Largely Speculative Preview: Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires

Many thanks to the fine folks over at Koei Warriors, who are keeping us updated on news about Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires and thus torturing me with anticipation for a game that is still several months from a US release. It's a good kind of torture, if that makes any sense.

Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires is the latest in the long-running Dynasty Warriors series, part of the larger Tecmo-Koei Warriors franchise. The Empires spinoffs are kind of a midpoint between the action-based Dynasty Warriors series and Tecmo-Koei's giant strategy game series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the Empires spinoffs, you alternate between an overall kingdom strategy mode and the usual Dynasty Warriors semi-tactical crazy action battles. It's actually a really, really good combination in general, and combines the appeal of an empire-building game with the appeal (and general stress relief) of fighting against thousands of soldiers and just plain feeling awesome.

The last game in the Empires set was a little disappointing, however. While the character creation mode was solid, the actual gameplay was lacking. In contrast to Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires, DW6E felt shallower both in the strategy mode and in the battles--especially in the battles, in which the enemy would only ever pull one real strategic ploy, and always at the beginning of the battle (they'd either send a supercharged officer, a fire attack, or a sneak attack, and once you dealt with whichever it chose it was clear sailing for the rest of the fight). You just didn't have that many options in either mode, and while it was indeed fun, each playthrough ended up feeling like the same thing over again. In contrast, DW5E had more ploys from your foes in each battle, and a few more options in the strategic play (such as the ability to declare alliances with other kingdoms). It also forced you to consider where you placed your officers in strategic play, as when attacking or defending you could only use officers who were in one of the adjacent regions. It just had greater depth in general.

So I've been pleased to see signs in recent previews of DW7E that suggest it is bringing back at least some of the tactical/strategic play that was missing from the previous edition. While not much has been said about the strategic mode yet, it appears that there will be more varieties of missions that can be assigned, and you can become known for having one of various kinds of personalities based on the objectives you pursue in and out of battle. As I said, I can't tell yet if they've brought back the missing options such as alliances, but it does at least appear that there is more to do. It's also good to see that they've kept DW6E's varied modes of play, as you can still play an independent officer or general in addition to the ruler, and they've even deepened that by adding the ability to really live as a mercenary, which is cool.

What I can definitely confirm is that there are more battlefield tactics available now. They've confirmed that you'll have the ability to unleash fire attacks, floods, rockslides, and other tactics that you tend to see used in the more objective-based missions of the main Dynasty Warriors series. Hopefully (and I can't imagine why it wouldn't) this means that the enemy will also use those tactics. What's especially cool is that it sounds like unleashing some of these powerful tactics will require you to claim ownership over certain parts of the battlefield--for instance, using a flood will require you to take one of the bases by a waterway. That would add some more depth to the combat and make it feel a bit more like the objective-based play the main series gives.

In what should come as no surprise, I've also been looking into the character creation mode for the game, and it certainly looks like it will be an improvement. There appear to be many more face and body options available. I can't tell if we have actual morphing options or if they've just added more places for part selection, but either way, it looks like you'll be able to create more varied characters. DW6E actually had a pretty nice mode for this already, and let you create a large variety of character types and appearances--so DW7E's mode should be pretty great, though I can't tell just how great quite yet. One thing that bothers me is that I can't see any sign so far of color sliders for the clothing...hopefully if they aren't allowing that they've at least given us more colors to choose from, as that was a very limited selection in DW6E. It's difficult to confirm, but I think I did catch sight of color sliders (or at least more varied colors than you'd expect without them) for hair and such in one of the preview videos.

I'm actually really enthused by the changes it sounds like they've been making to your choices of fighting styles. This uses DW7's system, so each fighter can carry two weapons. You get to decide what weapon type is the fighter's favored weapon, and when using that weapon, the fighter will receive some bonuses and an extra attack. What's nice here is that a number of the weapons will actually have a few different EX attacks to choose from. Furthermore, it sounds like you get to pick your character's Musou attacks (their most powerful moves). I'm not sure how much freedom you'll have here, but at least it sounds like your created characters no longer have to be tied precisely to the fighting style of one of the historical characters. It helps that DW7 had quite a selection of different weapon types, and the game is including the types from the Xtreme Legends spinoff as well.

There's a lot that's still uncertain about the new Empires game, but it's looking like things are shaping up very nicely. Unfortunately the game will only be available in the US as a downloadable game for the PS3, but that's better than nothing. I hope to see even more positive signs from this game as we get closer to release, but I'm definitely excited.