It's very rare these days for a game to take a back to basics, bare bones approach and become a success 'Rayman Origins' managed it, Dynasty Warriors 6 did not.
What makes this even worse is that I do not think it was trying to be clever and build a fantastic back to basics game, rather it was just a lazy, unimaginative first outing on a new console.
GameplayThe gameplay in my opinion has become alot slower and more rigid, imagine how brilliant it could have been on a brand new console. Faster more fluid combinations of attacks with your character propelling across the battlefield riding the wave of generic enemy clone after generic enemy clone falling at your feet.
Even the Musou Attacks are stationary and often after your first swing of a weapon killing a couple of dudes, you are left mindlessly spinning in circles watching the enemies slowing stepping back away from the scary glowing man with the huge sword.
The levels are usually quite good, the first time round that is, but after playing each level 2000 times with the only real difference between them being generals being in a different starting location, it can get a little tiring. Most of the time it has little bearing where you start anyway as you can usually circle the map twice before Cao Cao has even managed put his lucky boxers on.
Most of the characters share a similar set of moves and there is just not the range of combo's available like in earlier titles, which i think is very unsatisfying when your best and pretty much only option is to just bash the X button, throwing in an occasional Y when the enemy remembers to block.
There is no character customisation options and only 2 outfits per character to choose from. I would have very much liked to have seen a much bigger range of options on a console this powerful, it's sad when your dog has more outfits than a character on an xbox 360 title. The only sort of redeeming feature was the level up system in which exp could be gained in freeplay or story modes and transferred over nicely and that which each level you gained a point to put into bonus stats for you characters, however ultimately you only ever got 50 points per character and there was only ever 50 boxes to fill, would of been nice to have all power-ups available for all characters. Making big heavy dudes faster or your generals having rallying abilities etc.
The have removed a huge amount of characters, modes, bodyguards and just about any other aspect which could add diversity or volume to this game, which for a next gen console i think is a huge step backwards.
GraphicsJust Terrible,
There, can we move on or do you need the reasons?.......Fine.......
I am writing this review a few years after this game was released but I'm pretty sure even at the time the graphics would have been terrible. One of my friends came round a couple of days ago and upon seeing my T.V. screen presumed my 360 had broken and i had gotten my PS2 out the attic.
The playable characters are all reasonably sharp but by this time they should be as they have changed very little since I have been playing DW.
The big let down for me is the ability of enemies to fade in and fade out at will, due to the fact that there can only be about 10 people on screen at anyone time. Surely it can't be that hard, all the enemies look the same, even some of the 'Generals' have the same character model. There are games like GTA 4 or 5 where whole cities can fade into view with hundreds of people on the streets and I know that the budget for DW6 probably wasn't as big as Rockstar's but the step down from a city to walking into the same copy and paste tree or vase over and over again is a big step down. It makes the game impossible on the harder difficulties when the enemies can disappear at random, 'You can't kill what you can't see'. Time after time I kept finding myself being killed by, well, nothing right at the ends of the level because all the generals had made themselves invisible. It's like your mum saying you can't have ice cream till you eat all your peas, but all the peas are invisible and deadly and your armed only with a rubbish copy and paste cocktail stick.
Ultimately all the enemies look the same, all the trees look the same, all the forts are the same and this is made even worse by the fact that you have to play each level over and over again almost to tears.
SoundtrackThe games music at least hasn't changed or taken a step back since to be honest it could hardly or been worse to start with.
It follows the same philosophy as most games from the East which assumes all us in the West listen to high tempo, thrashing, techno rock. This is played through the entire game until your ears bleed and you are forced to hit mute and listen to your ipod instead.
I can tell you straight up, that you will not miss anything of note, and that your experience of the story mode will not be hindered by not knowing what the story is, and just listening to your own stuff whilst hacking a chunk out of feudal China.
The only thing worse than the music is the terrible voice acting and the annoyance that most of the voices will bring. I have already advised skipping the cutscenes but if you do fancy a laugh then listen to a couple and best of all listen to the catchphases of the generals which they happily spurt out after each pointless action is acknowledged. One of my favorites is from Sun Shang Xiang 'or summats' where everythime you vanquish a general she shrieks 'Who says a girl has to be weak, tehe' in a 13 year old school girl voice, which is so hilariously sexist made even more stupid by the fact that it's trying to prove that they're not sexist.
Overall, any game that makes you hit mute and listen to music is not going to win any awards for its sound.
GamerscoreEasy enough to get a few achievements on this game but I would steer clear of it unless you really want to dedicate a large chuck of your life to grinding out exp, or to get to the end of levels on the hardest difficulty only to be killed by invisible super generals.
A time consuming and not all together easy 1000 G, thankfully we appear to have at least dodged the DLC gamerscore fairy with this title at least.
OverallI had some laughs playing this game with a friend and I think its the best way to do it, rather than sat home alone in a dark room with a pistol pressed against your head, because this will almost certainly push you over the edge.
Worth a go perhaps fans of the series if only to make you want to skip it and play DW7 instead. It's also a fairly easy 900G i you want it but some serious grinding is involved if like me, Completion Ratio is the new big thing.
I have awarded 3 stars because it is a playable game, no real bugs etc. that i have found only the limitations of the game itself, and for an afternoon at least i actually had a laugh playing it. I only ended up paying £6 for it as well. I would have rated it much lower at a RRP of £40 or something ridiculous.
It felt to me as if the guy checking disk space just got it all wrong and got KB mixed up with MB and told the guys to slow down or the game will have to be put on 4 discs where in reality it takes up about 4 rings on the one disk.
3.0