Replaying Dynasty Warriors 6

As I mentioned in a previous post, I bought a converter to use old scart connectors to HDMI, and a capture card, so I could use some of my old consoles to play some of my older games (PS1 and PS2)

Sadly, my chunky PS2 is broken. I'm disappointed by that. I do however have my sister's old PS2 Slim console and brought that to the house to plug in, sadly though, I don't have the 8.5v power pack thing for it.

Now I'm wondering if I should just buy a new console with the cables for 80-ish Euros, or buy the power cable for 25-ish and just hope that the console is still functional.

Decisions, decisions. Nevertheless, while making this decision I have cracked out my old PS3, which doesn't need a converter as it already has a HDMI connector.

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I only have a couple of games left on the PS3, and of those few, two of them are part of a franchise I really want to get back into playing, and a big part of wanting to get my PS2 back out. Dynasty Warriors.

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Dynasty Warriors 6

I'm not certain that I ever completed this game, but I did play a hell of a lot of it. However, none of that matters this time round because for some reason none of my save games seem to be on the console.

It's not that big of a problem though, because I like the idea of starting from scratch.

So far I'm enjoying replaying this game, and it has been so long that it's relatively new to me. The combat is very fluid, and so far the characters have been fast, which is great as it adds to the excitement of playing these types of hack-and-slash games.

The music is great too, and really amps up the combat. There are a lot of people on screen at once, however, there are many instances of the game slowing down to a near halt, when there are too many things going on at once. Also, there seem to be some draw distance issues which are most likely a result of the hardware not being able to handle the game.

One thing I don't really like is the character designs... well, most of them are fine, but a few of them, I'm not really a fan of. Also, I don't like the cartoonish weapon choices that seemed to take place during this game compared to the older titles. But, I'll go into that down the line.

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Zhou Yu

My first playthrough was for Wu, as Zhou Yu, and this is where I first came to remember the sheer speed of combat, but I also noticed how slow the walking speed/ horse speed is.

It's cool that horses can be upgraded as you get more kills on horseback, however, but at the end of his campaign, my horse was only level 4 out of a max level of 5. As the level increases, so do their stats, so I didn't get the full benefit of having a speedy mount. What's cool though is you can bring these leveled-up mounts into your following character playthroughs.

Speed is everything in this game, as even playing on normal difficulty poses some challenges in combat. There is a lot of micro-managing within battles, such as certain characters needing to be looked after as the game goes on, and trying to be in multiple places is tough with the noticeably slow running speed.

I always thought Zhou Yu was a new character added in this game because I couldn't remember him from the last game I played before picking this one up... Then I saw a picture while searching through images.

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This is the Zhou Yu I can remember, and in DW4 he used a sword instead of a Bo staff.

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Dynasty Warriors 4

DW4 was my first entry into the Dynasty Warriors franchise, and after that, I picked up DW3 back in the day. I remember people talking about Dynasty Warriors 5 when that came out, but I never bought or played it.

Within a few years, DW6 came out, and I had a PS3 so bought it, and was excited to see this new era of Dynasty Warriors games, with better graphics and bigger battles.

I was, however, pretty shocked when coming from DW4 directly to DW6, because it seemed that so much had changed.

For starters, in DW6 each character gets a set amount of stages to complete which seems to be the same, right across the board. While each character may have taken part in many more battles than just 6, the designers chose to focus only on 6 of the big battles, and for me, this always felt lacking, as it feels like we don't get enough time with each character, and the story as a whole feels very broken.

On the other hand, DW4 allows for each character to take part in so many stages throughout a particular campaign. I had to look this up to find out - because I haven't a PlayStation 2 to play DW4 on... yet - but what I found was shocking.

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This image may not seem impressive, and sadly I can't find an image with the number of each battle of each chapter.

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Essentially, each chapter has a max of 4 battles for some, and usually has 3 battles. Certain secret bonus levels unlock if certain requirements are met during certain battles.

This can range from playing battles in a certain order, sipping past certain battles, or completing battles where you allow certain enemy generals to flee the battlefield alive.

Those people can come back down the line and will need to be dealt with.

There are even branching battles, in the form of A or B choices.

The Information Above Was Provided By This Site.

This is why the characters and campaigns I complete in DW4 still remain in my mind; players had no choice but to spend hours with each character, and all of the information in their story had no choice but to be absorbed.

Not only that, but there were multiple factions, not just the big 3, Wei, Wu, and Shu; you also had Lu Bu, Yuan Shao, Dong Zhou, The Yellow Turbans, and - one of my favourites - The Nanman.

DW4 had an insane amount of story, especially considering that each of those factions has between 3-10 playable characters who you were with for the entire game.

Once I saw this, and compared it to DW6 I realised that the storyline for 6 isn't really on the same level as DW4, and personally, for me, the storyline is the best part so now I'm really looking forward to getting back onto it.

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Dynasty Warriors 6 Is Still Good

While I may be comparing it to a game which I think has much more going for it, in many different areas. DW6 is still solid, and it's great to have better graphics.

Also, it's an example of why content is typically sacrificed for graphics, we simply can't have it all, and these days, people seem to enjoy the icing more than the cake.

I'm looking forward to going back to play through the older games now that I've had a small serving of DW6. So far, I've completed Zhou Yu, Xiahou Dun, Zhang Liang, and will continue to play some of these games until I come to a solution to my PS2 problem.