Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition Review (PS Vita)
Tecmo Koei’s Dynasty Warriors series has a lot of history behind it, but other than it’s original release as a 1 on 1 fighting game, it’s always stayed true to its hack and slash roots. Dynasty Warriors 8 is no different and you’re still able to slash your way to victory.
With this new instalment comes tighter gameplay, bigger maps and more customisation options, making it easily one of the Vita titles with the most content.
There’s an unfathomable amount of content in-game with its lengthy campaign mode, joined by its equally extensive free play, ambition and challenge modes. Even with it’s wide array of modes, there might not be a lot for you to do if you’re not a fan of button mashing, or Dynasty Warriors in general. It’s a game made for fans and excels at what it does, and if you’ve enjoyed Dynasty Warriors in the past then you’ll feel right at home here.
The gameplay is tight and fluid with combos being racked up easily, and you’re able to switch between 2 weapons in battle, allowing for more flashier and long-chaining attacks. If you want to, you could easily go through most – if not all – levels solely mashing the square button, but much of the fun is is found by experimenting what you can do with each character.
The main focus still revolves around capturing bases and battling other big names, such as the infamous Lu Bu (when you aren’t playing his story), on a grand map with thousands of enemies charging at you constantly. But with the large maps comes an extremely slow horse – so it still takes a while to get to where you need to be, especially with many missions forcing you to retrace your steps. You won’t catch a break, but you might develop Repetitive Strain Injury!
Ambition Mode, the Xtreme Legends part of the game, is good fun and sees you selecting an officer to play as you build your empire. You’ll choose battles to participate in to collect materials, which are then put towards enhancing your empire until you’re the strongest.
Fortunately, the touch-screen based mini games found in Dynasty Warriors NEXT are absent, and whilst they were responsive, they were also rather bland and outstayed their welcome early in.
Graphically it’s quite pleasing, if not as attractive as some other Vita games but this is most likely due to the sheer size of the maps. There’s some slowdown when many enemies are on-screen, and although it’s in no way gamebreaking, it can interrupt the flow of your combo and this will irritate some.
Character models are nice to look at, especially outside of battle, and special attacks are colourful and flashy, but sadly, this doesn’t apply to environments which are rather flat and lifeless. Cutscenes seem to be fairly inconsistent, with some scenes being much better graphically than others, but mostly they’re rough around the edges and don’t show much overall improvement over Dynasty Warriors NEXT, which released 4 years earlier on Vita.
Audio is a mixed bag. On one hand, the voice acting is mostly terrific, but on the other you have fairly dull combat sounds where swords seem to have lost their steel. Sadly, the voice acting is the peak of the in-game audio as the music is mostly forgettable. I do remember my characters whistling constantly though, as you summon your horse but tapping the lower right-hand side of the Vita screen, something that is easily accidentally done.
The constant dialogue in-game keeps things lively, and it’s nice to see the relationships between characters deepen especially as elsewhere the game is quite light on the story side.
If there’s anything that can be said for Dynasty Warriors 8, it’s that it has an abundance of content that will keep you busy for hours. Easy storyline is lengthy, Ambition mode can be replayed with a variety of characters and there’s always Free Mode if you fancy something easy and ideal for travel. It’s easy enough to get into, even if you’ve never played a Dynasty Warriors game before, and I can easily recommend it based on the sheer amount of content alone, but if you’re looking for a beefy story with less ‘I can complete this with my eyes closed’ gameplay, then you may want to look elsewhere.
THE VERDICT
With Dynasty Warriors, it delivers on what it’s always marketed to be, and that is a solid hack and slash that will keep you busy for a long time. Whether or not you think it’s worth your time is up to you, but it’s definitely worth giving it a whirl.
Whilst I can’t call it one of Vita’s greatest titles, and I felt that in some areas NEXT was a better Dynasty Warriors Vita title, I can say that it’s great value for money and will be sure to please both fans and newcomers to the series alike.
Just bare in mind that with great hack and slash comes great button mashing responsibility.
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