Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires Review (PS Vita)
We’ve covered Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires on PS3 and so I’ll be describing the Vita-centric features so you can decide which platform offers the best experience for the game.
I’m personally not a huge fan of Musou games on Vita as I prefer the extra enemies, less lag and better visuals of the PS3 and PS4, but that’s not to say that the ports are bad by any means. Koei Tecmo have supported the Vita greatly and I have nothing but praise for them for doing so, and so I’m happy to see one of the reigning kings of the hack and slash genre make a second home on the beautiful little handheld. With so little memory available on the Vita, I bet you’re wondering if Empires is worth that sweet 3GB.
I own Empires on PS4 and that’ll remain my platform of choice due to the poor visual quality on Vita and some less than desirable controls. The first thing I noticed is how the first cutscene of Empires mode has an incredibly low framerate where the game seemingly hadn’t been well optimised for Vita, as other games have managed to do the same thing fine. The visuals as a whole fail to impress, as with most Musou games on Vita, as the console counterparts look gorgeous but the handheld versions not only look worse – which is to be expected – but look a whole lot worse than a lot of the Vita’s library.
Gameplay fares slightly better but doesn’t feel as fluid as it does on its home console counterpart. Even playing the game by its own merits, I’d be hard done to praise this much as it’s lagging behind a lot of other Vita titles and I’m not a big fan of Musou games on the go – the gameplay might allow easy portability but Koei Tecmo sacrifice so many aspects of the game to make it portable that it doesn’t seem particularly worth it, despite my appreciation that they’re still strongly supporting the beautiful little Vita. There’s some slowdowns when oodles of enemies are on-screen and sometimes the buttons don’t feel entirely responsive and although the core gameplay is fun, it’s not very fun here.
There’re some Vita-exclusive features that make use of the touchscreens but they’re not necessary and I prefer not to use them. Strategems and things such as calling your horse can be activated via touchscreen although they’re little more than a button push away anyway, and whilst I’m sure some will like the convenience of quickly flicking your finger to the screen to do something, I prefer using the buttons as I always do in these circumstances to avoid dirtying up the screen and because I feel buttons give me more control over what I’m doing, and I’m not likely to do something else by mistake.
Visually it’s less than impressive with murky textures, little detail on anything bar the player character and technical issues. It’s frankly not a pretty game with bland environments, pixellated character and enemy models, and textures that could’ve used more than a little time polishing up – water meets with ground and just completely, utterly stops dead in its tracks, looking like different flooring rather than water unless there’s light reflecting off of its surface. One thing that’s always disappointed me with Musou on Vita isn’t how the visuals are worse because that’s to be expected, but to be this bad when other games on the system fare far much better is appalling.
Audio manages to hold up better with the Japanese voice-acting remaining intact along with the OST, although the sound effects are noticeably less impactful and a tad more tinny-sounding. Sadly, models don’t seem to move their mouths whatsoever when talking outside of the CGI cutscenes, making the game seem even more stiff. Maybe there wasn’t much Koei Tecmo could do audio-wise and whilst it’s far from the worst thing about this port, it doesn’t do anything to help save it either.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires on Vita is only worth getting if you understand that it’s not nearly as good as the console counterpart but you want more of the action and you want it on the go, but otherwise I can’t recommend it. Koei Tecmo do some fantastic Vita ports, notably the Atelier series’ which can go toe to toe with the PS3 versions, but the Musou games are always badly lagging behind. As a fan I can’t exactly say I’ve enjoyed my experience with this on Vita, the same way I disliked Warriors Orochi 3 on Vita whilst loving the PS4 version, and I’ll certainly be sticking with the PS4 for my Musou games.
- Super Mario Odyssey Celebrates its One Year Anniversary - October 28, 2018
- Dragon Ball Z KAI Final Chapters Review (Anime) - October 28, 2018
- Resident Evil 2 Remake Gets a Steelbook Edition in Europe - October 24, 2018
