Genre: Strategy
Publisher: KOEI
Developer: KOEI
Release Date: March 16, 2005

Now You Can Pursue Lu-Bu on the Bus, in Starbucks and Olin Hall

For those of you who don’t know, and I’m sure that means everyone, I am by trade a high school English teacher. This past weekend I took a field trip of ten students from Wilbur Cross High School to not-so-sunny Ithaca, New York for the Model United Nations Conference where my kids took the Best Small Delegation Award and five out of ten of my kids took home awards for their stellar performance and behavior. So, what does this have to do with anything concerning games? Easy. While my kids were experimenting in foreign policy, debate and diplomatic exchanges, I was outside on the lawn laying waste to hundreds if not thousands of Dong Zhou’s lackeys. All in all it made for an awesome weekend if not for the time I got to spend with my shiny new PSP but simply being up in the hills of Cornell and Ithaca was a whole lot of fun.

So, where to begin? First of all, Dynasty Warriors is a hack’n’slash button mashing fest the likes of which we haven’t seen since Double Dragon in some movie theater atrium. You enroll as one of dozens of officers taken directly from the famed mythology of China’s Three Kingdoms era. The books are known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Koei has had a long standing franchise based on these hugely famous Asian tomes. Indeed, more people have read Romance of the Three Kingdoms than the Bible (my Korean grandmother tells me that if a person reads it three times in his or her lifetime then he or she may be considered a wise person). Anyhow, the backdrop for DW is epic if nothing else.

DW for PSP is the first of a long line of Dynasty Warriors to appear in hand-held form. Many of DW’s traits and features are taken from the newest version Dynasty Warriors 5. In this sense there are bases to attack, supplies to be kept up and officers to kill in order to throw opposing armies into chaos. The gameplay is pretty straight forward. You basically wade your way through thousands of soldiers while swinging away and unleashing the occasional super-duper attack after a type of “rage” meter has filled up from hitting enemies and from being hit.

Dynasty Warriors has long been maligned as being simplistic and repetitive. I’ve always held a soft spot in my heart for Dynasty Warriors despite these criticisms. Unfortunately, I find that DW for PSP falls squarely into that criticism.

What made Dynasty Warriors so much fun for me was wading through epic battles on massive fields while reducing an army of thousands to nothing. The juggling combos and whacked out Musou attacks were cool too and the incredibly campy narrative and bad Kung-Fu movie voice acting made it all the more fun for me and my college buddies. Where DW PSP stumbles is that the game segments each field into sections where you lead your regiment in a turn based strategy map. This would work and be a new challenge were it not for the fact that the enemy forces stay pretty much where they are. You are then left with simply navigating the field tile by tile until you reach the objective area. Had this map been developed more into an asset rather than a design crutch, DW PSP would be a lot more fun and intriguing.

DW PSP reminds me very much of the first Dynasty Warriors in that your character doesn’t develop in any appreciable way and stats earned in one battle do not carry on to the next. There is a “Level” for your warrior, but the stats don’t seem to be impacted that greatly. There aren’t new weapons or items to equip your warrior with and you do not have a choice of bodyguards to take into the fight with you. Instead you have a selection of up to four officers who you can call up during a fight. This could also be cool were it not for the fact that these officers seem to be rather useless as they work off of the same AI as your average enemy officer. Each officer can only be deployed a certain number of times unless they earn new deployment points. I don’t quite understand this system except for the notion that officers could become too powerful an asset on the field, however due to their capricious nature I wouldn’t depend on them saving my hide in the midst of a fight. You can’t trade officers with friends via the PSP’s wireless function much like Pokemon cards, but again due the lack of impact trading officers isn’t much of an incentive.

What drove home the final nail in DW PSP’s coffin for me was the game’s performance. I realize that DW PSP is a first generation game and DW looks great and sounds awesome, however as soon as five or more characters are on screen and swinging, the game slows to a crawl that is embarrassing. One of my students watching over my shoulder and asked, “Hey, is that like bullet time in the Matrix?” as the game became inextricably bogged down. I wanted to say yes so bad.

Essentially, DW PSP is a good idea poorly executed. The premise is solid, but the game simply doesn’t have the intended affect. It pains me to admit this game’s mediocrity as I love the series so much, but I know a bad game when I see one and try as I might DW PSP cannot be more than what it is: a bad game. With the performance hit, lack of customizable heroes, poorly executed strategy map and inept AI I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. The graphics do dazzle and the sound plays very nicely even in the PSP speakers, but all that glitz is not gold.

Score: 5.5/10