I guess this is sort of a review of sorts. Allot of people posted in my last DW6 topic about how much they disliked DW due to it's repetitiveness, so I figured I should give some info on 6 specifically now that I've played it allot.
I got a PS3, and Dynasty Warriors 6, and surprisingly I am actually feeling somewhat less ecstatic about it than usual. And no it's not because I'm getting sick of the repetitive nature of the series. Though I should mention something about that as well. The thing that's got me disappointed is that they've removed huge gobits of content. Specifically, 7 characters, and the musou modes and unique weapons/movesets of most of the remaining cast. That said,(getting back to the repetitive nature of the series thing) the game has actually been greatly changed in some not bad ways.
The combat system has been revamped to be allot better in my opinion. The number of attacks you can do no longer depends on your weapon, instead you can do a continuous stream of square attacks, but you can increase the effectiveness and intricacy of you attacks by filling your Renbu gauge, done by wacking the hell out of enemies. Once you fill it, it goes up a level and your attacks become better. Triangle are different as well, they're still more powerful than square attacks, but they now are completely separate and are effected by the Renbu gauge in a similar way to square attacks. You can do a quick strong attack by tapping the button, and can usually do a short combo by tapping it multiple times(and it's effected by Renbu level), or you can hold it to do a more powerful attack. Jump attacks are similar to DW5, you still have a square and a triangle. There's now a triangle running attack. You can still deflect attacks by holding block and pressing square at the right moment, and you can counterattack by pressing triangle instead. They've also now added grappling attacks executed by holding block and pressing square for a quick one, and triangle for a charged one. They removed the bow(which was nearly useless anyway, and is even more so now that you can just climb archer towers) and replaced it with a forward roll ability that allows you to quickly dodge around. Musou Rage has been replaced by specials which are an ability that each character has one of out of five. They all have context sensitive applications that increase their effectiveness. Use stone drop on a slope and the stones will roll down and crush all in their path, use fire in a base and it's light it up, dealing additional damage to any enemies within, as well as confusing enemy officers in the area. Swift Attack special fills your renbu gauge and increases your combat effectiveness, and if your health is in the red it can even allow you to shrug off attacks. True speed lets you run around like a superninja or Gan Ning's old musou attack, plowing through enemies and dealing heavy damage. It affects your horse too. Finally there's the volly special which rains arrows upon your enemies, and sometimes balista bolts, ice and lightning depending on the character. It also annihilates archers with great efficiency. Horse combat, like jumping is relatively unchanged. Oh yeah, and you can now use the right analogue stick to turn the camera.
Anyway, onto other changes! Based now are different. Instead of offense, defense, and supply, there are now just bases of varying sizes and shapes. All but the smallest have a health recovery item spawn point which can be found in the center of square bases, but for larger ones like castles you have to find the colored square on the map. All bases except watch posts have gates which must being broken through in order to get at the juicy defenders inside. Gates will be repaired when the base isn't being attacked. Base capture is more complex now than simply killing the guard captain. While there still is a guard captain, he won't appear in smaller bases and in larger bases he only appears after certain conditions are met. Those conditions are tied to the new system. Now when you enter a base a number will appear onscreen. This is the base durability and when it's lowered to zero the base switches to the side of whoever lowered it. Base soldiers are worth one point, while more powerful soldiers called corporal are worth 20, and once a large base is lowered below 100 the guard captain appears and allows you to capture the base by defeating him. Yes, so bases can now be captured! They can pass back and forth between different sides in the battle multiple times. There are two types of small base that are not like the others. Watch posts are full of archers and periodically send a rain of arrows down on enemies nearby (similar to volly special). These can actually by pretty dangerous given the right circumstances. Especially since they are usually in hard to reach places. Gates are just a gate with enemies on one side and archers on top. They have only 30 durability so killing ten troops and finishing off the corporal makes quick work of them. One thing about bases is that officers can bolster their defenses by staying in them. This adds the soldiers in the officer's unit to the base's durability so it's a often good idea to take out the officer before you capture the base.
On a similar subject to bases are the sieges. Sieges, like most things in DW 6 are all more involved than previously. now when you reach Hu Lao Gate you stop in front of it and start slaughtering multiple defense captains. Killing one opens up a position to build a siege engine, depending on where, it could be a catapult or a ram. The ram will try to bash open the gate, but the enemy will usually have ballistae on the walls that will blast it to pieces. The catapults can destroy them, but aren't very accurate so it may take a while. The thirst type of siege engine though, is the ladder. Engineers will build siege ladders and then carry them up to the wall and set them up. You and your allies can them climb them in order to assault the walls and take the destruction of the ballistae, archers, and boulder hurlers into your own hands.
I'll list a few miscellaneous features now.
Horses can jump now!
You can press down to call your horse to you. You actually choose from a list of collected horses at the set up, and the horses can each be leveled up in pretty much the exact same way as bodyguards from DW5
You can swim! So can your allies and enemies!
The minimap is greatly improved. it now shows actual elevations and areas where you can climb up and down as well as stairs, castle walls, bases, etc. It's considerably more detailed, and allot better in general.
The weapons have been changed as well. Instead of four progressively better weapons, we get three roughly equal weapons. The Standard, strong, and skill. Each type is effected differently by Renbu and they can all have varying special abilities and damage levels. You can keep up to eight individual weapons per character.
Now instead of picking up health/musou/defense/attack +10 items, the character's abilities increase as their level does. With each level they get a skill point that they can spend on the new skill trees to upgrade their stats and gain special abilities.
Every battle now has targets you can complete to gain an experience reward as well as a weapon.
No more equipable items... I don't personally miss them much, but I can easily see how others would.
Author
Topic: Dynasty Warriors 6 again (Read 1156 times)