There has been a bit of an online thing in Japan recently, where websites are cracking down on who actually gets to view their content—preferably only their own species. Why is that, you ask? Well, imagine you created a website in English for English speaking audiences, then along comes a bunch of foreigners from another country who generate content on your site in a different language you and your audience doesn't understand. You wouldn't like that too much, right?
So hence, if you try to visit a few Japanese sites/pages recently and discovered you are unable to access them due to errors (e.g. Forbidden Access), then you are most likely purposely locked out due to your location not being in Japan.
The most recent example of this is on SAVEDATA.JP. I already detailed what this site is about and why it is useful here. However, they have begun to make all their save codes (セーブエディット) section available only to people living in Japan. So if you try to access these pages outside of Japan, you'll be now greeted to the following:
Red text translate to: You do not have permission to access.
Here is an easy way to get around this, and no, you do not have to move to Japan or any other country.
All you really have to do is to switch to use a proxy address. Proxies not only help you retain anonymity over the internet, but it additionally solves the issue of blocked/forbidden websites and pages, even ones set up by the server/network you are currently using.
But the above page will not just work with any proxy. You specifically need to use a proxy that is located in Japan. By doing such, you are basically masking yourself to the internet as coming directly from Japan instead of where you are currently.
Most proxy lists should indicate the proxy IP (proxy address), port, speed, level of anonymity and country it comes from.
In order to browse the internet with at least decent speeds, you should select a proxy that has the highest speed. Not all proxy addresses also work, so you may have to end up trying multiple ones until you come upon one that does the trick.
So looking at the above proxy list, I would first select 179.60.241.173, copy it to the clipboard and keep the 8080 port number in mind (as I'll be needing to input it later onwards).
Do not simply copy and use this proxy address I'm using or refer to the screenshot I posted for addresses. Proxies change all the time, so you most likely won't be able to continuously use the same ones for an infinite amount of time.
Let's briefly go over how to actually switch to a proxy address in your internet browser settings. All browsers will be different, but in general they should all give you adjustable proxy settings.
In Firefox, proxy options are located under browser options/preferences in Advanced -> Network -> Connection -> Settings.
After clicking "Manual proxy configuration", you need to enter the proxy address you copied previously and paste it into the "HTTP Proxy" number field. Additionally, input the port number tied to that proxy address into the "Port" field. Leave everything else unchanged and save the changes.
In Chrome, proxy settings can be changed by going to Settings -> Show Advanced Settings -> Network -> Change Proxy Settings. The steps should then be the same as Firefox above.
After changing the proxy, you can then test the page that you couldn't access earlier by simply reloading or going to the address again. If you cannot get the page to load or you are still getting error messages, you should go on to try the next proxy address.
So after doing that, I was able to access SAVEDATA.JP's save codes pages again!
Now that you know how proxies work, you can use it to your advantage in other ways, and I do mean not strictly for Japanese web content exclusively.
You may have remembered I posted a guide on this blog on how to mod your weapons in Dynasty Warriors 8 via Windows software Bruteforce Save Data.
Mod?! What a crime, you say! But nah, this came into existence dominantly because the majority of people, including myself, absolutely dreaded the awful weapon tempering system in the game originally. Modding weapons was therefore a way to relieve yourself (your temper, not your pants) of this agony and have some actual fun with the game once again. It was also useful for test purposes, e.g. testing out different element builds.
Albeit the weapon tempering has gotten much better and almost perfected in Xtreme Legends, people who have used it have been kind of spoiled, apparently. They desired to mod their weapons (and other bits) in Xtreme Legends as well, even though the only thing that urges any modding now is the endless grinding and farming the game requires.
I have to maybe pause and say that some things are better left in secret. KOEI has caught onto our shameful tactics and in defense have double layer encrypted their game saves starting from DW8:XL and onwards. This means that Bruteforce Save Data can no longer be used to decrypt the game saves in order to modify their data. Even worse, the developer of Bruteforce Save Data has withdrawn development of the software entirely and pulled it off from his own website. Oddly, I still can't find reasoning of the sudden departure, but this may potentially mean the road will look very bleak for support of newer games, even for mere profile resigning.
Nevertheless, double layer encryption is not foul proof. It can still be destroyed via third party devices such as Game Genie (English) and Cyber Save Editor (Japanese). Yes, Game Genie still exists and not a mere distant memory from the 90s. I know for a fact that Cyber Save Editor has added support for the latest KOEI games such as DW8:XL and SW4 (as documented at savedata.jp). These are of course the Japanese versions. There is still uncertainty that English versions of these games are supported in Cyber Save Editor (Japanese do play our games too, ya know?!)
Anyway, onto the most important part—viewer T Blipz has written the following message to me through e-mail and declares I should let everyone know of this. Hence, I shall not let him down.
He states that basically Game Genie can now decrypt DW8:XL and allow hex editing:
Therefore, if you want to continue to mod stuff in DW8:XL, then Game Genie (English games) or Cyber Save Editor (Japanese games) will be your only bets. The best thing is that Game Genie is a mere 30 bucks, compared to $50-$100 for Cyber Save Editor.
Now stop asking me how to mod stuff in DW8:XL. :) And I have no experience in either of these and never used them, so please don't ask me how to use them. Besides, I believe there are already a few guides on the internet for both.
Finally, I wonder what KOEI will do now knowing of this evil I just unleashed through the bag... *Gulp*
tl&dr: DW8:XL cannot be used with Bruteforce Save Data; however, you can now overcome that with Game Genie.
I know that a lot of my viewers are interested in
playing imported games, particularly newly released Japanese titles or
earlier titles that were unfortunately pushed off into the abyss for
English or other international audiences. While I think the idea is
wholly crazy for reading intensive games such as RPGs, it's otherwise
alright for games that are rather light on it, such as action games in
veins of KOEI's Warriors series.
To help your
experience be less of a misery, I'm going to share with you a useful
tool you can use yourself to quickly translate in-game Japanese text to
English, or whatever other language you desire. Now if you are already
fluent in Japanese as I mostly am, you can still use it for a dozen
other languages and not just for games either. I've used this tool
myself to translate Chinese, Korean, German and Russian text to English from
games, movies, video clips and television shows (none of which I'm fortunately any adept in).
The tool in question is called OCR, or Optical Character Recognition. If
you haven’t heard about it yet, it essentially allows you to
grab specific sections of text in a picture/screenshot and converts
them to machine-encoded/computer-readable format, which is text that you can manipulate freely on your PC
including copying and pasting into a translator.
OCR is widely available as both online web embedded services or via downloaded software. There are additionally both free and paid versions; free versions offering basic functionality with less accuracy while paid offering higher accuracy and more features.
Before we dive into anything, let’s briefly go over the prerequisites. You’re going to need the following:
1.) A computer that preferably has access to the internet. 2.) OCR software.
I tend to favor and prefer ABBYY Screenshot Reader, included in ABBYY FineReader. Although it is paid software, it has worked mostly flawlessly for me converting virtually any text in any language in screenshots to computer-readable with high accuracy. If you visit their website, you can download a free, fully featured trial of the software. Albeit its rather hefty price tag, I highly recommend purchasing as it is one of the best OCR software available on the internet.
Do not download or purchase ABBYY Screenshot Reader individually, as you will not be receiving Asian language support with it.
If you prefer to go the free route, there are numerous free OCR services available, both as online web embedded and via downloaded software. Be wary that a lot of them do not support Asian languages.
Capture2text is a free downloadable OCR software with Asian language support and specific section/text area capturing: http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/
Keep in mind that I have no experience or knowledge with Capture2text or any online based OCR services, let alone free ones. All I ever use is the fantastic ABBYY Screenshot Reader. Nevertheless, a simple Google search will yield more results, if the above ones are not favorable or working for you.
The following is necessary if you desire game console support (e.g. PS3, Xbox 360, etc.): 3.)A capture card or device compatible with your game console.
The
capture card or device is necessary because we require a method to take
screenshots in the game with the text we want converted/translated, so
we can then run OCR on it. Now, you may get away substituting this with a camera, but since most OCR
requires the text in the picture be very clear and precise, a capture
card or device will undoubtedly work much better.
If you want to do this on PC games, then you can simply use "Print Screen" command.
Alright,
now with the prerequisites and boring things aside, let’s get into the
actual process!
Let’s say for example you're playing Musou Orochi 2
Ultimate right now on your PS3, pretend you don’t know Japanese and really
like to know what the highlighted text said.
Now being
that it’s a game, you can’t really just copy the text and paste it into a
translator, could you? You could possibly manually convert the text into computer-readable by finding out which letter is which (using some sort of
Japanese dictionary or characters list) and typing it out one by one on the computer. But let’s face it, that’s going to take until Hell freezes
over and infinite eye strain, especially given the amount of Kanji that exists!
Well, fear not, as this is where OCR comes to save the day! It will easily convert the text to computer-readable for you in the speed that it takes you to type a sentence or less.
So
the first thing you have to do is take a screenshot of the screen with
the text on it you want converted, utilizing your capture card or device. If you're on a PC game, print screen should
work dandy. Remember, you can also attempt to use a camera if you're on
a game console and have no access to a capture device. That may or may
not work, depending on how large, clear and prominent the text comes out on the
photo.
The next step is to run OCR on the screenshot. For this purpose, I'm going to be using ABBYY Screenshot Reader exclusively. Methods and instructions will vary upon the OCR being used. In my case, I'm going to show you how easy and fast it is to use ABBYY Screenshot Reader.
Here ABBYY Screenshot Reader can be launched directly from the Start Menu after installing ABBYY FineReader:
In order to change language to Japanese or any other Asian language, click on the Language drop down menu and select "More languages...":
In the Language Editor window, Asian languages, including Japanese can now be selected under "Asian Languages". Be sure to uncheck any other languages that have already been enabled, such as the default English. If you have more than one language selected, the software will attempt to read all of those languages in the screenshot, which may make the results not come out what you'd expect.
After clicking OK and confirming that you only have one sole language selected, you can now go ahead and click on the capture screenshot button (the big button with the notepad and clipboard icon to the right). However; before doing that, you have to make sure the screenshot the software needs to read from is already opened in a picture viewer, fully zoomed to 100% and non-hidden/obstructed on the screen. Because once you click on that button, it will essentially freeze everything on the screen.
Click the capture screenshot button to start the reading process, but do not click it until your screenshot is launched in a separate window, fully zoomed to 100% and non-hidden/obstructed on the screen.
After clicking that button, the ABBYY Screenshot Reader window will disappear and your cursor will transform into a crosshair.
What you basically wish to accomplish here is to simply just drag and select the section of text you want the screenshot reader to read and copy from.
It might consume a few lousy seconds, but once it's done its magic, that bit of text that is in the screenshot should be correctly converted and additionally copied to the clipboard.
We can find that out by simply opening a software that can input text (such as Notepad) and clicking Control + P to paste.
So here are the results of attempting to run ABBYY Screenshot Reader on that specific section of Japanese text in that Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate screenshot:
In comparison to the actual text that appears in the game, it read it 100% perfectly!
The next step is, as you have guessed, copy that bit of text and paste into a translator. My main web translator of choice is Google Translate, but if results fair poorly for you, I also recommend Babylon Translation or Babelfish.
After running that bit of Japanese text on Google Translate, this is what it returned:
Google Translate doesn't do a fantastic job on translation, especially regarding Japanese to English, generating broken Engrish a fair majority of the time. Regardless, it should be enough most of the time for you to get a general idea of what the text means. Here, I can pretend that I can only read the English, so to my understanding it basically means that turning this on will cause enemy morale to raise greatly at the start of the battle.
Now if you still don't understand it after the above translation, you are welcome to tormentask me to give you a proper translation that doesn't make anyone's mind melt in confusion (Japanese only of course). No OCR necessary, just send me the screenshot or text directly. :)
And that pretty much concludes this guide on OCR. You can envision other endless possibilities you can have with OCR, given all the possible languages it can read from. Of course and like I already indicated, it doesn't have to be Japanese or be a game. I honestly think every person who enjoys foreign media and games should have knowledge on how to effectively use OCR, and most certainly ABBYY Screenshot Reader.
One last thing I want to mention is that any OCR, even ABBYY Screenshot Reader, isn't a miracle product by any means. Meaning, it's not going to perfectly read all text you hand to it. If you desire perfect or near perfect results, you have to make sure whatever text in your screenshots you want read from is as crisp, clear and in large font as possible. The text should additionally have no background behind the text, straight (not crooked) and be single colored. Vertical text is fine as long as it's straight.
Lately, there have been reports of people having pesky troubles resigning PS3 game saves to their profile using Bruteforce Save Data, the main culprit being the dreaded BLANK they receive when they attempt to setup a PARAM.SFO template.
Keep in mind that getting BLANK doesn't essentially equate to failure. Some games do not mind game saves with a BLANK profile. To them, it just means that game save has no attached owner and they will allow you to save over it just fine and dandy. Other times however, games will reject game saves with a BLANK profile. The only way to tell for sure is to simply test the game save.
So what if the game does mind, and it really needs an appropriate profile (16 digit ID) attached to it? Well, lately all I have been telling people with this problem is to keep trying different game saves until you get one without BLANK. However, that doesn't work a lot of times. I have been searching around the internet to answers of why BLANK occurs and even e-mailed the software author about it (with no response). That is until, I finally believe I solved the mystery!
What you basically need to do is to simply tie a PSN/SEN account to your PS3 user account and log into it.
That's it! That will generate that magic 16 digit ID for you on your game saves. After you logged into your PSN/SEN account, make sure you create a new game save or save over a current one.
After you transferred the game save to a USB drive and configured your PARAM.SFO profile once, you can then continue to use that saved profile configuration on the rest of your game saves you need to resign. After that, it is your choice to continue to log into PSN/SEN on your PS3 or just stay offline.
I have tested with success on a brand new PS3 user account. The PS3 will continue to create BLANK game saves until I created a PSN/SEN account, log into it and then save the game.
Hopefully, this helps answers the continuous messages I am receiving about this issue!
Shame on me; the prior game save I posted of this game was a little premature. It was all based upon the ancient patch 1.02, so therefore things weren't as right as they should be. My PS3's wireless internet was misbehaving, so I could not update to more recent patches until recently when I finally got it fixed! I also thought character growth and leveling was quite uneven, so I desired to get them to a more even level.
This game save contains the same data as the original (had you managed to nab it while it was online); however, it is dramatically improved to better suit patch 1.03 through 1.05.
It is highly recommend that you switch to this game save to receive all the new and improved benefits! New Changes:
5 star Shin weapons (unlimited mode crafted weapons) now all have +99 attack power from max compatibility. These weapons have been upgraded from max +18 attack power to +99 in patch 1.03, essentially making them now the most strongest weapons you can obtain in the game.
4 star weapons with +99 attack have been removed for every character. They are now worthless in patch 1.03+ (see above).
All characters have now been reincarnated at least three times instead of once. Several characters (5-10) have been reincarnated eight to nine times.
Stock experience has been raised to 9,999,999 to adjust to the max limits of patch 1.05.
Stock weapon attributes in the blacksmith has been all raised to 99.
Game Save Features:
100% unlocked and clear including story and unlimited mode.
All 145 characters unlocked (unlimited mode included).
5 star mystic weapon for every character.
5 star Shin weapons for every character (crafted from unlimited mode materials).
All weapon attributes unlocked with up to 99 stock.
Level 100 for every character.
Reincarnation three times for every character; eight to nine times for a few (5-10).
All items unlocked and at max power.
Max 9,999,999 stock experience.
And more!
Feel free to use this game save to help your experience with
this game be more enjoyable. However, I do not recommend using it unless
you really desire some of its features, as having everything unlocked
can potentially spoil the fun factor and longevity of the game.
This
game save is only available in Japan region, as the game has not been
released anywhere else. When it does come to NA and EU, I'll be sure to
give you guys also English versions. But for now, enjoy the Japanese
version of the game save, and keep nagging KOEI TECMO to localize,
localize, LOCALIZE!!
Remember
to resign the game save to your Playstation 3 profile before usage, if
you wish to save over it and earn trophies. Full tutorial can be found
by visiting this link!
If you need help resigning or want me to resign for you, feel free to e-mail me!
So I had the chance to update Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate from version 1.02 all the way to the present version 1.05 released around Christmas time. I know, you're probably thinking: "Where the hell have you been, living under a rock?!" But trust me, there's a valid reason why I was staying on 1.02 for what seems to be an eternity. You see, my PS3's wireless has gotten funky and hence caused me to be offline since around October with no connection to the internet. I could theoretically connect using a wired Ethernet cable, but since my home's router is upstairs and my PS3 and HDTV are downstairs, I didn't want to run an hundred feet cable and have everyone tripping over it. Anyway, I finally got the chance to fix the wireless on the PS3. So now, I can finally connect with it to the internet once again, hurray! Still, I don't have a PSN account, so don't bother asking (I don't play online on the PS3 anyway).
You don't want to hear my sob story about my PS3 hardware woes though, so enough of that and let's get into the topic of this blog post—why nine reincarnations in patch 1.05 is overkill, and why KOEI even bothered to add in that many reincarnations.
So if you haven't learned yet, patch 1.05 adds a few new features, most notably extending the maximum numerical values of various elements, including reincarnations. In versions prior to 1.05, reincarnations are capped at three total. This cap allowed almost all characters to max speed (180) and an additional two to three other stats (health, defense and musou). That being said, it left you with the inability to max all five stats, so KOEI has kindly raised this cap to an absurd value—nine.
I decided to test it out and reincarnate a few character nine times. Not that you'll really want to though, because it's quite senseless to raise stats beyond their normal max values without reincarnations, strictly due to diminishing returns (you'll be working much more than what you'll be gaining in return, basically). The formula is two growth points per level after reincarnation, so 891 points is possible for every character.
What I discovered was that for a few characters that I did reincarnate nine times, I was able to max out all five of their stats by the eighth reincarnation. This meant their health was 999, attack was 999, defense was 999, musou was 999 and speed was 200. Yes, they did raise the speed cap to 200 instead of 180, which is still pretty lousy. Beyond the fourth reincarnation, speed remained capped at 200.
Keep in mind that in order for this to be possible, I had to be conservative with my growth points and use them only after I have leveled the character to 100 and not in-between.
I was then left with around 200 extra growth points on the ninth reincarnation for all characters, with nothing able to pump them into it. Hence, making the ninth and final reincarnation completely non-beneficial to your character stats.
Xu Shu ninth reincarnation with 176 extra growth points.
Nu Wa ninth reincarnation with 234 extra growth points.
Zhao Yun ninth reincarnation with 219 extra growth points.
Yukimura ninth reincarnation with 225 extra growth points.
Diao Chan max stats at eighth reincarnation with 21 extra growth points.
So in conclusion, reincarnating characters the max nine times is not necessary to max a character's stats. You may gain other rewards, but certainly not in the stats department!
I was also curious to what the max speed you can now have on a character, including all bonuses from items. With Charm of Alacrity (神速符) +20, Dual-Layered Armor (両当鎧) +20 and Tag Shell (æœç”²) +20, along with the new 200 speed cap, you'll end up with a grand total of 400 speed.
400 speed on Yukimura at max stats.
Testing out the 400 speed definitely felt insanely fast, and much, much faster than riding on both Red Hare and Matsukaze. Picking up speed shoes unfortunately didn't seem to have much of an effect, or there seems to be a cap on the max speed of the effect on the shoes. I didn't have time to test Rabbitskin Leggings (脱兎脚絆), as that will also double your speed when your life is in the red. I doubt you'll need them anyway, as you'll be blazing through battlefields like a rocket. It almost feels like cheating!
Anyway, I don't want to turn this post into a book, so I'll leave it at here. There are other things that 1.03-1.05 added, but they aren't significant enough to write about.
Also, I want to also mention I will be updating and reposting the Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate platinum status game save I posted earlier, which is now taken down. The reason why I took it down was because I desired to update it for subsequent patches past 1.02. I also liked characters growth and levels to be a bit more even, so I am in process (and nearly finished) of reincarnating all 145 character three times. Some characters will be reincarnated nine times due to the experiment above, but I am definitely not planning on reincarnating everyone nine times. Weapons will also be updated. I will be removing all 4 star +99 weapons, since they have become useless in patch 1.03+. The strongest weapons are now the 5 star crafted weapons from Unlimited Mode, because patch 1.03 allowed them to have +99 attack power from max compatibility (from the previous +18 max).
I will let you guys know when the new, updated game save will be available. I'll likely have it tomorrow or by Friday the latest, actually.
I didn't really meant to make this an actual blog post, but I've been getting two particular questions regarding Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate from viewers continously. Hence, I might as well make a big public post about it for everyone.
When will Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate be released in English for North America and Europe?
At this moment I'm typing, neither KOEI TECMO Japan or NA/EU has made a public announcement regarding whether the game will be localized to English, that includes specific dates. However, one of the company's officials (鯉沼P - Koinuma) has tweeted they might release an English version in summer of 2014. Here is the link to the tweet.
Can you supply a translation guide for weapon attributes in English?
I would translate them, but a kind soul has already compiled a list of weapon attributes in both Musou Orochi 2 and Ultimate, plus provided English translations for them. You can find the list here.
If you need other bits of the game translated, feel free to send me an
e-mail. I could also work on a thorough translation guide for this game
if you guys want, since this game doesn't look like it's going to
localized any time soon. If so, let me know your thoughts and I may look into it.
I might as well add another question I was asked just recently on a different game...
How come I can't decrypt the game save of Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends with Bruteforce Save Data?
Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends, like a lot of newer games, uses double layer encryption for their game saves. Hence, you won't be able to decrypt it via software as of yet. The only way to do so is to use a third party Game Genie device. PS3 CYBER Save Editor (Japan only) has added support for Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends. I have no familiarity with this item, but I know it lets you modify game save code. I'm not sure if it will allow you to resign your game saves like Bruteforce Save Data. Remember: Don't mod/cheat unless absolutely necessary; try to stay legit!
Earlier this December, a new YouTube MCN (network) popped up offering some rather drooltastic benefits that may rival that of Curse Union for Gamers.
Founded by George from TGN, Freedom network is designed to be a network for anyone in any category, that emphasizes in freedom from YouTube and other networks' limitations. It offers the following:
No lock-in forever
Managed status instead of affiliate for every channel
No minimum payout (if you earn $1, they'll pay you $1)
60% revenue share, growing up to 110%
Transparency (view all your earnings direct on YouTube)
You may recalled I praised Curse Union for Gamers for potentially moving the majority of their channels to managed status, and moving newly partnered channels to managed within a few weeks of non-copyright issues. Well, they apparently took back their words. Yep, they recently released a statement that they will only be putting trusted channels as managed now.
Why is it that networks have such a sudden fear for putting their channels as managed?
Being managed status turns out not to be all sweet and sugar like it's made to be. It turns out that networks do take a huge risk in managed channels, and that managed channels themselves are also at risk. This is because the network shares responsibilities for each managed channel, and all managed channels share responsibilities for another's actions.
In other words, if a managed channel receives a copyright strike, then YouTube will consider that as a copyright strike against the entire network. Rack up enough copyright strikes and the network will lose features such as custom thumbnails, modifying channel art and using annotations for every one of their channels. If the network receives 20 copyright strikes from managed channels total, the network will be terminated and the channels may not be able to upload any new videos.
Affiliates channels don't have this issue. Their behavior are similar to ones today, in that they are responsible for their own actions, and if they receive a strike it count against them and not the entire network. Hence, affiliate channels are much safer from all standpoints compared to managed channels. Nevertheless, affiliate channels will not be granted instant monetization and be subjected to YouTube monetization review.
So the question is:
Would you rather be managed and receive instant monetization, but take huge risks in your own channel because of the actions of other managed channels? Or would you receive no instant monetization, but be more safe, responsible for your own actions and not have it affect the entire network?
Even if you're an affiliate, you shouldn't worry too much about YouTube's monetization review. We don't know how it works yet, but should you be able to continuously keep getting accepted every review, it'll be enough for YouTube to give you instant monetization again (due to their trust algorithm). This in the end will be better than being as managed. Nevertheless, I still believe it will difficult to monetize gameplay videos as an affiliate channel, commentary or not.
Note: This review is based upon the Japanese version of the game (Shin Sangoku Musou 7: Moushouden) and uses translated names. English names of certain things may be different in the English release.
INTRODUCTION
Dynasty Warriors marks its 8th iteration almost one year ago and certainly, it's no astonishment that this upcoming year marks another Xtreme Legends expansion for the game.
The Xtreme Legends series have always been considered the true expansions to the original games, whereas the Empires series are deemed more as spin-offs. Therefore, if you have arrived expecting more of the same, then there's not a whole lick that's going to disappoint.
Please remember my fellow readers—this is a review for Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends and its new contents and gameplay differences alone, not factoring in the original. Like my Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate review, since I'm essentially reviewing an expansion pack, I will have the predetermined mind set that you have already played or at least know details about the original game, plus Dynasty Warriors in general. If I were to go all out to please even the newbies, this review wouldn't be called xtremely long version, it would be called xtremely unreadable version due to its length.
With that boring guff out of the way, let's get into the good stuff then!
GAME MODES
Customary to any Xtreme Legends, new game modes and features to existing ones are obligatory. It's also no surprise that KOEI TECMO went again with their safe, perpetual formula to include more story mode content, a challenge mode and a few features to ambition and free mode. So how good are they, exactly?
STORY MODE has been expanded upon from the original, including a brand new story of the Lü Kingdom (Lü Bu's forces) and supplementary hypothetical scenarios for Wei, Shu, Wu and Jin. Lü Bu's story mode follows the vein of the original four kingdom story modes, featuring full length historical and hypothetical paths. Wei, Shu, Wu and Jin on the other hand receives short, segmented stories that are usually one to two stages long, encompassing various playable characters.
I'm sure many fans were storming KOEI TECMO's headquarters in hopes that their favorite character finally gets sufficient share time and love in one of the games. I mean, this is Lü Bu we're talking about after all—the only character in Dynasty Warriors to have a diminutive chance in winning a video game character popularity poll. Fear not fellow Lü Bu fans, as Lü Bu is indeed the protagonist here in his dominant story mode, and it follows him all the way soundly, grunt to grunt, until his untimely end. That is, unless you choose to cheat history and potentially destroy China, of course.
Yes, this is a real screenshot. Lü Bu actually has his own, full length story mode!
I do have to say playing through the historical path of Lü Bu's story mode is rather disheartening and awkward, especially near the end. To prevent my head from being severed due to reader backlash, I'll just describe the feeling in a non-explicit way that opens up for interpretation (until you play the game). But imagine playing a battle, ridding the entire field of enemies, dominating against every enemy tactic, having the morale of Superman's friendly onlookers, then finally being crushed having to endure drawn out, dreadful deaths of people you've been attached with for a long time. History is history, right? If you can't handle history, you shouldn't be playing Dynasty Warriors to begin with.
The most touching part of Lü Bu's story mode. When you see it, you'll know why.
One of the most noteworthy positive experiences to the new story modes are the multitude of new and redesigned stages. The final battle of Xiapi is now a giant single land with a colossal castle in the center that has walkable walls. That entire stage just screamed epic!
Overall, if you're expecting more story mode content, you'll be getting quite a good amount of it here that will last you anywhere from five to ten hours. Then again, this is something we were already expecting in a Xtreme Legends, so I can't be exactly too glee about it.
CHALLENGE MODE is a new, recurring mode added in many past Xtreme Legends games that pits and hones your gaming skills to a variety of objective based challenges, focusing on obtaining the highest score both offline and online. Five total challenges await you in this mode. Prior to entering into a challenge, you are allowed complete freedom to select any characters and customize their weapons to your heart's content. To ensure overall equality and balance, character levels are capped at level 30, and skills cannot be equipped.
What will you find in these five challenges?
Storm transports you inside a small, enclosed arena with thousands of enemies, tasking you as the player to rack up as many K.Os as possible in a given time limit. When a certain amount of time and army fodder are annihilated, the beast known as Lü Bu emerges, hoping to both put a halt to your insane killing spree and dwindling down your inner morale. Get used to him appearing abruptly by the way; he's going to be there in most challenges to put your efforts to ruins. After he's taken care of, more army fodder pops up. The process is then repeated until the timer runs out.
Comet puts you on top of a series of connected narrow platforms with peon swarms, ballistas and occasionally enemy officers. Enemies are invulnerable to damage, so your goal here isn't to rack up direct kills, but K.Os that involves shoving them off the platforms. Yes, enemies will meet their demise apparently when they fall into the abyss below. Not only can you die due to regular damage, but falling off yourself results in the same fate. Comet isn't so much skill and luck based, but more about weapon and moveset choice that works best to shove enemies off.
Thunderclap is like running the Chinese Olympics solo in hell. There is one long, twisting path chocked full of the absolute worst possible living and non-living things you can face in the game—tigers, ballistas, flame throwers, sorcerers, horsemen, tanks, spiked walls, giant wind blowing fans, the list goes on. Even Lü Bu starts chasing you like an insane psychopath from Clock Tower. The goal here is as you guessed, to get to the end of the path in one piece in the fastest time possible. Regrettably, this challenge is about as annoying to play as it is to enjoy, as you're likely going to get constantly knocked around by all the junk on the screen.
Leave me the #*@$ alone!
Hundred Flowers isn't about picking a hundred flowers in an oriental garden, although that would provide immense relaxation from all the crazy adrenaline inducing challenges before it. It's about killing all playable officers in the game sequentially in an arena with no other enemies. Yeah, go figure right? This challenge just screams nostalgia because it looks and works virtually the same as the arena battles in Dynasty Warriors 7. Arena battles were indeed fun in the past, but here it's forgettable at best due to how the combat has changed for the worst. The equal character levels and starting weapons limitation does make Hundred Flowers more challenging, nevertheless.
Inferno is like storm mixed with thunderclap. You are inside this weird maze littered with enemies, strange obstacles you have to destroy to open up paths, and platforms you have to jump over. The objective here is to eliminate all enemies in the map before the timer runs out, ingenious eh? Be prepared to be very annoyed if you missed even a sole peon, as if you did, you'll be likely having to backtrack across the empty map devoid of enemies to get to that pesky little rodent.
It's nice to know that in this iteration of Xtreme Legends, playing and winning challenges aren't all about showing off coupled with smack talk. Successfully completing each challenge will award you with a random weapon prize, regardless of how well you did in the challenge. A new weapon element is also incorporated for each challenge, resulting in five new weapon elements total that are exclusively obtainable in this mode.
Winning 6th place yet receiving a level four weapon. Looks like I other things to brag about!
Albeit fun and a good distraction from the prolonged mayhem in story, free and ambition mode; the main problem in challenge mode lies in its originality. That is, none of the challenges here are new and original, save for the slightly disappointing Inferno. Four of the challenges are rehashed copy pasted from Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends with minor alterations. If you factor in the ugliness that most of the weapons and movesets from Dynasty Warriors 7 are additionally rehashed in 8, you'll find little redeeming value to go through the same challenges again, other than obtaining some beneficial weapon prizes that you can use in other modes. Tsk, tsk, tsk... KOEI TECMO, you once again chose the lazy way out in hopes that either your audience won't mind or won't notice. You sly fox you...
AMBITION MODE receives a new game feature/mode in itself called "Territory Suppression", additional to the primary one where you are charged with construction of the Tongquetai Palace. This one takes place after all that home improvement jazz, and this time it's actually serious, because these Chinese men and women now directs your action to unite Han China as something troubling is brewing.
So here's the synopsis in territory suppression: You are to recruit officers, build your relations with them and conquer five territories of Han China through repeated battles, then finally defeat the emperor (who is a naughty, fake one) in the final sixth territory. The unification occurs when all regions have been conquered, obviously. But there's an enormous catch though—friendly officers defeated by the enemy during battles will depart your forces and return to the other side, as somehow seemingly provoked by the fake emperor.
The first thing right off the bat that will likely induce angst and rage is the actual starting process of territory suppression. You can only initiate by talking to an individual in ambition mode after your task of construction of the Tongquetai Palace in is complete. But once so, close your eyes and take a deep breath, as all your current recruited officers (aside from a few characters that are in close relationship to your controlled character) will vanish back to enemy forces. To make matters more insulting, the effect is universal in ambition mode and hence applied to even the original survival battles. You would have at least thought KOEI TECMO showed some decency and courtesy, respected your immense time in obtaining all your officers and simply allowed the game to continue on the way you left it, but nah... they mocked your efforts and forced you to unlock every playable character for this mode over again. *Claps* Bravo!
There's no going back after talking to this special guy.
This is becoming a trend actually, and a bad one. Putting in a new mode separate from others that erases all character unlock status, forcefully requiring their unlocking again. It's idiotic and annoying KOEI TECMO. May I at least kindly suggest simply putting this new feature into its own mode, separate from the original ambition mode, whilst also separating the unlock status of characters on both?
The actual gameplay portion of territory suppression resembles sort of a bastardized and miniaturization of Empires, and an extreme one at that.
You start off with being able to select one territory and one battlefield within. To wholly conquer a territory requires you to conquer 100% of each of its four battlefields. How so? The percentage increases after a successful battle in each battlefield. Subsequent battlefields are then unlocked when the percentage of the prior battlefield are raised high enough, and raising percentage of battlefields will raise the overall percentage of the specific territory. Additional territories are unlocked when the overall percentages are high enough. Don't worry if all that percentage talk above is the cause to your sudden headache—the concept is pretty much straightforward and simple, I promise! The most important thing you should need to know is: expect to play through the same battlefields a heck lot of times!
That's a whole lot of percentages!
A nice, savory bit is that prior to riding into the battlefield, you are allowed freedom to construct your own forces of up to 32 officers, with each officer playing a different role in their battle tactics. Gaining more officers to shove in the excitement requires defeating them in battle and recruiting them into your forces, similarly to the past. Three officers you recruited can also be selected to serve as your bodyguards during battle. We'll dive a bit more in-depth about bodyguards later onwards in the gameplay and characters section.
Constructing your own forces of officers.
All battlefields, with exception of the final one in the final territory, consists of the player aiming to defeat a set amount of enemies (including enemy bases) and afterwards a boss officer to be victorious. Bases are marked by flags (blue for the player's army and red for the enemy's) and can be captured by defeating guard captains surrounding them. Remembered where I mentioned Empires? This is where the subtle similarities of Empires ties in, as taking over bases is virtually identical here, just without the whole colored and connectivity element.
Flags, enemy bases and officers are the meat of territory suppression.
After all five territories are adequately conquered, a sixth territory opens up consisting of a single battlefield, giving you chance to finally crack down and go toe to toe with the fake emperor. This one's an outcast from the rest of the battles, as the battle itself resembles more of something constructed and pulled from challenge mode. There's no base taking here, just lots of enemies to defeat and siege weaponry to avoid. I gotta do say that this battle is probably the most memorable moment in the entire game, as it features one of the most absurd and ridiculous fights in Dynasty Warriors history leading up to the boss fight. Words will not be able to express the true extremity of it, so I'll gladly leave that up to you to find out!
Alright, with details of territory suppression aside, let's talk about two of its primary flaws.
First, there's nothing terribly enticing or innovative about the entirety of the gameplay. Like I stated earlier, it feels like a kindergarten version of Empires—conquering territories, recruiting and losing officers, formation of your own forces, taking over bases, etc. all without the fundamental strategic components that makes Empires special and fun. I was also borderline bored going through the same battlefields multiple times to raise the percentage enough to unlock additional battlefields and territories. A little more variety and choice would be a welcomed addition.
Second, the whole aspect of friendly officers returning back to enemy forces after being defeated makes the experience unnecessarily frustrating. This is especially valid as the only way to play playable characters is through recruiting them to your forces. While your controlled character can never be seized away, the opportunity to utilize and better develop other playable characters (notably through ambition mode exclusive facilities) becomes restricted once they've been captured. Playing thoughtfully and well will prevent your officers from getting defeated, but you aren't always going to be able to keep them all safe every time. Attempting to re-recruit lost ones over and over again becomes an inconvenient and senseless task, heightened by the fact officers are seemingly randomly placed on battlefields. The only way to truly avoid losing playable characters is to keep them out of your forces entirely, i.e. only bringing generics to the battlefield. But that's not any fun, now is it?
Territory suppression is marginally fun and a nice change of pace from regular ambition mode survival battles, but it's certainly not going to get anyone steamy over its inclusion.
Ambition mode also introduces a new weapon tempering feature for the blacksmith. This one's entirely separate from the original and thankfully works identical to Warriors Orochi, allowing you to swap in elements, increase attack power and change affinity from two weapons with ease. Good luck being able to use this feature often though, as it requires much grinding for gems in territory suppression.
FREE MODE in Xtreme Legends has also been revamped with a new interface and enhanced with supplementary features. You now get a lot of options and features right at your fingertips in the menus, including entire access to the blacksmith, equipping bodyguards and more. All other existing options have been completely streamlined, making free mode now incredibly easy to jump in and get going.
The newly revamped free mode interface. Sure beats the old one!
Granted are also optional missions in each stage, which are loosely based upon those found in story mode.
Finally, the game incorporates a ranking system that ranks your gameplay efforts with a alphabetical grading scale after each stage. Earning higher ranks, as you might have guessed, rewards you with higher experience points. Now I'm uncertain how the ranking system works and could care less, but if you play like a madman like I do, you'll be gifted with an S or A rank in no time!
GAME OPTIONS has been sprinkled here and there with some new options. The most remarkable being the ability to set storm rush to activate manually using the square and triangle buttons simultaneously. Remembered how I complained about the automatic activation of storm rush and wished for manual activation in my Dynasty Warriors 8 review? Perhaps KOEI TECMO does listen to their fans after all. Kudos, kudos!
You'll also discover MixJoy in any Xtreme Legends, allowing you to "remix" the game by inserting your original Dynasty Warriors 8 game disc to "load its contents", then reinserting back your Xtreme Legends game disc. This allows the game to be unlocked with all the original content in addition to the new content. Of course, everybody and their grandmas should know that nothing is really being loaded when you insert either game disc. All that happens is a system check is made to verify if the discs are valid and are of the correct games. Every single spec of data of the original game is already in the Xtreme Legends disc. Hence, this is just a pure folly way for KOEI TECMO to force you to own the original game alongside Xtreme Legends.
Xtreme Legends does have other version variants, including a PS4 version that has contents of both games included. Again, the Xtreme Legends with Dynasty Warriors 8 and Xtreme Legends solo are likely the same damn thing, just with some changes to the code that allows the player to have all content non-hidden from the start.
GAMEPLAY AND CHARACTERS
It isn't Xtreme Legends without a couple new faces to the existing mammoth cast of characters. This time, the spotlight gets shined on notable officers of Lü Bu's forces, including his wicked strategist Chen Gong and his own daughter Lü Lingqi (who's own name KOEI TECMO has fancied up). Contrary to what Chinese historians say, where Lü Lingqi was essentially a poor soul that was pushed around by her father for forced marriage, she's certainly no pushover here. In fact, she's just as bit as tough and diabolic as her father, even going as far as completely stealing his cross halberds (remember those?) and using it to show amazingly utter badassery.
Who said a woman has to be weak?!
Lü's kingdom isn't the sole one to receive the new characters treatment; as Wei, Shu and Wu are all granted a new playable character to their forces each. Within the mix you have Yu Jin—Cao Cao's fierce general who's blessed with a trident encompassing all of Earth's elements, Fa Zheng—Liu Bei's adviser who has a knack for magic carpetry, and Zhu Ran—a pretty boy from Wu that isn't shy to show off his archery skills.
"Would you like a ride on my magic carpet?"
The new characters' weapons and movesets are fortunately not a disappointment due to their very varied, unique and interesting attacks. Fa Zheng's floating carpets are a bit out of the world, even for Dynasty Warriors; but Yu Jin's trident that allows the player to switch and build from ice element to slash element is probably the most fascinating weapon I've seen yet from KOEI TECMO. Nevertheless, it's not all safe heaven for the weapons, as a few do lack proper polish and control. Zhu Ran's bow and arrows in particular controls like a mess unless standing completely stationary.
One of the minor issues with new characters are the designs themselves. Now, I typically adore KOEI TECMO's character designs, but some of these poor souls just screamed a style that's both lazy and generic. Both Chen Gong and Yu Jin looked more like generics than actual playable characters, only colored and facially detailed in a way that remotely makes them unique.
New characters aside, Xtreme Legends adds and changes a significant amount to the gameplay. So let's spent some quality time with each of the new and different.
Accompanying the original EX attacks of each character and their primary weapon, a second EX is added to every standard character and weapon combo. This new implementation almost makes equipping and using non-primary weapons personally degrading, as there's a huge increase in the amount of strength and diversity in primary weapons now. While not all second EX are equal in performance and aesthetics, it's nice to know that KOEI TECMO is indirectly encouraging the usage of primary weapons (at least for one of the two weapons). I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being disgusted by seeing players running around as Da Qiao with Twin Axes or some other variant, which often just looks awfully wrong.
Character stats and levels have been raised from their previous maximum limits. Character levels are now capped at 150 and stats for attack and defense are increased to 1,500. Although this overall raise is mandatory for the intention of the new Nightmare difficulty, it just simply means a whole hell lot more grinding for your finger and thumb thwacking pleasure if you wish to get there.
A new, harder difficulty has been added called "Nightmare". If I were to describe this difficulty, I would label it Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legend's nightmare difficulty minus both the extreme enemy aggressiveness and player life absorption ability. Enemy officers in particular have the ability to boost their attack plus defense, and their damage output is crazy high even if you have max defense. I congratulate KOEI TECMO for finally delivering a difficulty that actually feels challenging and worthy of its name, unlike the tired and failed nightmare and chaos difficulties of the past. Nevertheless, it's still another Warriors Orochi type of high difficulty, where the challenge lies in both the player and enemy capable of tremendous damage output. Some of this is actually due to the game failing to fix blatant broken aspects in the original like they did with the 7th version of Xtreme Legends. The enemy AI is still a soft spot, unfortunately. We'll talk more about the AI in the AI and difficulty section.
Personal bodyguards makes a welcome return, allowing you to tag along three bodyguards and boss them around in the havoc. Unlike bodyguard systems of the past, where your selection was limited to pretty much a bunch of faceless and boring nobodys, the new one in Xtreme Legends allows freedom to select all three as any character in the game, non-generics included. Being able to fully utilize the bodyguard system (such as equipping more than one bodyguard and equipping non-generic characters as bodyguards), requires you to build up your leadership level in ambition mode under territory suppression. Bodyguards' actions can be controlled on the battlefield by either manually selecting the actions in the pause menu or use shortcuts via the directional pad on the controller. The actions range from following you closely to defending a specific base. Leveling bodyguards can also be achieved by simply having them continuously fight alongside you, or exchange existing recruited officers in ambition mode for an exchange in their increased experience. Overall, this is a good addition.
My very own team of bodyguards... Aww...
I bet you didn't see second treasure weapons coming, did you? Yep, KOEI TECMO has added yet another treasure weapon for every character that's even more powerful than the first. The unlocking method remains unaltered, requiring you to go through a specific battle with a specific character completing specific tasks. Sadly, even these weapons are once again mostly tailored for aesthetics rather than actual usage. They still don't hold a candle to an appropriately decked out level four weapon. The dominant reason holding these treasure weapons back are the inability to customize any of their elements, which KOEI TECMO unfortunately did not want to remove.
Speaking of weapons, Xtreme Legends adds a hefty ten new weapon elements that can attached to your weapons. Five of the new elements are exclusive to the challenge mode mentioned earlier, and the rest of the five are exclusive to ambition mode under territory suppression (where the emperor grants you a gold weapon with a new element each time you thoroughly conquered a territory). The bulk of the new weapon elements are not terribly beneficial to your arsenal; however, thunderclap is one element which should have been in the game in the beginning. It essentially gifts you the ability to avoid getting staggered by enemies, similarly to how the combat resistance weapon seal worked in Dynasty Warriors 7.
While most weapon elements and their effects are untouched
in Xtreme Legends, several do get whacked with the change stick. Most
of the changes are incredibly minor and therefore negligible, but one in
particular really switches things up in the gameplay—Cyclone.
Cyclone has a bit of controversy in the original, as it was a weapon
element that hugely broke the difficulty balance of the game (going as
crazy as to kill Hu Lao Gate's Lü Bu under chaos in one hit). It's
standard tradition that with any new Dynasty Warriors game, KOEI TECMO
squeezes in something that purposely or accidentally breaks the game,
then swiftly patches it up in the expansions. In Dynasty Warriors 7, it
was wind element coupled with multi-elemental hits, which was mostly
patched in Xtreme Legends to reduce the insane damage. Did KOEI TECMO
execute the same plan for cyclone in this Xtreme Legends? Not quite...
In
fact, they completely transformed cyclone into something else that works similarly to the Blast Orb of Dynasty Warriors 4. Cyclone now only activates and deals
its percentage damage on blocking enemies. In addition, it can no longer
break an enemy's guard, period. Call me crazy, but I think it's utterly confusing to abruptly change an element's effects to behave drastically different. Cyclone equates to wind, and wind should remain in its current form in the recent games—an element that breaks an enemy's guard (along with dealing additional damage). KOEI TECMO furthermore
didn't bother reducing the percentage damage on cyclone, so what's the
point? The game is still broken because of it, as you can still run
rampant on nightmare throwing cyclone knives at blocking enemies and
instant killing them in one hit. If anything, it chiefly reduces the
amount of freedom and style in combat when utilizing it, as you're
obviously going to want to use it on blocking enemies only. How
boring...
GRAPHICS
If you were judging this game based upon graphics alone, then it'll be sucky. But that's ignorant. You have to take in consideration how taxing it is for console hardware to implement and render a game such as Dynasty Warriors, where players are predominately placed on giant, free roaming battlefields with hundreds of enemies at once. For this type of game, the graphics are more than beyond good, especially considering how much the graphics from the series has evolved throughout the years.
This is about the only time you'll be drooling at the in-game graphics.
Now if you're expecting improved graphics from the original, then sorry, that isn't evident here. This is just an expansion pack, after all. Nevertheless, I'd expect the PS4 version of the game to have some minor boost in graphics including cleaner and higher resolution textures, more enemies on the screen at once and higher frame rates. Still, graphics in these games are mostly a non-issue.
AI AND DIFFICULTY
The AI, particularly the enemy's, has been vastly improved from the original. In fact, the AI and combat mechanics have been so greatly adjusted, it's pretty much no longer a BSing game—you either play to win or not play at all. In other words, forget messing around like the original and attempt to pull off crazy, stylish combos for fun. That's just going to wind up as a personal embarrassment here.
Why so?
Lots of small tweaks have been developed to put a stronger halt to player's ability to juggle enemy officers than before. One of the major ones involves massively ramping up their ability to switch affinity both on ground and in the air, regardless if they are under attack. If you recalled in the original, enemy officers rarely ever bothered to switch affinity, even though the feature was clearly available. Heck, I even yelled out it happened only twice during one hundred hours of play. So the supposed outcome was to stop juggles by having the enemy officer switch to a different affinity (usually superior to yours) during the juggle, rendering them then futile. This of course will also increase difficulty, as you're gonna be seeing that warning sign more often than anything else now. There's somewhat of a problem though, dear KOEI TECMO... Why does the affinity switching take them so bloody long to execute? By the time you realized they are attempting to switch affinity, you can easily knock them out of it completely with a simple weapon switch (they can't be staggered by most other attacks while affinity switching), rendering them inane. Yes, it does greatly kill combos via juggling, but for increasing difficulty alone it's poorly implemented.
Storm rush is now seemingly much more difficulty to activate, as destroying an enemy officer's affinity shield requires twice or three times the normal effort. This is more notable on higher difficulties than lower, as in the lower difficulties storm rush comes out just as fast as usual. I have no complaints about this change, as this is something welcomed to help fix storm rush being vastly overpowered in the original.
The incorporation of nightmare difficulty gives a strong boost to better difficulty varieties—ranging from being so easy you could play with your toes and win, to being actually sweaty and anxious trying to stay alive. Nevertheless, nightmare can still be a complete pushover if you're utilizing good weapons, have high to max stats and learn to avoid taking damage. The sheer, continued brokenness of cyclone doesn't help matters, either.
AUDIO AND MUSIC
For the most part, audio and music remains stable in its high quality form. The new music introduced are quite unremarkable and immediately forgettable, which is a repeated act of shame as the majority of music from the original game suffered the same mediocrity. Then again, all ears are not created equal, so I'm sure a few people may actually dig the new music.
For individuals that wants some more of that nostalgia factor, KOEI TECMO does tack in a lot more music derived from earlier Dynasty Warriors games. From within you'll now find classics such as "In Full Bloom" and "Ultimate Pressure".
Voice acting are great and clearly continue to be unmarred. The Japanese here surely have raised the bar high and no one else is going to touch them in this department. Even unwarranted death does not shake them up one bit, as the new voice of Sima Yi is just as lunatic and awesome as the former.
REPLAYABILITY
Short answer: You'll be playing this game more than once, even if you finished the game multiple times. That's because there's still additional paths (such as hypothetical paths) to embark on in story mode, a never ending ambition mode and challenge mode. Let's not forget the over 80 plus individually unique characters that you can play as and develop alongside hundreds of weapons to collect.
By no means can this game or any Dynasty Warriors become an addiction like an MMO, it just means you're never going to run out of things to do.
CONCLUSION
I believe it has arrived to an unsettling point where the Xtreme Legends games no longer feel special and wholly worthwhile to play. KOEI TECMO has proven their desires in continuing to go down the same old road of stagnant, tired and industry safe game formulation. Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends shamefully contains nothing exciting or creative, shoving back in content that's been rehashed from their earlier games of the same category.
The combat has additionally devolved a further notch, offering much less possible variety, style and fun factor in exchange for increased challenge and difficulty that could be worked in other, better ways.
The saving grace of it all merely lies in its expanded story mode, where much of the actual effort and talent of the game developers lies. If you enjoyed playing through story mode whilst learning about Chinese history at the same time in the original, then that same amount of joy can be found in a sparing amount here.
It's also good to note that Xtreme Legends does greatly enhance certain experiences that are missing from the original, such as more streamlined menus, additional features such as bodyguards, easier weapon tempering and secondary EX attacks.
Still, the combat and lack of originality dilutes the pros of the what's offered. In the end, the game become something of a mixed bag that can be described as mediocrity.
Posts
