Dynasty Warriors DS: Fighter’s Battle Review

Having never played a Dynasty Warriors game before, I fired up my DS with a sense of anticipation for what would await me in Dynasty Warriors: Fighter’s Battle. I figured a series based on influencing the outcome of a grand-scale conflict in ancient China by beating the living tar out of thousands of enemy troops with a legendary warrior just had to be entertaining on some level. Unfortunately, what I got was a sub-par, repetitive beat-’em-up which fails to entertain beyond the first few battles.

The unfortunate part is that Dynasty Warriors: Fighter’s Battle, with more development time, could have been a great game. The concept of a large battle field with a main camp and a number of smaller bases to defend or defeat is a great one for a beat-’em-up, potentially adding strategy to a straight-forward game design. The problem is this potential is completely missed. Chasing down your enemy to defeat him in a one-on-one battle or running to the defence of one of your bases gives you no advantage, in fact it hinders you more than helps. It is just as easy to drudge through the game pressing the same button combo and slaying endless swarms of enemy troops as it is to try and play strategically and plan out an attack path to outsmart your enemy.

The problems don’t end there either. Repetitive stages, repetitive moves, repetitive music…the word repetitive is something that can be used repetitively to describe Dynasty Warriors: Fighter’s Battle. The inevitable result is a game that quickly kills any interest the player may have had long before the couple of hours required to finish the game is up. Adding to the problem is dumb enemy AI that makes you feel like you are fighting a bunch of crash-test dummies with swords and boss characters that are equally stupid, but sometimes attack you with their special moves which are too often unavoidable. The missed opportunities don’t stop there either. The game has a card system that acts as a system for slecting and leveling up your captains who defend your sub-bases. Great idea, but poorly executed and you will find yourself just selecting whichever card comes up first. Because of the failure of the strategy system it doesn’t matter who you select as they are inconsequential to the outcome of the battle.

I was eager to sample the multiplayer portion of the game, but as it requires multiple game cards, I was unable to see if this would improve my enjoyment. This is unforgiveable so far into the lifecycle of the DS and another missed opportunity. Graphics and sound-wise, the game is also poor. The art style is generic and does little to inspire you to believe you are fighting battles in ancient China. Animation is limited to a few frames, even on the playable characters and bosses. The music is electric guitar-based and feels very out of place in a game set in historic China. Sound effects are passable though, with a reasonable array of whacks and ka-chings. Overall my introduction to the Dynasty Warriors series was disappointing to say the least. I can’t even recommend this to fans of the Dynasty Warriors series, let alone those who have never played the previous games before. The core concept has potential, but needs plenty of work to turn it from a below average game into something good.