From what I can tell there are no camera controls (I believe the right analog stick does nothing), but you can block. (One of the bumpers, I think.)
And yes, from what I could see the only campaign-ish level that’s unlucked when you start is the Yellow Turban Rebellion, although presumably more open up as you play…
So if I can get this for $15, it’s worth it? (360 version)
Also, re: pricing…
" Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires
Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: KOEI
Category: Action, Fighting, Strategy
ESRB Rating: Teen
Usually ships in 24 hours
$39.99
Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires
Platform: Playstation 2
Publisher: KOEI
Category: Action
ESRB Rating: Teen
Usually ships in 24 hours
$29.99
One thing I miss is being able to use another main character as your body guard. Wish they’d bring that back.
Except that the music isn’t bad, it’s great.
Well, I think you’re a lying liar. I own most of the thousands of DW games and they all have very poopy music, I think.
Ah, usually when they release a new one not a spin off ish like the empires or extra edition it’s 50$. Although the last time I looked at buying on was DF4, so they could have dropped the prices since then.
Also is Lu Bu still like super rambo?
Yeah, the left bumper blocks, and it also centers the camera behind the player. This sometimes causes problems if you’re in a situation where you can’t block (flying through the air as a result of an enemy attack, for example) because you can’t fix the camera either. The right analog stick is completely wasted, with its only use being that the R3 button activates Musou tokens (which are rare but awesome).
There are 6 campaigns total, counting the Gathering of Heroes one. None of them change anything except the starting allocation of forces and the possibility of one of the 5 special battles occurring.
I realize that I’m completely failing to live up to my promise of defending the game, but it’s a rough day at work. I’ll post more glowing rants once I’m home with some decent air conditioning.
That’s what I get for only renting the series or trying it out at Eb. I never knew you could block.
My first game through I picked some random nobody named Han Sui to be my character. I picked him because I often have trouble with the names, but I could remember this one because it reminds me of Han Solo. I kicked ass with the guy and levelled him up to max, but at one crucial juncture I failed to position him in a hot zone where he was needed.
Because he was off in another province, I had to choose a local boy. “I’m in luck!” I thought, as I noticed that Lu Bu had been sitting there twiddling his thumbs for years. I grabbed his pokeball and prepared to steamroll the enemy.
About 10 minutes later, Lu Bu and his two accompanying officers were being held prisoner by the enemy. At fault was my failure to adapt my playstyle to Lu Bu’s moveset and lack of experience. This was on Easy.
From what I remember playing the regular games, Lu Bu controlled by the Ai is pretty much unbeatible.
I never played the empires spin off, I know it adds some turn base strategy to it, but is it better then the regular edition?
Well, despite any animosity he feels towards me, Kitsune’s post will almost certainly help me enjoy the game more by telling me what to focus on in terms of controls and what-not. One of my big complaints is that it seemed like an arbitrary button-mashing fest, but he shows there’s a bit more to it than that.
And since I can override the music, that’s another complaint down. So I think the remaining obstacles for me to try to deal with are (what appears so far to be) repititious gameplay and more importantly, the zombie-like enemies that really break the experience for me.
The key to surviving against Lu Bu when he’s powered up (he has the weird electric aura surrounding him) is to use the power-reversals. While holding block, press Y (triangle on the PS2) the instant his attack is about to hit you, and you’ll not only parry it but land an automatic and nasty counterattack.
Indeed, on Chaos difficulty, I’m pretty sure there’s no other way to beat him unless you’ve found a 2x-attack powerup.
But while Lu Bu is still incredibly nasty, I’d rank Zuo Ci as the most insanely overpowered character in DW5. His Charge-1 has a randomly-determined element in it, even if your current weapon has no elemental orb installed, plus it has a nice radius. His Charge-4 shoots lasers all over the place, has very little charge-up time, does good damage, and stuns whatever it hits. Plus if you’re right next to someone, you can get two of the lasers to hit them at once for extra damage. His Charge-6 juggles enemies AND has so little downtime (unless your weapon is “heavy”, and even then this may still hold true) that he can do infinite juggles with it. His evolution attack finishes the same way his Charge-4 does, so it’s basically a Charge-4 combo except you’ve landed about five more hits and done much more damage THEN you’ve stunned everyone around you. His Musou attack hits very anyone very close to him very rapidly for nice damage.
In short, give him an Ice Orb so that his Charge-4 and Evolution attacks can freeze enemies, and he’ll slaughter huge crowds in no time flat. Then use musou attacks to quickly beat down tough single opponents.
Ling Tong is also great, in that he has a hilariously spammable Charge-4. Decent radius, decent damage, but the key is that I don’t think there’s any cooldown time at all. In other words, even if it gets blocked, he can start blocking before anyone can counterattack him. At least I’m sure this is true when he’s using a “light” weapon - it may not be true for a “heavy” weapon.
Zuo Ci is pretty cool. He’s the dude with the cards, right? Man, I can’t get those names straight, but every now and then one of them is funky enough that I remember it along with the biggies like Lu Bu and Cao Cao. I swear to god, in one fight, I had Zhang Li fighting against Li Zhang. Argh!
But the thing about the Dynasty Warriors games is that you kind of already have to be a Dynasty Warriors fan. As for me, I lost that capacity somewhere around, I dunno, the third iteration.
-Tom
Cao Pi is a pretty great name, too. I’m unsure if it’s supposed to be pronounced “pie” or “pee”, but either one is excellent.
Closest way to pronounce it is “chow pee”. But you need to note that Mandarin is has 4 tones for each syllable, so there are many ways you can say “chow pee” and still get it wrong.
Or, you know, you could always just actually read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga, a pretty goddamned fantastic work of literature, and actually learn who these people are, and why they’re fighting. Holy shit, is it actually expecting too much for western gamers to get beyond “OMG WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE THEY HAVE SILLY CHINESE NAMES CHING CHONG BONG WHAT?”
I’ve seen several pronunciation guides (and my brother who’s learning Mandarin backed this up) that the “Cao” should be pronounced and/or spelled as “T’sao”. So it less “chow pee” and more “t’sao pee”.
I thought it was meant to be pronounced Tsao - or at least, I’ve encountered some ardent ROTK fans who are dead certain its supposed to be that way. It really pisses me off that the english dub actors in the DW games don’t even bother to pronounce the chinese names correctly, but thank god you can almost always turn them off.
Beat you to it. ;p
Bastard! I’ll shoot you in the eyeball with an arrow! :P