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Dynasty Warriors
Koei/ Sony/ PS2


The Dynasty Continues.

In direct contrast to Nintendo's quality over quantity mission objective, Sony is firmly famous for simply throwing stuff at the wall and then patting themselves on the back about the things that stick.

There are relatively few poor games in the Sony library, however, and contrary to what the competition wants you to believe, the best PlayStation games are often the best games on any platform. With the imminent arrival of the PlayStation 2, super console gameplay with a mountain of retro compatible tiles and a decent mound of supergames was duly promised. The problem is that middle ground. The expansive selection of good but not great titles, or bad but good-for-some games that do, so annoyingly, obscure from view what is hot for PlayStation gamers around the world. This year, Sony will be posing and flexing their enormous marketing muscles so gamers and non-gamers alike from Burkina to Uzbekistan will be inundated with PlayStation 2 and Sony games advertising. But, something you might note here in this massive E3 feature - or in anyone's massive E3 feature for that matter: Very few of the top Sony games generating post E3 buzz actually come from Sony.

One such third party title, quietly adrift the great big sea of Sony spew, was Dynasty Warriors 2. Wow. Just frickin' wow. A sequel to a game that came out so long ago it's practically in the "classics" category. An action/adventure game based on the technical fighting in the original Dynasty Warriors, a tour de force in its own right.

But not even a sequel, really, save for that annoying numeral 2 which is apparently a prerequisite affix when releasing a game for us dumb North Americans who wouldn't recognize a franchise otherwise (it's simply called Shin Sangoku Musou in Japan).

Anyway, this continuation of the Dynasty legacy (ha ha) is no longer just a top-notch 3D fighter, and is more than just an action/adventure: A roaming action/adventure/3D fighter - a 3D fighter on horseback! - and still that's an understatement. It incorporates RPG, RTS and even shooter elements (saw some long range crossbow stuff). They're calling it a "Tactical Action Game." Works for me. Looks glorious. If Sony would only concentrate on top-notch games like this and forego the mega spew of mediocre titles, they'd have made a stronger impression.

Fortunately, a few developers/publishers are gobbling up some obvious Sony slack by creating masterworks (see Metal Gear Solid 2; Gunslinger, Spiderman, Run Like Hell…). Koei is certainly doing their part. In fact, I remember asking the Koei PR guy when we could expect a Dynasty follow up - long after one could reasonably be expected to wait for such an occurrence - so impressed was I by the quality of gameplay found in that 1997 release. "Something's in the works" was all he'd say. I'll say!

So you pick one of several sword-wielding warriors then jump into a battlefield of besiegement. Plenty of proficient hacking and running around to the next little melee o' hackage, all from that 3rd-person chase mode, yet with nary a camera glitch to be seen.

Some stealth and sneakery seems to come into play, and more than a few scenes of Lord of the Manor overseer stuff whilst the battle raged also showed in the demo - but my experience with the game was fairly disjointed as I alternately played a demo and watched two demos going on beside me - hey, I didn't put any quarters in, I could afford to waste a few men as the next guy went barbarian on horseback. I like to watch.

And aside from the superconsole graphics - and very little aliasing, unlike many of the PS2 games - there's also a great deal of detailed peripheral action that doesn't seem to bog the frame-rate like you'd expect. Wow. It's all very grand in scope. Seriously epic proportions.

Remember, too, that there's a great deal of cavalry warfare and an intelligent combat system that takes note of opponents' relative height and position with moves and combos executed judiciously and accordingly. Smart even when combat gets so busy you just want to mash buttons and pray.

In fact the button mash tendency was probably the only deficiency showing itself (aside from the lack of a complete game, I mean) but as a work still in progress, it's safe to assume tighter interface or less dizzying intensity (shades of Gauntlet Legends relentless onslaught of hackables) will accompany the final release.

Can't wait.

-Shaun Conlin

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