Dynasty Warriors 4
After having such a fun time revisiting Dynasty Warriors 5, I decided to extend my trip down memory lane by replaying its prequel as well. Dynasty Warriors 4 was a reasonably hyped release back in the day. I played Dynasty Warriors 3 to death back then, and still remember seeing leaked screenshots of the fourth entry on a fan site (during IT class, no less). The site authors had translated news of its features: a character creation mode; the ability to leap from charging horses; fire-breathing siege engines, and yet more playable characters pulled from Chinese history. 2003 was an exciting time to be a fan.
Dynasty Warriors 4 has some features its immediate sequel didn’t have. The animated end of battle replays were always fun, as was the Versus mode where two players enter skirmishes alongside teams of CPU-controlled officers. Also the Edit mode where players create their own playable officer from a range of costume parts and move sets. The options in Edit mode are painfully limited, but it remains a cool feature nonetheless.
While not as graphically impressive as the fifth entry, Dynasty Warriors 4 introduced players to a more modern presentation with higher quality character models and a less saturated colour palette for the battlefields. The game looks sharp when played in compatibility mode on an Xbox 360 console, although a nasty bug with saving progress makes this option hard to recommend nowadays.
If you’re coming direct from the fifth game, it’s worth being aware of the little fixes Dynasty Warriors 4 is missing. The life bars above enemy heads always need to be turned on before battle, and selecting a difficulty level can only be done from the main menu. Battle overviews weren’t there yet, horses are harder to mount, and grab attacks are often glitchy too. There’s also some appalling frame rate drops to contend with when fighting officers in a crowd of troops (which happens a lot in this game).
Arguably the most significant mechanic is the duelling system. Players may be challenged to a duel when approaching an enemy officer in the field. Declining the duel gives your army a morale penalty, whereas accepting will transport both officers into a 1v1 arena for a battle to the death. The mechanics of play remain largely the same here, save for the enemy officers who can unfairly heal, power-up, and kill you out of nowhere with sudden attacks. There is some charm to duelling (the original Dynasty Warriors was a 1v1 fighting game after all), but the camera is really not up to the task, and even then the concept just doesn’t play to the franchise’s strengths.
Fighting enemy officers on a swarming battlefield is what this series is known for and does well, so removing elements that contribute to that thrill is backwards design. This is especially true when playing cooperatively because the non-duelling player is forced to sit there and watch the action. When you factor in the advantages players lose by accepting a duel — help from allies, the option to retreat and heal, not to mention a bug that reportedly disables a player’s equipped items after winning — it’s easy to see why Koei retired the whole system after this.
Another problematic mechanic is weapon XP. Players don’t collect random weapons in Dynasty Warriors 4 — they’re instead given one weapon to steadily evolve by earning XP for it. Achieving long combos, defeating officers, and winning duels provides these points, with the weapon ascending to a stronger form upon reaching higher levels. The problem is with slower officers who can’t as easily maintain those lucrative combos. Club or hammer users, for instance, grow sluggishly compared to those who use fast swords and rapiers which can reliably juggle enemies to bigger rewards. This levelling system does offer an intuitive sense of progression, but it almost forces players into fighting a certain way, and is annoying in 2-player because XP there ideally needs to be shared lest one player fall below the power curve. (Expect that to cause arguments.)
DW4 featured improved voice acting, interim saves, and rebalanced archer units.
The Musou campaign mode also has a more generic faction-based structure. Whether this approach is preferable or not is largely a matter of taste, although being forced to always play The Yellow Turban Rebellion and The Battle of Hu Lao Gate at the start of every campaign is pretty tedious. Even so, this approach works well enough thanks to optional battles and branching paths which keep things interesting, and it does provide a space for custom officers to feel like they fit in with the wider story.
When reviewing the differences between Dynasty Warriors 4 and Dynasty Warriors 5, it’s a clear win for the latter, but there is one remaining design point in this fourth game that does offer value for the right player, and that concerns the game’s difficulty. Dynasty Warriors 4 is a game of two halves in this sense because the harder input reading demonstrated by enemy officers can be enormously frustrating to play against. If you’re playing as an officer like Huang Gai (whose move set is mediocre to begin with), having a CPU opponent routinely dodge your strongest attack with the same annoying jump strike can make you want to quit playing altogether. If I wanted to test myself against psychic enemies, I’d go play Mortal Kombat 3, thanks!
And yet, a little bit of spice in the combat also makes things more enjoyably challenging, and I find that especially true when it comes to the peon enemies who are noticeably more aggressive here than they are in later sequels. Again, it’s a design choice that won’t be to all tastes because peons will regularly interrupt players whenever they become exposed — which occurs frequently because character movement is locked whenever players perform attacks. (This one difference makes Dynasty Warriors 5 a much easier and more fluid experience overall.)
Even on Normal difficulty, the later chapters of the campaign will take players to their limit due to the sheer number of aggressive enemies each battle throws at them. Nevertheless, it was nice to revisit a Dynasty Warriors game where the foot soldiers still felt important, compared to the useless punching bags they became in later sequels.
In conclusion, Dynasty Warriors 4 is an easier recommendation for hardcore fans of the series, but it has enough merit to make me wonder if Koei will ever release a remastered collection of these older titles, if only so their contributions to the series can be fully appreciated once more.
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