flyingjohn
Arcane
- Joined
- May 14, 2012
- Messages
- 3,193
Someone explain to me Dynasty / Samurai Warriors; I want to try and get into this series. Which are the good ones for the PS4? And could someone explain to me the differences between the normal games and the Empire games. Do they have some kind of empire sim gameplay, as the name might imply?
I will list the positives and negatives of the series but considering you are enjoying nioh and souls games combat you may be heavily disappointed:
The good:
-Coop is extremly fun.Balancing between killing thousand of enemies while saving your allies on the hardest difficulty is simply a great time.
-Battlefield managment negates the just "mash square to win" false critique.You may think killing the enemy soldiers is the point of the game but that is simply not the case.
Your job is to eliminate the most dangerous enemy officers while taking over bases to make sure your allies don't die and countering enemy events.
when you look at the map you aren't looking at the large amount of useless fodder you are wanting to kill but you looking for where your allies are in trouble and how to counter the ambush/reinforcements/event that happened a moment ago.Remember most of these games end when not you but your commander dies or the objective is lost.
On easy difficulty none of these things apply,but you don't need to go to nightmare,just stay on normal or hard.Not to mention killing thousands doesn't really give you anything as a reward.
-Plenty of content.These games main campaign usually lasts in the 15-20 hours range.And the side content is mostly a grind but still adds additional 20 hours min to the length.
-Large cast:These games usually have more then 30 characters and bearing the dreaded c curse(i will talk about this in the negatives) most characters have enough difference in the attack arc/movement stats to make them worth to play.(especially for pirate warriors)
-The music:
-finally a semi good story presentation.The older warriors games had a campy feel but the newer one have made actual effort into at least making it a solid story presentation.
Now the bad things:
-Combat is shallow.The c curse still remains in most of these games.What this means is that all combos are thrown into the same type with a different animation depending on the character(water vs fire aoe,sword uppercut vs spear uppercut etc).
c2/uppercut or guard break depending on game c3/aoe c4/uppercut with a different animation c5/aoe with a different animation and so on.
Dynasty warriors 8 introduced special ex attacks unique to each character and pirate warriors changed this formula slightly to give each character a unique style.
Samurai warriors introduced super speedy attacks and so on.
But they improved the combat form the old games so much it is almost not recognizable.
Considering this will probably be your play or not play criteria i will recommend watching combo videos of dynasty warriors 8/pirate warriors 3 considering these are the best full packages warriors games.
Pirate warriors:
Dynasty warriors 8:
If these videos look boring to you then there is no point in trying the series considering the combat is the meat of the game and you won't get any super new moves that change the gameplay in the videos.
-Ai.The ai is garbage and higher difficulty just changes their stats not their aggressiveness.The game uses some weird half realtime combat system for the peons.They will mostly just watch you and then hit you after a few seconds and then continue watching(even if you are surrounded).The officers actually put up a fight but they all behave the same so once you figure out one you figured them all out.
-Your allies ai is even worse.You will spend a large of time saving your useless allies (especially the commander).There used to eb a morale system tu buff/debuff them but now they are just get slightly better depending on when you complete specific objectives.
-Level design is shit.In the old games there were huge empty maps in which you could charge straight at the enemy commander and kill him.Now you follow a very predetermined path on small maps with linear pathways and small square basses scattered around.But the maps have better scripted events so at least there is that.
-I wanna be diablo syndrome.Each game has inventory and loot yet not a single one has nay meaningful loot.Most of them all are just stat upgrades without any additional abilities.In 8 they introduced weapon rock paper scissors but that just means you carry different affinity weapons and that is all.
-The grind is real.Every single warriors game has some form of ridiculous rng grinding if you want to max stats. In the old games it was based on breaking bases and hoping to get musou upgrades.In pirate warriors you get a chance to get coins which allow you to upgrade stats beyond ,just a chance not a guarantee.(except for specific story ones). This extends to the side mods which are just either smaller maps which you have to constantly grind to get coins/materials/exp to max stats.
I guess some people feel they are a nice diversions from the main game.
-repetitiveness .What you do from the first level you will do until the last level.There will be different events but the core gameplay remains the same.
Empires game are just warriors game combat with added strategy options.This is not romance of the three kingdoms rpg style,this is just you choosing battles and some strategical options and then using the same combat system as the base game in maps which are worse then the base games(smaller and nothing worthwhile actually happens in them). They did add stuff like marriages but they were an afterthought and just seem to be there for the fanfics.
So what is the core gameplay then?
You run around the map from objective a to b eliminating the biggest threat while killing a large amount of peons and making sure your allies are alive.
Think of them as action roguelikes,just play a couple of maps for a hour-two and the repetitiveness won't annoy you.
My personal recommendation is either pirate warriors 3 or dynasty warriors 8+ xtreme legends.
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