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yeonchi · 22 days ago

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Koei Warriors Retrospective Part 21: Dynasty Warriors 8

Dynasty Warriors 8 (真・三國無双7) Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Release dates: Japan: 28 February 2013 (PS3 only) USA: 16 July 2013 Europe: 19 July 2013 (originally 12 July)

Cuz I got a brand new combine harvester An' I'll give you the key Come on now let's get together In perfect harmony I got twenty acres An' you got fortythree Now I got a brand new combine harvester An' I'll give you the key

Heh, finally, Japan made a mainline Dynasty Warriors cover that isn't just the logo on a background. It's also funny how the Japanese and Western covers are opposites of each other.

Well, everyone, I've finally recovered from spinning out about Warriors Orochi 3, seeing off my assistants Alec and Shanna, and getting stuck in an alternate Parallax where I had to do a retrospective on the original series to pass the time. I had to timeshift some things for various reasons, but I'm back in real time and ready to continue this retrospective.

Back in the days of the classic series, there was a new mainline Warriors release practically every year. Since 2010, or 2007 if you don't consider WO2 a mainline release, there have been gaps between mainline releases where the years in between only saw spinoffs or ports being published.

Fans like me were enjoying the games, lapping them up as they came out, and while they were still enjoyable, Koei Tecmo were starting to spin out uncontrollably. How would it affect the quality of this game? Join me on a journey through the downward spiral of the 2010s, beginning with the continuation of peak that was Dynasty Warriors 8.

Dynasty Warriors 8

Alright, let's get the obvious out of the way; Dynasty Warriors 8 is largely based on 7, hence why the development turnaround was quicker, a mere 2 years after DW7 compared to 3-4 years for the two mainline DW games before it. Producer Akihiro Suzuki even confirmed that development of this game started after the last mainline game was released, continuing through the development of its Xtreme Legends expansion. A similar thing happened a decade prior as the development of DW3XL and DW4 occurred simultaneously as well, but things were better back then because Koei Tecmo (or Omega Force, to be precise) weren't spreading themselves thin over multiple projects. Suzuki also marketed this as the "ultimate 1 vs. 1000 title" and the culmination of the series, like how DW5 was the culmination of the PS2 era.

This game also uses a new lightning technique known as deferred lighting. In DW7, there were reports that the frame rate would stutter and dip to 30 FPS from the "normal" 60 FPS, but with deferred lightning in DW8, it can maintain at least 45 FPS without stuttering. As a side effect, it makes the game look darker, but the rest of the game's tone matches pretty well.

BlackKite, who initially reported the information about this game on the Koei Warriors forums, apparently stated that the concept of this game was "infinite deepening" rather than "evolution" in an intention to focus on what is quantitatively added to this game, but I couldn't find any Japanese information to confirm that.

Anyway, let's start off with the new characters for this game:

Wei:

Yue Jin

Li Dian

Wu:

Lu Su

Han Dang

Shu:

Zhang Bao

Guan Xing

Guan Yinping

Jin:

Jia Chong

Zhang Chunhua

Wen Yang

Zuo Ci also returns from DW5 and Zhang Chunhua's appearance was foreshadowed by her ascended edit character debut in DW7E. With this, all the cut characters have finally returned to the fold. There are quite a few key players who were generics in the classic series that are now playable in later games, but I suppose you could say that for any game.

Also, the modern series has been a real boon for Shubabies, including Guanbabies, Zhangbabies and Liu Shan. I suppose it is a consequence of the story expanding past the Wuzhang Plains, but according to Suzuki, Liao Hua and Wang Ping were also highly-requested additions for Shu and they considered including them, but then they got conflicted over who they would replace so they ended up not doing it. The funny thing about the Shubabies as well is that they are their fathers' children because they constantly make references to their fathers in their generic dialogue, particularly in the officer defeated lines. Geez, not even Cao Pi, Sima Yi's sons or the Sun family siblings had it that bad.

The biggest change to Story Mode is the inclusion of the hypothetical/what-if paths in each story. Since DW5, characters have died throughout the stories in accordance to the history and the ROTK novel, making for emotional moments and cutscenes. But what if certain characters didn't die when they did? Well, they just continued appearing in later stages if you played as them pre-6, but how would it be implemented in the new linear Story Mode format used in 7? Easy.

Certain stages have hypothetical conditions or if-flags that when fulfilled, can allow certain characters to survive the battles they would have died in, and be playable in the next stage. Some of those conditions can also led into Gaiden/X stages as well.

Over halfway in the story will be the Divergent Event, the battle that leads to either the historical or hypothetical routes. Fulfilling all the hypothetical conditions up to that point will allow you to proceed to the hypothetical route, and there will be an alternate character you can speak to in the camp to begin that version of the battle. This flag system in Story Mode harks back to DW4's Musou Mode, but with different battles to be played instead of the same battles in a different order. Each faction's Story Mode can go up to 12-14 stages per playthrough without splits, but with the Gaiden/X stages, it can bring you up to 15-16 battles. All in all, each of the four factions have a total of 20 stages.

Unlike 7 where there we only followed one character for each stage, 8 allows you to pick from up to four characters for each stage. So as to prevent each battle from being monotonous, most battles will have two paths that are determined based on the character selected to play the battle. Each character will be playable in at least one stage, but despite this, there are characters who only have one playable stage in Story Mode, mostly female characters like Cai Wenji, Zhenji, Yueying or Bao Sanniang. Some characters may only be playable in either the historical or hypothetical routes, such as Ding Feng, Pang De, Xiaoqiao and Guan Ping.

Wei, Wu and Shu's Story Modes have a bit of a staggered start to them so they don't play the same stages. Shu's story begins with the Yellow Turban Rebellion before going to Hulao Gate, Wei's story begins with the Escape from Luoyang following the failed assassination of Dong Zhuo before going to Hulao Gate, and Wu's story skips them altogether as they go straight to the Battle of Xiangyang against Liu Biao. The Other factions do get Story Modes as well, but they are limited to one stage per character here and they have no camp. They are unlocked after clearing their respective counterpart stages (or the Jin hypothetical route in the case of Meng Huo's stage).

Like in 7, each kingdom's Story Mode has its own mini-arc soldier in the camp segments. Shu has the "It's me!" guy and Jin has a guy who now shares the latest goss on the Sima family. New to this game, Wu has a guy who shares his thoughts on Sun Quan and Lianshi's relationship, while Wei has a guy who loves to share factoids about Cao Cao.

A tutorial is also available, but wait, there's four of them, one for Wei, Wu, Shu and Jin. Hooray, now you get to play the tutorial four times! Yeah, apparently there's a trophy available for it, which is presumably the only reason why there's four tutorials.

Free Mode in this game is quite unique. In other games, Free Mode is just a collection of all the stages used in Musou Mode, but in this game, Koei Tecmo actually made the effort to create Free Mode-exclusive flip-side stages (where you play as the enemy) for most battles that do not have a counterpart in another faction's Story Mode, particularly Jin's. However, true to Koei Tecmo's bizarre form of laziness, these flip-side stages aren't made on the same scales as the Story Mode stages, making them feel lazy.

An average Story Mode battle would see you fighting, say, 2.5-3 pages of enemy officers that outnumber the officers on your side, while in an average flip-side stage, you would be fighting 1 page of enemy officers with slightly or even more allied officers, then after that, either you only use 50-75% of the map or the rest of map is just filled with soldiers to mow through so that you end up finishing the battle in under 10 minutes. I don't care if there aren't any strategical elements scripted into these battles, but it's not like they couldn't put in random generic officers throughout the battlefield so the flip-side stages could be on the same level as the Story Mode stages. One battle I will give credit to is the Battle of Nanjun Cao Cao Forces scenario because this is potentially the only battle in the vanilla game where the scale is in the right direction.

When playing Story Mode battles in Free Mode, the path that you play in this mode is determined by who you last played this stage as in Story Mode. Also, you can adjust the hypothetical condition flags as necessary and play both the historical and hypothetical versions of the Divergent Event stages.

The alternate mode in this game is called Ambition Mode. In this mode, your objective is to build the Tongquetai and bring the Emperor to your kingdom, but to do that, you need to gather materials and allies and raise your fame.

When you speak to the guard, there are three different types of battles you can choose from out of the four randomly-generated stages given to you.

Skirmishes are small-scale battles where you can gather weapon and facility materials. Weapon materials are used to reforge or temper weapons, while facility materials are used to rank up your facilities to a maximum rank of 50 (requires 288 materials per facility).

Great Battles are standard battles where you can easily gain allies. Unlocking playable characters will also allow them to be used in this mode. The battle synopsis will show who is leading the enemy army in that particular battle. You will need to break through the enemy's defensive line to get to the enemy commander. Various locations around the battlefield are also occupiable enemy bases which can be occupied by defeating the one base captain that is there, but if your side's morale is high enough, you can occupy enemy bases by just walking into them. At least that's a better use of bases than DW7.

Unconventional Battles contain multiple rescue missions that help increase fame. Increasing your fame allows you to gather even more officers (whereas going over the limit causes officers to leave) and therefore, allows you to unlock more facilities and increase your fame limit in turn. A maximum of 9999 fame can be obtained along with 790 allies (816 in XL).

Every time you finish a battle, you can choose to play another one. With each battle you play, the gold, EXP and feats you obtain multiply based on the battle's after-battle bonus ratio. Sometimes there will be battles that will have increased difficulty compared to the other ones given to you and of course, they have bigger rewards and after-battle bonuses.

After 2-3 consecutive battles, there will be a duel battle where you fight against multiple playable officers and have them join you. Clearing duel battles also allow you to unlock camp symbol sculptures for your camp. A random weapon will be obtained every 5 consecutive battles. A random animal will be obtained at 10 consecutive battles, then at 30, 60 and 90, you can obtain Shadow Runner, Hex Mark and Red Hare, and finally at 100 consecutive battles, you can obtain the War Elephant. Make sure you have space for these rare animals before you obtain them.

In order to complete the Tongquetai, you need at least 400 allies, 5000 fame and all the facilities unlocked at that point (Blacksmith, Teahouse, Barracks and Merchant) ranked up to 50. After that, play a battle and come back to meet the Emperor. I think I got the Tongquetai way after that target, but that is the minimum. There are also special items (Emperor's Blade, Golden Panda, Harrier) that are unlocked when you obtain all allies, max out your fame and have all facilities at rank 50. Upon completing the Tongquetai, one of the four battles will become a Mock Battle, which is just like a Great Battle but with your own allies. Let's take a look at all the different facilities now.

Aside from buying and selling weapons at the Blacksmith, you can reforge weapons at rank 10 and temper weapons at rank 30. Reforging weapons requires you to select three weapons that will be destroyed and reforged into two random weapons at a cost of 2 weapon materials per use. Tempering weapons allows you to enhance the attributes on one weapon using another as a medium. The weapon materials required for this varies depending on what level weapons you use. At rank 50, you can spend a sizeable amount of gold to gamble for a special weapon with high capabilities.

The Teahouse allows you to buy foods that increase your stats or provide buffs for your next set of battles.

You can send soldiers out to various provinces from the Barracks to obtain materials and animals. Sometimes you can obtain weapons and allies as well. Up to 10,000 gold can be invested in a deployment.

At the Merchant, you can exchange weapon and facility materials and you can buy or sell animals. Weapon and facility materials are initially exchanged at a rate of 2:1, but at maximum rank, it becomes 1:1.

The Farmer just tends to the crops and gives you (a cut of) the profits every time you come back from a battle. Sometimes if you have a supervisor with him, he can also give you materials.

By placing a supervisor in the Training Ground, you can watch them perform their Normal Attack string on a loop, plus they can earn EXP every time you come back from a battle (800 at rank 50). It's not very efficient on its own but it's a free investment.

Your animals can be fed at the Stables. Each of them have their likes and dislikes, plus they have varying levels of satisfaction. You can feed your animals until any number of them max out their satisfaction, allowing you to obtain materials and weapons.

And finally, the Academy serves a similar role to the Strategist from 7XL, allowing you to purchase EXP and stat upgrades.

Playable officers can be assigned to facilities as supervisors. Out of the nine facilities available (including the gate), a maximum of six supervisors can be assigned at any time.

As much as Ambition Mode was enjoyable, it feels mindless and generic compared to Conquest Mode in DW7.

Onto the battle mechanics now, and if you've already played DW7, I'm sure you'll be very familiar with them. In case you forgot what it is or if you didn't know, each moveset runs on a 6-hit combo system with EX attacks when your character uses their favourite/EX weapon.

Throughout 7, clone weapons were apparently the bane of some fans. Some characters have been decloned throughout 7's generation and those efforts come to a head in 8 as every character now has their own unique EX weapon, down to Huang Gai's Yacht Arm Blade and Xiahou Ba's rocket engine Siege Spear. Every character that was decloned in 8 retains their EX attack from 7. As I've no doubt made clear by now thanks to the Dynasty Warriors Weapon Moveset Power Rankings, not all weapons are created equal nor are they effective or easy to use.

You know, Dynasty Warriors Online had a bunch of original weapons and movesets that never made it into other games, not to mention Warriors Orochi 3 brought back some Charge Attacks from older games to declone the characters as well. Sure, every sword-wielder, spear-wielder, pike-wielder, pole-wielder etc has their own name for their weapon and that's a good start imo, but if Koei Tecmo were to, say, give Sima Yi and Zhuge Dan their fans back or give weapons to other characters that resembled other types of weapons, they could use the naming scheme from DWOnline to inspire the naming of the weapon's moveset. I mean, look at the list I linked; they were able to differentiate the DW7/8/9 movesets from the DW5 movesets with fairly creative names.

Anyway, in regards to generic officer weapons, swords and spears are still used, but clubs and iron fans are replaced with great swords and throwing knives. Two special generic officers, Yu Ji and Zhuangzi (南華老仙) wield talisman cards. You can still see generic unit commanders (even more generic than generic officers) and handmaidens wielding clubs and iron fans, but with over 700 generic officers in this game, wouldn't it be better to also have generic officers wielding clubs and iron fans? I mean, let's face it, the generic officers and soldiers in DW7 are a mix-and-match of different face and armour parts and I'm pretty sure it's been ported over to DW8.

All playable characters now have three Musou Attacks, so those who didn't have an aerial or R1 Musou in 7 get one in this game. With regards to the aerial Musous, I don't think a lot of thought was put into them because a lot of them are weak to the point that they're basically just glorified Jump Charges from DW4. WO3U was in development at the same time as this game so surely some inspiration could have been taken from the Aerial Type Actions. Musou Gauges are capped to a maximum of 3 instead of 4 from the previous game.

Rage Mode is back from DW5. To the left of the HUD is the Rage Gauge, which can be filled by attacking enemies (particularly with Switch Counters). When the gauge is full, pressing R3 allows you to enter Rage Mode and merges your Musou Gauges into one so that you can perform a Rage Attack. As you rack up combos, the flavour text above the hit/chain counter changes from Rage to Frenzy/Burst and finally Rampage/Sparking, at which point your Rage Attack transitions into the True Rage Attack, which also adds a final flourish before the finishing blow. All enemies defeated by the True Rage Attack will drop +5 EXP. This is akin to the pre-6 Musou Attacks, but there's a criticism I have with it which I want to leave for the rant.

Levels are back and they're in the same style as DW6, so no backwards ranks or grinding for stat boost items. All your moves are unlocked as you level up so that by level 30, you'll have unlocked your C6, all three Musous and Musou gauges, your weapon mastery and your general voice lines in the Gallery.

A weapon affinity system known as the Three Point System has been introduced in this game. It is a rock-paper-scissors system that goes Heaven > Earth > Man. Depending on how your weapon affinity fares against that of another officer, you may be able to deal more damage if you have the advantage, but you will take more damage if the other officer does.

When you have the advantage, a Spirit Gauge will be displayed above the head of an enemy. When you land enough hits to deplete it, you will automatically perform a Storm Rush, a string of repeated attacks that draw enemies in and deal great amounts of damage to them. Apparently you can mash Square + Triangle to make the attacks faster and stronger, but I honestly don't see much of a difference unless they didn't actually implement this. If you have a strong enough weapon and play on a lower difficulty, you'll find that you'll defeat enemies well before depleting the Spirit Gauge. As such, I think the Spirit Gauge should also deplete based on the amount of damage dealt. Some would say that it would make the game too easy, but let's face it, fighting enemies in this game is easy enough as it is.

When the other officer has the advantage, they will glow blue when they are about to perform a Storm Rush or Switch Attack. At this point, you can perform a Switch (Variable) Counter to counterattack while switching your weapon. This will also fill your Rage Gauge significantly, sometimes instantly if you have the Rage Springs skill.

One thing to note is that enemy officers will switch weapons even if you're not at a disadvantage, and they will always switch to an affinity where they have the advantage. You can perform a Switch Attack back on the enemy officer to prevent them from switching their weapon, but it's actually recommended that you have two weapons of different affinities in order to best take advantage of the Three Point System. However, I would argue that the Three Point System is useless and the Storm Rush and Switch Counter could have been implemented without it.

Speaking of weapons, the dual weapon system is obviously continued from 7, but you cannot change weapons during battle, only check what weapons you acquired. A maximum of 1000 weapons can be acquired, but excluding the three initial weapons each character has, you can obtain 769 more weapons when you first play the game. For some reason, every time you defeat an enemy officer you'll always get a weapon along with gold or EXP. Considering how many enemy officers are in each battle, that number can easily add up and managing your weapons can be a bit complicated. Sometimes in Free Mode and Ambition Mode, you can obtain an animal instead of a weapon, but why can't you obtain gold and EXP when you defeat officers a fraction of the time?

Weapons can have a maximum of 6 attributes out of... wait for it... 40, replacing the seal system from DW7. The Poison element from DW4 is back as Venom and some elements can also generate explosions, lightning bolts or shockwaves when attacking or being attacked. Normal attributes can have a maximum level of 10. In Asian versions, normal weapons are also named after the (first listed) strongest attribute in the format (strongest attribute)の(weapon).

Rare 5-star weapons are available as well and while the attack power on them is high, they only have four attributes and they are all locked to the Heaven affinity. Even SW3's rare weapons had different types, Koei Tecmo. Each weapon also has rare weapons of 1-3 stars (two for each one) that are usually obtained via random drops or gambling for one.

When obtaining weapons, only the name of the weapon is displayed but not the actual moveset it's under, let alone the logo, unlike in 7. This means that people won't know what weapon they actually got until they see it in the weapons menu because let's face it, there are so many weapons that no one is going to remember what moveset they belong to.

The skill tree and seal system are also replaced by skills. When you defeat an enemy officer under certain requirements, you will obtain or level up a skill to a maximum level of 20. Unlike weapons, skills can be changed at any time during battle. These skills normally provide buffs or adds bonuses to recovering health, Musou or Rage, but the problem is that some weapon attributes do this already, namely Recovery/Jubilation (health), Uplift/Roar (Musou) and Enlightenment/Triumph (Rage). Speaking of which, why the hell are there two of them? No wonder people complain about this game being too easy.

Bringing characters up to Level 50 will unlock their mastery skills that can be equipped by any character. Take note that it is redundant to equip them on characters whose EX weapons share the same mastery action because they also have mastery of them by default (once they get to Level 26). Unlocking all mastery skills for a particular action will also unlock a skill that will allow you to do that for all weapons using that action.

Guardian Animals are selectable in Free Mode and Ambition Mode, even during battle. In Story Mode though, the mount is fixed for each character, but the attribute abilities of the animal you equipped in Free Mode are reflected. Cao Cao will use Shadow Runner by default, then Liu Bei will use Hex Mark after Disturbance at Guandu before being passed to Pang Tong at Chengdu, and Guan Yu will use Red Hare from the Battle of Xinye onwards while other characters will use generic horses. A maximum of 30 animals can be held and animals can have 2-4 attributes attached to them.

The bodyguard system also makes a return from DW5, but it works more like playable officer bodyguards in DW3XL. Each playable officer bodyguard has two support skills, the second one being unlocked when your bond with them reaches the maximum level. Of course, you can perform Double Musou Attacks with them as normal.

Onto the Gallery now. General voice lines for characters are unlocked when they reach level 30, but unlocking all Ambition Mode lines is a bit more complicated. To do that, you need to max out a character's bonds with male and female characters by playing 9 battles with them as a bodyguard. As you do that, you will witness a total of 5 affection events with that character, one common, then two for males and females each. Here's the rundown:

Assuming that you start from scratch, play two Ambition Mode battles with a character then go back to the camp - this will give you Affection 1.

Play three more battles then go back - this will give you Affection 2 for one gender.

Play four more battles then go back - this will give you Affection 3 for the same gender.

Change to a character of the opposite gender, then play five battles and go back - this will give you Affection 2 for the other gender.

Play four more battles then go back - this will give you Affection 3 for the other gender as well. If you have completed these steps, all the Ambition Mode lines for that character will be unlocked.

Admittedly, this is also something that sounds easier said than done given the ratio of female characters to male characters, but hey, you can't say there's no representation there.

There are considerably less general voice lines than there were in DW7 as well; DW7 had five enemy encounter lines for each character (including variants for specific officers), but DW8 takes it down to two for some reason. Huh.

In terms of costumes, everyone who was in DW7 also gets both of their costumes from that game, while new characters debuting in this game get a second costume for this game. The only returning characters getting a second costume or variant in this game are those who were affiliated with different forces or had headgear/eyepatch variants. God knows why Koei couldn't give everyone a second DW8 costume considering that alternate costumes are colour swaps anyway, but whatever.

Ending theme music with lyrics, aka songs, makes another return from DW4. There are two theme songs in this game that can be heard in the credits for both routes in each kingdom's Story Mode. The historical route features 嵐が丘 by Tomoyasu Hotei, while the hypothetical route features 生路 ~CIRCUIT~ by Yō Hitoto, the ending theme song for DW3. In the Switch version, however, WITNESS TO HISTORY, a bonus on the soundtrack, is used for the historical route credits, presumably due to licensing issues.

I know that BGMs from older games have been heard in Empires games, but I think this may be the first time that BGMs from older games are included in a mainline title and not as DLC. These can be heard on hypothetical route battles.

Speaking of DLC, the lineups are similar to, if not the same, as the DLC lineup in DW7. In terms of new weapons, there is the Flame Blade, Revolving Crossbow (gatling gun), Sabatons, Emei Piercers, Bladebow (Yueying's weapon from DW6) and the Paired Fans (Daqiao/Xiaoqiao's weapon pre-6). No original maps have been created for DLC battle packs, but there are the usual throwback battles from previous games. DLC animals are also included in these battle packs or as free collaboration DLC.

Five Ambition Mode base skins are available, which change your Tongquetai into an amusement park, a military base, a futuristic sci-fi city, a tropical market town or a retro shopping mall. These are in addition to the feudal and Japanese style base skins included in the game.

The original costume packs for this game are themed around modern-day occupations. Shu's costume pack also contains Sentai-themed hero and villain costumes for Shouryuu Sentai Tiger Five (昇竜戦隊タイガーファイブ) if you call that a modern-day occupation (well, you would need suit actors to film it, so it probably counts).

And of course, the costumes from DW3-6 are available again as DLC. The DW1 costumes available as pre-order bonuses are for Cao Cao, Zhou Yu, Lu Xun, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, but for some reason, the DW1 costumes that were featured in 7 (Zhao Yun, Xiahou Dun, Taishi Ci, Diaochan and Lu Bu) are not available. ROTK 12 costumes for Zhao Yun and Sun Shangxiang are also available along with other collaborational costumes and weapon skins, including a Hotei-themed skin for Lu Bu.

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends (Complete/Definitive Edition)

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends - Complete/Definitive Edition (真・三國無双7 猛将伝 - with 猛将伝/DX) Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, PC, Nintendo Switch Release dates: Japan: 28 November 2013 (PS3 - XL only + with/Vita)/22 February 2014 (PS4)/23 May 2014 (PC)/6 December 2018 (PC - DX)/27 December 2018 (Switch - DX) USA: 25 March 2014 (PS3 - XL only/PS4/Vita)/13 May 2014 (PC)/6 December 2018 (PC - DX)/27 December 2018 (Switch - DX) Europe: 4 April 2014 (PS3 - XL only/PS4/Vita)/13 May 2014 (PC)/6 December 2018 (PC - DX)/27 December 2018 (Switch - DX)

The release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2013 marked another transition in gaming generations. This wasn't like the late-2000s with the HD transition, however; Sony and Microsoft moved away from PowerPC architectures (including the proprietary Cell Broadband Engine used on the PS3) and adopted the x86-64 architecture with SoCs based on AMD architectures, making them on-par with the average Windows PC. Heck, even Nintendo would transition from PowerPC to ARM with the Nintendo Switch in 2017, making it on par with Android tablets and Apple iPads. As such, those consoles would see mid-generation refreshes a few years down the line, with retweaked versions for enthusiast and budget gamers.

I'm sure many people who played DW8 will be more familiar with the Xtreme Legends Complete Edition, because for Koei Tecmo, that was their first mainline Dynasty Warriors game to be released on the PS4, PS Vita and PC. Man, I remember when I downloaded this game on my school laptop (at school) a decade ago; that was my first real foray into modern era Warriors. Around the same time, I had a friend at church who played this game, DWNext and Street Fighter X Tekken on his Vita. I even remember helping him obtain hypothetical objectives and rare weapons by getting information from the Japanese wiki on shitty ADSL internet that would usually drop out longer than it would work. He didn't have any other social media other than Skype or WhatsApp and at some point, he basically ghosted me and stopped attending our church. I wonder how he's doing now...

Anyway, most releases of this game are the Complete Edition, which has the vanilla and expansion content unlocked from the start. An XL-only release was also sold on the PS3 alongside a Complete Edition/with release that was never released outside Japan, so Western players on the PS3 are stuck with the old "importing" method and having to buy two games.

There is a little bit of a silver lining though. For this game, I was able to obtain information about how the "import"/Mixjoy process worked, and yeah, I think I was on the right track in regards to DW7, but if this isn't the case, then please feel free to correct me. If you have the vanilla DW8 on disc, you will need to use that for the "import" process, then the "import" state will remain for several days if you're logged into the PlayStation Network. If you have the vanilla game digitally, then the "import" status will be instant and permanent. Both methods will work for physical and digital releases of DW8XL. And like WO3U, you can upload your save data from the vanilla game on PS3 and transfer it to the Vita and PS4 versions of XL, plus you can also cross-save between consoles. Of course, DLC you purchased for the vanilla game can also be used on XL and can be downloaded for free for the PS4 and PS Vita.

Interestingly, this game was also released in China on the FUZE Tomahawk F1, an Android-based gaming console created (after a ban on foreign gaming consoles was lifted) to compete with the PS4 and Xbox One, even going so far as to rip off their hardware and software designs. I don't know if it flopped or not, but apparently the console needs to be constantly connected to servers in China (even putting aside privacy and security issues, it can be a bit hard to access media/streaming sites hosted in China, eg Bilibili works for me in Australia but QQ Music/Kugou doesn't), so I wouldn't be surprised if it did flop, even in China. Apparently even Soulja Boy tried to resell this console in the West in 2018 as the SouljaGame Fuze, a console that was weaker than the Nintendo Switch, for the same price of (until it was marked down, it was more expensive than) a PlayStation 4.

And as always, Xbox players get screwed again with Xtreme Legends games. The vanilla game is the last Warriors game to be available on the Xbox 360, and only in the West at that; DW7 was also exclusive in the West, with the last Xbox 360 game available in Japan being Warriors Orochi 3. Not even the Complete Edition of this game was made available on the Xbox One; WO3 Ultimate was the first Warriors game to be ported to the Xbox One in September 2014, followed by DW8 Empires a couple of months later in November. But enough waffling, let's get into the game itself.

Five new characters have been introduced in the expansion, but this time, they're not all centralised to one kingdom for the sake of balancing out the cast:

Wei: Yu Jin

Wu: Zhu Ran

Shu: Fa Zheng

Other: Chen Gong, Lu Lingqi

As always, the new characters (with the exception of Lu Lingqi) replace their generic counterparts in the vanilla Story Mode stages. As for the vanilla DLC stages, well, they don't have the issue where their generic counterparts still appear anymore, but there is a goof in one of the DLC stages (Battle of Bowangpo, Liu Bei's Forces) where Yu Jin says a generic line instead of a playable line. Whoops.

Instead of having a Legend Mode, all the new XL stages are introduced as Story Mode stages. Each of the kingdoms have new alternate hypothetical/Another IF scenarios, including a three-part storyline featuring the new characters (even for Jin, which doesn't have any new characters and instead is centred around Zhong Hui's rebellion), plus a fun battle added for humour.

Unfortunately, Tsuyoshi Takishita, the seiyuu for Sima Yi, died after falling off a bridge on his way home in the early hours of 10 March 2013, a mere 10 days after the vanilla game's release. As such, he has no new Story Mode appearances, nor does he have any lines in the new content of WO3U (he has a recommended character appearance in one of the new stages in that game but that's about it). From DW8E onwards, Takishita's role as Sima Yi would be given to Ryōtarō Okiayu, who also voices Sima Shi in this game, Motochika Chōsokabe in Samurai Warriors and Orochi in Warriors Orochi.

For the first time in over a decade (since DW4), an Other faction gets a Story Mode, and it's for Lu Bu. 9-10 stages out of 14 can be played in one playthrough. Lu Bu's Story Mode covers the Ten Eunuchs'/Attendants Rebellion, Hulao Gate, Dong Zhuo's death, Changshan and the occupation of Puyang before the Battle of Dingtao serves as the Divergent Event. The historical route sees Lu Bu being chased out of Dingtao and siding with Liu Bei in Xiapi before taking over the castle. He then fights Yuan Shu and Liu Bei before Cao Cao finally pins him in a sunset showdown at a new Xiapi Castle map. The hypothetical route sees Lu Bu turning the tables with the help of Hua Xiong, Liu Bei and Yuan Shao before the latter two turn on him alongside Cao Cao and Sun Ce at a new Chang'an Castle map, which boasts a whopping 71 enemy officers, of which 22 are playable characters.

Lu Lingqi and Diaochan are limited to the historical and hypothetical routes respectively. I guess they didn't want people to mistake Diaochan to be Lu Lingqi's mother. Also, in case you're interested, Lu Bu's Story Mode does have a mini-arc soldier who admires his lord and loves to ask him questions.

And of course, Another IF scenarios are also available for Other characters, the difference being that Zhang Jiao and Zuo Ci share one stage and Meng Huo and Zhurong share another. Because Lu Bu and Diaochan are now in their own Story Mode, Dong Zhuo and Yuan Shao get two new stages each.

Free Mode adds battle objectives and evaluations (akin to DW5/6) to all battles, including flip-side stages but excluding DLC stages. Each stage has three objectives to complete and some of them also involve the use of bodyguard battle skills. Completing objectives awards you with 100 gems and some EXP each.

Ambition Mode is presumably fully available from the start, plus there is an additional mode that can be played after completing the Tongquetai, namely regional unification. Apparently, there are rumours being spread that the Emperor is an imposter and many people are being deceived; so many, in fact, that many allies left the camp after a new opposing force installed a new Emperor and claimed to the land that their Emperor was real. Our target now is to conquer the land and win back our allies and locate the imposter Emperor and the people behind him.

When you start this mode and select a starting character, all your allies will leave you except for about 3-5 playable characters and 70 generic officers. You will earn them all back as you play. This new mode is playable by speaking to the minister next to the guard at the gate.

You start off a battle by setting up eight units, each of them having one general and three subordinates. Up to eight playable officers can be deployed. Then, you select one of four battlefields in each of the five regions and you play a Grand Battle with special bases. There are five types of special bases and some bases can be neutral to start off with. If an officer is defeated in this mode (except for your bodyguards), they will be removed from your allies and you will have to earn them back.

Every time you play a stage, its battlefield subjugation percentage will increase and contribute to the regional subjugation percentage. As you pass every 10% of battlefield subjugation up to 50%, you will be able to unlock a playable character officer.

Eventually, once all regions are 100% subjugated, you'll unlock the final battle at Chengdu Castle, where the true culprits of the plot are revealed to be the Ten Eunuchs. You'll fight each of them as you make your way through the castle, then you'll fight all ten of them in hyper armour. Finally, you just need to defeat the imposter Emperor in the throne room (or rather, the top of the castle) and that completes Ambition Mode.

Challenge Mode is back again, a classic era staple relegated to expansions in the modern era. Challenge Modes include Rampage, Bridge Melee, Speed Run, Arena and Inferno, which is like Time Attack but there are about 450 enemies to be defeated instead of 100. Weapon element gems will appear every time a playable officer is defeated.

Nightmare difficulty returns as Ultimate difficulty in this expansion. It's the same as it is in DW7XL, but note that even enemy soldiers can deal significant damage to you and being hit by an enemy Musou means instant death. I've got a better name for the Ultimate difficulty - why don't we call it the Realism setting? I mean, let's face it, nobody in real life has life bars with 1000 health and people die if they are killed, whether by one hit or multiple. Then again, that would require fall damage to be implemented when you jump off of high places, but surely that adds to the realism hey?

A new second EX attack has been added for each character. Where the first EX attack was spun off from a higher or lower Charge Attack, the opposite applies for the second, allowing all characters to be able to use an EX attack from the very beginning. Honestly, I think they should have done that for the vanilla game so we could get an extra voice line for it. Plus, other spinoffs would give them the second EX attack anyway, so why not?

Storm Rushes can now be set to be manually triggered once an enemy's Spirit Gauge is depleted by pressing Square + Triangle.

When your character is using their EX Weapon, their Musou and Rage Attacks will reflect the weapon that is being used, otherwise they will default to their standard weapon in the animation, which in this game is their normal third-level weapon.

The maximum level has been raised from 99 to 150. The upper limit for attack and defense stats has been raised from 1000 to 1500. An extra 200 weapons can be obtained for a total of 1200, or 954 after the initial three for each character.

Rare 6-star weapons are also available, as is the norm for expansions. 5-star weapons for the new characters are also found in the XL stages on Story Mode. Obtaining the 6-star weapons for some characters requires them to be played in Free Mode. Before building my gaming PC in 2021, I spent part of the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020 getting the rare weapons for all the characters in this game. I was just that bored.

Weapon Fusion is a new feature in the expansion similar to that seen in Warriors Orochi. With this, you can manually add or enhance weapon attributes, even overwrite those you don't want. Gems are required to perform weapon fusion; you can also change a weapon's affinity (50 gems) or increase its attack power by +1 (500 gems) up to a total of +10 the base attack shown in the Gallery, which gives you 1.2 times the damage.

Rare weapons could not be reforged or tempered in the vanilla game, but they can in the expansion; they just can't be used as the fusion weapons in tempering or weapon fusion.

The bodyguard system has been revamped from the vanilla game (again). In Free Mode and Ambition Mode, you can now equip up to 3 officers that have joined you in the latter mode as bodyguards. Similar to the first two PSP games, each officer has an equip fee, a battle skill and two support skills. Initially, your maximum total fee is 30, but as you level up your Leadership EXP by ordering your bodyguards to activate their battle skills, your total fee will go up to a maximum of 99.

You can order your bodyguards to guard you, mobilise themselves, secure a location (up to 3 times) or activate their battle skill. Battle skills can only be triggered once (confirmed once you exit the Command Bodyguards menu), but as you strengthen your bodyguards, their battle skills can be triggered multiple times.

Bodyguards are strengthened by having other allies contribute to them, which will also make you part with them, but they can be found again in Ambition Mode. The total amount of allies/bodyguards has been raised from 790 to 816 with the officers debuting in the expansion, so it's going to take a lot of rinse-and-repeating to max them all out. Honestly, why couldn't they earn EXP like characters earn feats as well? That would have made it much more easier.

As for XL-exclusive DLCs, there are three new weapons, the Stele (Meng Huo's weapon in DW6E), Mandarin Duck Hooks and the Dragon Column (it's a bench). Original scenario sets are also available, accompanied with new base symbols for Ambition Mode. There's also an original troop costume pack that can make allied or enemy soldiers be dressed up in school uniforms or business wear, or cosplay as Sentai mooks, Bladestorm soldiers or Orochian troops. Then they also resold the original and fantasy costumes from DW7's DLC because why the fuck not.

As I said at the start of this section, more people will be familiar with the Complete Edition because this was Koei Tecmo's first release on the PS4, or on PC via Steam. This is also the first "Complete Edition" release in the West as previous releases of this type were limited to Japan or Asia. “bUt ThIS gAME iSn’t ‘complETe’, iT DOESn’t have alL ThE dLc!” Like I said back in my rant for DW5, how much of the DLC do you really care about? Even if you only care about the stages and weapon system packs like I do, they only complement the main content of the game.

Koei Tecmo would later release a DX/Definitive Edition of this game in 2018 on PC via the Windows Store and the Nintendo Switch. This release would be bundled with all the DLC released for this game. And yet the game (on Steam) is only less than a quarter to a third the total cost of the game with all the DLC and Koei Tecmo haven't even bothered to reduce the cost of anything or release an all-in-one package for the DLC. What an absolute gyp.

Apparently, the PC port of the game uses the PS3 graphic textures instead of the PS4 textures (which use dynamic lighting vs static lighting) and quite a number of players experienced issues running this game. As a loyal fan of mine said a decade ago, when you build a PC you get the graphics quality provided by the parts you pay for, unlike with consoles where the quality is standardised based on the included hardware. I'm not someone who cares about the minute details like graphics quality, sound quality or background music, but to be fair to Koei Tecmo, people really needed to cut them some slack back then because this was their first "mainstream" PC port on Steam, a platform that already existed for at least a decade, when KT were only comfortable with releasing PC games on physical discs.

And now for the all-important look at the localisation of this game, and of course, the game is dubbed in English with the original Japanese voices available via DLC... but sadly, the narrations and camp voices are not dubbed. As such, this means that for the first time, a Dynasty Warriors game has been localised with partial dubbing. Now, this doesn't count the unvoiced lines from SW2/3's side modes because those lines were also unvoiced in Japanese (and believe me, I've checked).

Considering how the system lines for characters seem to be taken from the last game and the narrator is the same person who voices Huang Gai (Lee Everest), this is another example of Koei Tecmo's bizarre form of laziness. If they directly used the generic voice lines from DW7 instead of redubbing them, they could have saved time and money that could be used to dub the narrations and camp lines. Also, when you play as certain characters and speak to certain soldiers in the camp who are talking about your character, you might hear them retort with a line as well. The immersive appeal and novelty of it just flatlines if you can't hear the lines being spoken.

Oh, and you know the best thing? On the Battle of Fan Castle in Shu's Story Mode, turn about 135 degrees anti-clockwise from your starting position in the camp. Then, walk toward the two soldiers straight ahead of you and speak to them. These are the only camp lines that have been dubbed in this game. If this isn't a mistake, then this is just spiteful. No, we've let Koei Tecmo have the benefit of the doubt too many times. This is spiteful even if it wasn't a mistake.

And on top of that, do you know the kicker to all this? For some reason, Roger Craig Smith did not reprise his role as Zhang Liao in the Xtreme Legends expansion, a role he had taken on since WO2, replacing Michael McConnohie. Presumably, Roger Craig Smith was busy at the time - after all, he is a popular voice actor and he's been featured in lots of works around the time of this game's release - but the kicker is that all of Zhang Liao's voice lines were redubbed. I'll bet it's because the person they cast to replace Zhang Liao, Joshua Tomar, who also voiced Yu Jin, barely sounds anything like Roger Craig Smith. Hell, Yu Jin's voice sounds closer to Zhang Liao's old voice than his new voice does.

In most cases, when characters were recast in expansions or spinoffs during the classic-modern transition period, the old system voices would be kept while the new voice actor voiced the new lines, and in most cases it was seamless; you barely even noticed that the character was recast because Voicegroup made sure that they cast people who have or could do similar enough voices. Even Kyle Hebert, who voiced Sima Yi, replaced Travis Willingham for Xu Huang and Zhou Tai between 7 and 8 and he still managed to make it work. Therefore, the mis-recasting of Zhang Liao is entirely on Voicegroup's part.

Despite Voicegroup dubbing this game, Rubicon Solutions still manages to fuck up the translations. Here are three glaring examples:

Battle of Hulao Gate, Shu/Wei Story - defeating Diaochan while Lu Bu is still alive: "Lu Bu's defeat has enraged Diaochan!"

Battle of Fan Castle, Shu Story - Mi Fang and Fu Shiren defect to the Wei-Wu coalition: "Mi Fang has betrayed Fu Shiren!"

Campaign for Jianye, Wei Hypothetical Route - Guo Jia's first line: "Master Zhang He, you and Lady Zhenji shall seize the southern side..." (NB: Zhenji is not in this battle, in the Japanese dub he is referring to Cai Wenji)

Although this game (vanilla and XL) has received physical releases on the PS3 and PS Vita due to it having an English dub (even if partially dubbed), this would be the last game to receive such treatment in the West. While PS3 and Vita physical releases would continue in Japan until 2016-17, future localised games for those consoles would only be available as digital releases in the West due to them not being dubbed. In the West, Samurai Warriors 4 Empires and Dynasty Warriors Godseekers would be the last games to be released on the PS3 and Vita respectively; in Japan, they would be Samurai Warriors Spirit of Sanada and Warriors All-Stars.

Sadly however, though I would not know it or understand at the time, Dynasty Warriors 8 and its Xtreme Legends expansion would be the last games in the Koei Warriors series, let alone the Dynasty Warriors series, in the modern era to be dubbed by Voicegroup Inc, if at all. The Koei Tecmo New Normal Copium continues its downward spiral and most fans wouldn't notice the symptoms of the rot or the consequences of leaving the rot unchecked. Or maybe Koei Tecmo let the Warriors series rot on purpose, who even knows at this point.

Rant: From 1 to 100 to 1000

I'm sure a lot of people have picked up on this, but over the course of the series, more and more enemies have been able to be put onscreen. During the classic series (even in the first two PSP games), achieving 1000 KOs was such a rarity or a grind that the "I am a True Warrior of the Three Kingdoms" line was basically a secret line. With the modern series games, however, achieving 1000 KOs is basically a staple on most stages, if not a requirement.

The roots of this issue can be traced back to DW5 with the increase in onscreen soldiers, but it's only in the harder stages of DW7's Conquest Mode (ie. Battle for Supremacy) and the DLC where the issue truly begins. The increase in onscreen enemies, combined with the variety of weapon choices and movesets, the lethality of weapon elements and the instantaneous destructive actions of Musou Attacks are contributing to the phenomenon of 1 vs 100 becoming 1 vs 1000 and making the games either too easy or too hard depending on what difficulty you play.

I say too easy because you can easily rack up masses of KOs in minutes, I say too hard because on harder difficulties, even enemy soldiers will deal you significant damage and enemy Musou Attacks will OHKO you. Tell me, is the difficulty supposed to reflect how aggressive the enemy AI will be or how much damage you take from enemy attacks?

A big part of the reason why the games are becoming too easy comes in the form of the Rage Attacks, which typically start off one way then transition into another, the True Rage Attacks, when you rack up enough hit chains to get Rampage/Sparking. While it's nice to clear out crowds of enemies with Rage Attacks, you'll have so many enemies caught up in your attack that you can't see what your character is doing. This makes your character like the eye of the storm in a tornado and it murks the immersion in my opinion.

Is there a solution to this problem? Maybe there wasn't a good solution back in 2014, but Omega Force would eventually come to a solution as they continued innovating with each game. But it would have to be seen to be believed, just as the Koei Warriors Retrospective is doing right now.

Dynasty Warriors 8 is to the modern era what 5 was to the classic era. They continue the wave of peak from the games before it to provide the ultimate Warriors experience of the era, despite its shortcomings in the case of 8. For me, DW5 was a primary school memory and DW8 was a secondary school memory.

The spinoffs for 8, Empires and Godseekers, are up next.

#dynasty warriors #dynasty warriors 8 #dynasty warriors 8 xtreme legends #koei tecmo #koei warriors #koei warriors retrospective

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