Dynasty Warriors

THE BAD:
Not as good as Street Fighter or Tekken for most people
Complex parrying system

SUMMARY:
This was a game I got bundled with 4 other games when I bought my PS1, and like 3 of the other 4, I can’t say it’s a game I would have gone out and bought, but I’m very glad I had it because it is the first game in my favourite gaming series of all time.

This game is not like all the sequels, this is a simple side-on view beat ‘em up like Street Fighter. You play as one of 10 characters (divided into 3 kingdoms of 3 characters each and a made up one) and engage in various modes like Arcade and Time Trial. Each character has a weapon and these range from spears to swords and even a huge club. There are combination attacks unique to each character to use and if you learn the combination off by heart then you will stand a better chance of winning. There is a bar which builds up below your character on screen if you are on the offensive but decreases if you are on the defensive. When this bar is full it will turn yellow and you can then do your special attack, which is called a musou attack. This is a 3 hit combo which does quite a lot of damage.

If your character’s health bar is in the red then you will be able to do your musou attack at any time. But if your character’s health is in the red and your musou bar is full then you will do the full combination, which is 5 hits usually. From the front this will do 103 points worth of damage. Each character has 2 different musou attacks.

Your character can defend, but you can also throw your opponent off balance when they attack by parrying. By pressing one of two buttons (depending on what type of attack you are being faced with) you can not only stop your opponents attack, you can also throw them off balance which leaves them wide open for an attack. But the problem is guessing which type of attack is coming your way, and if you guess wrong then you are left open and wishing that you’d just blocked instead of trying to counter. Some attacks can’t be countered though and if you try to do it with either parry button you will be left off balance regardless.

There are 3 unlockable characters which can be obtained by beating the main mode with all the characters overall. There’s the strategist for one Kingdom who can shoot laser beams out of his fan, the leader of another kingdom whose attacks are very fast and then there’s Lu Bu, the mightiest warrior of the time.

Really this game is not anything extraordinary. It doesn’t do anything that other fighting games haven’t done. The sequels to this game are far better though, but if I hadn’t owned this game I wouldn’t have bought the others. All in all it’s an average fighting game, but with real characters and information about them.