in the expansion. However, if you're signed into the PSN, the "import"/"remix" state will remain for 24 hours until you need to do it again. Does it work with a digital copy of the vanilla game? What if I have a digital copy of XL? Could I merge the ISOs of the two like I did with the classic series games for PCSX2? While these are questions that have remained unanswered on gaming forums, they are unfortunately rendered moot because I'm playing a different version that is superior anyway.

For the first time in Dynasty Warriors, new characters make their debut in an expansion. This time, Wei receives three new characters to balance out the roster; Pang De makes a return from DW5, wielding the twin axes (in a callback to his twin picks/halberds), Wang Yi debuts as another single-issue character (in that she is only known for her animosity towards Ma Chao) and Guo Jia receives an upgrade from his generic appearance. These characters can also be played in Story Mode and Conquest Mode.

Guo Jia will now appear in place of his generic counterpart in game, and as such he has a new appearance and voice in Story Mode. His generic counterpart in Conquest Mode has been replaced by another generic officer, but not in the DLC stages where he appears (DW2 Yiling - Defend Yiling and Treasure Battle Set 4 - White Knight).

On top of this, four officers have had their weapons decloned, namely Xiahou Dun (Sword > Podao), Zhao Yun (Spear > Dragon Spear), Guan Yu (Pike > Crescent Blade) and Zhang Fei (Double Voulge > Double Pike). Their Musous remain the same and their EX attacks are ported over to their new weapons, but I wish they could still be able to use their EX attacks on their old EX weapons, which is going to be important when we get to Empires. Because I didn't play the vanilla game, DW7Special is the only game where I can use the old EX attacks on the old weapons.

The mastery skills for their respective weapons have been changed in their skill trees, but given how Xiahou Dun changed from a Speed to a Power weapon and Zhao Yun and Guan Yu changed from a Power to a speed weapon, the mastery skills for their new weapons could just have been added next to their old ones on the skill tree, not that mastery skills or increasing power/speed stats exists.

With these weapon changes, two new weapon mastery actions have been introduced, namely Shadow Sprint (Podao, Double Pike) and Dive (Dragon Spear, Crescent Blade). Shadow Sprint allows you to cancel a Charge Attack and shoulder-check enemies by dashing into them, while Dive allows you to dive backwards when attacked by enemies.

A new difficulty setting above Chaos, known as Nightmare or Ultimate difficulty, has been introduced. In this game, enemy banner soldiers can give officers random buffs and drain your Musou Gauge. And then there's the usual Chaos-difficulty handicaps such as only having meat buns and wine to recover health and Musou.

The main mode of the Xtreme Legends expansion, Legend Mode, continues with this game. The mode has you act as a Prefect of a desolate Castle Town and you play battles to return it to its former glory. You also need to appoint another officer as an Adjutant, and they're really only there to explain how the mode works and just give random quips when the town is in various states of order. Eventually, you'll be able to welcome the Emperor to your town and that's about it. You can change your Adjutant by speaking to the Counselor.

At the start of Legend Mode, you'll be able to access the Weapon Dealer and Blacksmith as you would during Legend Mode. After clearing the first set of battles, you'll be able to access the Strategist and buy War Manuals, the power-up functionality having been moved here from the Merchant on Conquest Mode in Special. Aside from what was already there, you can also buy War Manuals to increase your Power and Speed stats so that way, you can hack your way to achieving mastery of all weapons. Now heavy characters can double-jump and light characters can conjure winds too! And yet men still can't use Chain Whips and women still can't use Great Swords.

Once you clear the second set of battles, the Merchant (a different guy to the one in Conquest Mode, the one in Legend Mode's more like a trader) will be able to travel to different provinces and obtain items. Sometimes he'll have weapons or animals, but other times he'll have treasures that are traded for gold.

When you're ready to go to battle, speak to the City Guard. Aside from DLC battles (which are available after clearing all battles, assuming they have been purchased), there are two types of battles in Legend Mode, namely Hero Scenarios and Legend Scenarios. Hero Scenarios give the characters who didn't feature in Story Mode a chance to shine, with each character getting a battle complete with a narration segment and a camp segment (complete with a guy in each one who goes "It's me!" when you talk to him). Legend Scenarios are more remakes of select battles, mostly from DW5 with DW6 Hulao Gate and DW3 Fan Castle. They really took care when replicating the stages down to the voice lines, even more so than the remakes in the DLC stages. I'll elaborate more on this later.

Your Castle Town can be in one of three states; Orderly, Carefree or Friendly. Orderly gives your character higher attack and defense while in battle, Carefree reduces the prices of weapons and War Manuals by 30%, while Friendly allows your Adjutant to gift you a War Manual and also unlocks their Legend Mode lines in the Gallery when you speak to them.

Titles are a new feature added to this game and are only unlockable in Legend Mode, though I wish it also applied to Conquest Mode as well. To earn titles, you need to complete a condition on a stage with at least the specified number of stars and above a particular difficulty. Such conditions include defeating enemies or officers within a certain amount of time, above a certain amount of health and/or without using your Musou Attack. Title promotions grant you stat bonuses and unlocking all eight of them grants your character the ceremonial robes, which is just a crown and robe added to the basic costume.

Rare weapons (that require you to unlock them) make a return in this game. Each stage in Legend Mode will have rare weapons that are available to be unlocked on Chaos and Nightmare difficulties; you can only unlock the Nightmare weapons after clearing all Legend Mode stages (excluding DLC) on Chaos difficulty, even if the stage doesn't have a rare weapon to unlock on Chaos. There is no specific character requirement for this.

Challenge Mode makes a return in this expansion with four challenges; aside from Bridge Melee, Rampage and Arena, there is also a new Speed Run challenge (similar to SW1) where you get to the destination as fast as possible. Performing EX Attacks activates a stat buff.

With the expansion, of course, there are new DLCs available as well. If you've purchased DLC for the vanilla game, it will be available in the expansion, but the DLC battle packs will have to be unlocked by "importing" the vanilla game. Guo Jia, Wang Yi and Pang De receive their original and fantasy costumes, but Pang De doesn't have his DW5 or WOZ costumes available for some reason.

And now we get to the XL battle packs, which show the epitome of this game's bizarre form of laziness. 10 Xtreme Battle packs and 6 more remake throwback battle packs have been released for the expansion, where you fight masses of enemies and enemy officers just like the vanilla game's DLC battle packs. Here's where it gets ludicrous. These DLC battles are available in Legend Mode after they are purchased, but then Koei repackaged the Xtreme Battle packs and sold them again for the vanilla game so they can be accessed in Conquest Mode. WHAT. THE ACTUAL. HELL. Instead of making different DLC battles for both games, they resold the expansion's battle packs with some modifications to remove the XL characters from them. Hence, there is a risk that someone may accidentally pay twice for the same DLC battles, or when you're playing the Definitive Edition like I am, people may become bored at having to play the same battle twice between two modes.

Yeah, bizarre forms of laziness seem to be Koei Tecmo's theme for the modern era of Warriors games. They'll release all the costumes for DW3-6 but not (all) the costumes for DW1 and 2, they'll repackage the DLC battles they made for the expansion and resell it as DLC for the vanilla game, and they'll localise a game with only English subtitles and abysmal translation and then release exorbitant amounts of DLC that end up costing nearly as much as the game itself. And their fanboys have the gall to parrot the unverified excuse that they don't have the budget to dub games when all of Koei Tecmo's budget issues end up being their own fault in the first place. But let's save it for WO3.

In 2012, this game was released on PC in Asian regions, bearing in mind that they state "with"/Complete Edition in the title, which means that this is the first time we get a Complete Edition with full Xtreme Legends content on a non-Sony console (DW5 Special removed modes involving CAWs while SW3Z removed Murasame Castle).

Only the DLC from the vanilla game sold before October 2011 is included in this game, including 5 DLC weapons (Dagger-axe, Bombs, Short Pike, Mace and Great Axe), the DW2 remake stages and the three original battlefields. "bUt ThIS gAME iSn't 'complETe'-" Shut the fuck up.

There was no way for Koei to sell the rest of the DLC because even though Steam was a thing back then, Japanese companies were still reluctant to embrace such new technologies that could potentially enable piracy. Maybe there was a way to port over the XL DLC from the PS3, but I assume the console's security essentially made it "impossible" to do so. These issues would be assuaged in 2018 with the worldwide release of the Complete Edition port on Steam, bringing it to the West while also including ALL of the DLC released for the vanilla game and the expansion in a port known as DX/Definitive Edition. Mind you, this was during a time when Koei Tecmo was doing a new round of damage control after the release of DW9. The eventual rant is going to be great, so I hope you'll be around when the retrospective for it comes out in a few months' time.

Rant: Remake throwback battles

With newer games introducing newer mechanics that allow you to sweep through masses of enemies in minutes, there are fans who have wondered what it would be like to play battles from older games using the mechanics of newer games and featuring the characters that were made playable since then. Even I imagined Koei Tecmo releasing a full Dynasty Warriors game/spinoff based around this idea. Although a full game would be nothing but a pipe dream, this idea would be realised in the DLCs for DW7 and 8 with remake throwback battle packs featuring battles from previous games. As stated, Legend Mode in XL also contains remake throwback battles as well.

Here's a list of remake throwback battles released between DW7 and 8:

DW7 DLC:

DW2: Yellow Turban Rebellion

DW2: Battle of Hulao Gate

DW2: Battle of Guandu

DW2: Battle of Changban

DW2: Battle of Chibi

DW2: Battle of Hefei

DW2: Battle of Yiling

DW2: Battle of the Wuzhang Plains

(this essentially acts as a full remake of DW2)

DW7XL Legend Mode:

DW6: Battle of Hulao Gate

DW5: Battle of Wujun (the Wu Territory)

DW5: Guan Yu's Escape

DW5: Battle of Hefei

DW5: Battle of Mt. Dingjun

DW3: Battle of Fan Castle

DW5: Battle of Baidi Castle

DW5: Battle of the Wuzhang Plains

DW7XL DLC:

DW5: Battle of Guandu

DW5: Battle of Yiling

DW4: Battle of Changban

DW4: Battle of the Wuzhang Plains

DW3: The Nanman Campaign

DW3: Battle of Hefei

DW8 DLC:

DW4: Battle of Bowangpo

DW3: Guan Yu's Escape

DW4: Unification of Jiangdong

DW5XL: Battle of Mt. Qi

DW5: Battle of Nanzhong

DW5XL: Battle of Yangping Gate

DW5: Battle of Liang Province

DW5XL: Battle of Hanshui

Because DW2 didn't have any voiced lines during battle, the voices in the remake stages are effectively made up of reused or generic lines, and if you look in each character's voice galleries for Conquest Mode, there sure are quite a lot of the latter. The same is the case for other remake stages, but if the DLC stages in WO3/4 and SW4/II are any indication, they don't have much of an excuse to not rerecord voice lines for DLC stages.

DW7XL's Legend Mode remakes actually go out of their way to replicate the voice lines used in them, making it a familiar experience for fans who have played most of the original battles from DW5. For the English version at least, there are some changes made to the lines, whether it's the way they're worded or because the character's voice actor has changed since the original games.

Most of the battles do allow you to play from both sides (even DW6 Hulao Gate with Lu Bu's side being a different version because that's what the original game did), but for some battles, like the ones taken from DW5XL, they made a new version of the battle from the enemy side. All the remake stages in the DLC do have an extra original scenario as well, with the DW8 scenarios allowing you to obtain special DLC animals.

The real funny thing about the throwback stages is that they still have the checkpoint/stronghold guard captains in the remake throwback battles. They don't respawn like in DW4 and they don't spawn guard captains for your side like in DW5, so in all honesty, they're as useless as the base system in this game.

In the end though, while these remake stages are fun to play, they are just more money grubbing initiatives of "autoerotic assetflipsiation". Not that I'm against it, mind you, I criticise this because Koei Tecmo never seem to do anything useful with the revenue they get from DLCs, not to mention how they never reduce the prices of their products over the years. Sales don't count because they're only for a limited time.

For an anniversary title celebrating 10 years of the series as we knew it, Dynasty Warriors 7 is one part of the modern series' peak, just as DW4/5 served as the classic series' peak. Coming from DW8, the lack of certain battle mechanics did take some time to get used to, but there is a lot of content to enjoy, even if a great deal of it is essentially mini-battles.

Sadly though, it only gets downhill from here. Next time, we take a look at the spinoffs for DW7, Next, VS and Empires.

#dynasty warriors #dynasty warriors 7 #dynasty warriors 7 xtreme legends #koei tecmo #koei warriors #koei warriors retrospective

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