Today, I downloaded and played Dynasty Warriors Online by Koei for the Personal Computer, an online "Free to play" faction-based player versus player version of the popular action game that just entered closed beta a couple of days ago in North America and Europe. Though new here in the United States, the Japanese release of the game happened way back in 2006. Since it is a rather old game, the graphics are not the best though it does looks better than any of the console Dynasty Warriors releases with less occurrences of environment pop-ups.
You get a fancy victory dance when you have successfully won a battle.
Finally, for the first time in Dynasty Warriors history, you can fully customize your character's looks. The game still involves that repetitive hack and slash action where you fight our way through never ending waves of enemies but everything has been packaged a bit differently. From what I have played so far, the game mostly involves faction wars between the three kingdoms where up to four players can join a 10 minute bout with varying objectives - like capture the base or kill the most number of enemies - and they are pitted against four other players from a different faction. Both teams are provided with the support of a massive computer-controlled army. The winning team will gain victory points for the associated faction but I have yet to see what all of this means. The game fully supports the X-Box 360 controller and the controls are similar to the other games in the series. Interestingly, you don't level up in the game though your computer-controller personal bodyguard does. It's all a matter of equipping the best equipments that can be earned by winning battles and doing crafting. There is a power-up system during the battle that works like Gradius where each pick-up enables you to activate a variety of different character improvements.
The shorter battles make the game easier to digest.
So far, this game is very promising but since it's "free to play", I am approaching it with extreme caution. If all is well, this could be the best Dynasty Warriors ever made and I don't see a reason why new entries should still be produced in the future. Since this game didn't stop the continuation of the series, the fact that new releases existed after its 2006 Japanese release, I am sure that the game has some flaws in it. I have noticed one catastrophic problem with the game: The match-making is horrible and I kept joining battles against opponents with advanced equipments. There's definitely some promise with this game and I do plan to keep playing it for a while. If you are interested in checking it out for yourself, please click here.
FIRST IMPRESSION: 4 out of 5
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