Title Successfully Ported From PSP
Generally I have a short attention span for games where I have to wade through waves of never ending bad guys, so I wasn’t sure what to think when I was handed Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce to review. That said, I do try to take on each new review with an open mind and I have to say that I was surprised to find many new elements to compliment the latest release in this series.
Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce was originally developed for the PSP and has been ported up to the Xbox 360 and PS3 where I played it. As far as I can gather, the game was not significantly changed from the PSP release.
Of course the graphics are better and there are more missions too. Oh and the big one, online four player co-op is now supported. So instead of button mashing by yourself, now you and three other people can mash buttons and fight though waves of bad guys together.
And I have to say, this is so much more fun that sitting alone on your PS3. Alternatively, you can recruit AI party members, and you can do some cool stuff with them, but I strongly recommend recruiting some online players. There seem to be plenty online to find, since storming fortresses in a team is great fun.
I don’t know why, but storming fortresses, doing the optional missions and killing bosses is better with friends or random people you find online.
The game beings in a quaint village. There are six vendors in the village who can upgrade your items and equipment once you gather the needed materials (which you get from missions).
You can also chose with mission you want to undertake. They naturally get harder as you gain more experience. And the personal and equipment upgrades get better. One of the things I like is that even if you fail a mission, you still get some experience. Too many games make you lose everything if you don’t get the brass ring. This way, you will at least toughen up a bit from your fight, and perhaps won’t fail the next mission because of it.
Assuming you like this type of game, the only real negatives stem from the PSP to console port and result in less than stellar graphics, small rooms and crappy camera angles. You can tell this was originally designed for the small screen. It looks good, but is a touch confining.
Overall, I have to say I was surprisingly very impressed with Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce. Developer Omega Force and KOEI did an excellent job of keeping the original gameplay while adding role playing like character and equipment improvements. And I can’t say enough about the addition of four person multiplayer. If they needed to add something to the series, that would be it.
Have fun storming the castle!