PyrosNine
10-17-2010, 08:46 PM
Pyros Plays
No this is not a let's play, the title is just some alliteration for the fun.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4241108/101710_174047_0000%20%28Small%29.PNG
So, the beta for Dynasty Warriors online came out last Wednesday, and Pyros got an invite! The way I saw it, it's essentially the PS2 game for free, right? So I got it, and even preloaded it.
I was not disappointed in terms of content: the basic idea is the same, you're a warrior in the Romance of the three kingdoms, serving under your choice of Wu, Shu, and Wei, but instead I'd playing as one of the famous commanders or as the generals themselves, you play some fresh off the provincial bus rookie.
Battles are held still in the Conan fashion, seeing your enemies driven before you, the destruction of their lands, and hearing the Lamentations of their women. Of course then you can have the women driven before you too, and destroy all their crates and towers while you’re at it. The essential capture the base game with a ludicrous death toll returns as well, and is the core of most of the modes of play, and the quests. There are usually three to four bases per side, with a few neutral bases. The goal is to capture all of the opponents bases before they capture yours, as bases are the only place where the defeated can respawn. The bases themselves are not too simple to knock over either, they each have specific attributes that make defending them easier, with specific requirements (defeat x many soldiers, defeat 4 stronger than normal captains, defeat special Officer, destroy towers, destroy tanks/juggernauts) and an elemental bonus coming from lit altars that restores health and provides a stat boost to those of that base’s side within. There is also a supply base that doesn’t count for the “capture” total, but capturing it will reduce the opponent’s altars by half, reducing the bonus they get by 50%, and allowing the altars to be destroyed quicker for them to have no bonus at all.
The ‘online’ part of this Pseudo-MMORPG, as well as the RPG part, is how they’ve made it different from Dynasty Warriors and Sengoku Basara on the major consoles. Instead of gaining levels, players gain honor, honor that enables them to advance towards promotions, Promotions allow players to use more powerful equipment, and more powerful equipment is essentially how players gain stats, meaning that skill and strategy are more important to victory than grinding up levels. By killing alot of mooks, other players, capturing bases, and collecting items, players gain honor, win or lose. Of course, if they win they get more honor, but no matter what you do you're still slowly working your way up the ladder of opportunity.
On the battlefield a level up system does occur, where collecting flasks dropped by the mooks wandering the battlefield outside the bases will allow you to power up a selection of upgrades that are specific to your weapon. These upgrades mean things like increasing attack, defense, damage (the ability to destroy enemy structures faster) speed, and powering up one’s lieutenant. They are also power ups, in that there are “???” random slots, which upon acquiring enough flasks, reveal a random power-up, like increased speed, attack multiplier, defense multiplier, and infinite Musou for a short period of time. These all take a certain number of flasks, increasing in rank. So you need 1 flask or rank 1, 2 flasks for rank 2, etc. By getting around 7 flasks you can increase your combo past a 4 hit to a 7 hit, and by repeatedly upgrading the combo you gain access to new specials and musou, as well replacing the combo upgrade with an Advanced power, which is a short term power up directly tied to your weapon. For example, “Reach” for the default spear makes the range of your attacks much longer, meaning you can hit larger groups with your combos. The power-ups and their order on the rank scale depends on the weapon, and stronger weapons will have more upgrades per rank, and have some upgrades earlier.
These upgrades however, only last as long as the battle, so the first part of every battle is mook murder until you’ve gotten enough power-ups to challenge the bases and the officers, and if you die in battle you’ll go back to square one as well. This works surprisingly well, and makes sure that once you’ve defeated an opponent, they will be somewhat out of your hair for a while, but also makes you more cautious about your own hide, especially if you find yourself fighting two enemy officers at the same time.
The towns of Dynasty Warrior’s recent games make a slight return, with players able to waltz about the home base of their side, make purchases, and undertake quests. What quests are available and what is for sell is apparently directly related to how the overall war is going, but as it’s in Beta it’s hard to tell. Quests usually take the form of the basic mode of gameplay, you’re on a map and given specific conditions for victory: destroy x number of bases, kill this many soldiers, but also have extra conditions like: kill all enemy officers except X, find the item hidden in one of the bases, and a few wicked time attacks.
Now, I’ve brought up the leveling up system, which is to say, the lack thereof for your character, but the beginning of the game is kinda slow because of it. You are given simple tutorial quests that give simple items and your first lieutenant (AI helper buddy) and have free access to a Training battle, which is you and three other newbies taking on 4 bot officers for free weapons and items, but only after you have built up enough honor will you be given quests to increase your rank to enter the real game, which is 4x4 pvp battles called the Campaign, where the rewards and stakes are much higher. You don’t do any of that until you become a Guard, which takes three upgrades in rank after an unspecified number of battles/quests, win or lose. Once you’re a Lt.Major, you can start using the more powerful stuff, as well as enter modes like Mock Battle (4v4 against your own side for honor and gold) Melee which is a mookless battle, and another that has a Team Fortress vibe in that characters are given special upgrades and fully powered up weapons to fulfill specific tasks. However, I’’m not there yet, and I’ve been battling for the better part of three days. Furthermore, until you’ve gotten to that level, most quests are too hard and the game engages in heavy handholding until you advance, with constant reminders from both the map and this teleporty old guy.
On the niceties, the game is as pretty as the PS2 game, maybe even prettier, and the number of active enemies on screen is still pretty good, given how much is going on at once in a battle. There is a dynamic weather system, where it goes from day to night, sunny to cloudy, rainy to pouring rain, and I assume that once it’s winter, there’ll be snow. This is reflected not only in the logon screen, but also the town and battlefield. The music is nice and the number of different weapons and equipment allows for a good degree of customization, as weapons can be upgraded, tempered, and imbued with an element on top of whatever upgrades they’ve got installed on them. The character builder is complex enough at the moment that your character’s stats and appearance will be distinct, and notably I’d picked myself to have a ‘pretty’ face with a “pure” personality, and of course my character ended up with a high pitched girly man voice.
The game allows for controllers, so peeps with an Xbox or Playstation style controller will feel like they’re playing the normal game, and it even includes vibration.
Since it’s in Beta, there are a few bugs: The only one I’ve encountered since it started is the Black Screen of Death bug, which is when the after victory/defeat cutscene plays, the screen goes black. Normally after a little while it goes to the results screen for the battle, however with this bug the game goes on with a black screen for awhile, before a pop-up message appears stating that there was a server connection error, and the player is dropped back out to the login screen. It’s somewhat annoying, as it also makes it impossible to complete some quests as it will randomly do this every time you complete one, and yet doesn’t count you as having beaten said quest. It’s part of the reason I haven’t advanced yet in rank, really. Fortunately they said in a recent login screen message that they were aware of the problem, and it should be fixed by Monday Night’s patch.
A nuisance of the game’s design for me is that whenever you win a quest or battle, you are returned to your home. Your home is the only place you can change clothing, and has furniture that serves every function from quitting the game to keeping tabs on your progress (the armory actually displays what weapons you have on it’s rack, kinda cool) and you can presumably add new pieces of furniture as time goes on, and move them around. What’s annoying though, is that you have to go all the way back to whomever you got a quest or whatnot to get the rewards for it, and if you want to gain honor quickly, this means you have to enter a battle by talking to the Instructor NPC, win/lose the battle, appear back in your house, then run back to the NPC, and this continues in cycle. I’d have liked to be able to just pop back up next to the NPC who gave me the quest so he can give me my fat loots.
Now, I haven’t done everything so there’s still much more to talk about, like Lieutenants (they level up like a normal MMORPG character, unlike you), I haven’t seen the effects of Campaign mode or the Server’s Scenario (which is supposedly based on the Book) which can affect where a side is headquartered and what’s on hand in stores, nor have I seen if you can venture outside of your side’s city, or even if the different sides have different cities, external to the battlefields you get to by talking to NPC’s. I also haven’t bothered checking what could be for sale on the point store, because I’m cheap. I might reply to this thread with more, or I might not, and just leave you to see it for yourself or ignore it for yourself.
My thoughts: It’s not bad. It’s Dynasty Warriors, pure and simple, with the usual mass murder and wire-fu, with all the bells and whistles of the series while also being free, and the stress relieving catharsis of going Musou on an enemy officer and their mooks and sending them flying across the battlefield is always worth a spin. It’s not a simple cut and paste branded MMORPG like Aeria’s other branded game, Shin Megami Tensei Online, and very true to the traditional style of play. Like the normal Dynasty Warriors, killing wave after wave of mooks does get boring after awhile, and the new modes seem like a simple rehash of the normal game instead of anything novel. Easy multiplayer does earn it brownie points, and a lot of the quests and particulars of battle are much easier when you’ve a friend or two to take care of it with you (I’m looking at YOU, Flame Breathing Wooden Tiger Tanks). When the game’s out of beta, feel free to give it a spin if you too enjoy giving history majors a brain hemorrhage about which historical war had the highest death toll.
Pyros gives Dynasty Warriors Online a 7 out of 9
http://dynastywarriors.aeriagames.com/
No this is not a let's play, the title is just some alliteration for the fun.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4241108/101710_174047_0000%20%28Small%29.PNG
So, the beta for Dynasty Warriors online came out last Wednesday, and Pyros got an invite! The way I saw it, it's essentially the PS2 game for free, right? So I got it, and even preloaded it.
I was not disappointed in terms of content: the basic idea is the same, you're a warrior in the Romance of the three kingdoms, serving under your choice of Wu, Shu, and Wei, but instead I'd playing as one of the famous commanders or as the generals themselves, you play some fresh off the provincial bus rookie.
Battles are held still in the Conan fashion, seeing your enemies driven before you, the destruction of their lands, and hearing the Lamentations of their women. Of course then you can have the women driven before you too, and destroy all their crates and towers while you’re at it. The essential capture the base game with a ludicrous death toll returns as well, and is the core of most of the modes of play, and the quests. There are usually three to four bases per side, with a few neutral bases. The goal is to capture all of the opponents bases before they capture yours, as bases are the only place where the defeated can respawn. The bases themselves are not too simple to knock over either, they each have specific attributes that make defending them easier, with specific requirements (defeat x many soldiers, defeat 4 stronger than normal captains, defeat special Officer, destroy towers, destroy tanks/juggernauts) and an elemental bonus coming from lit altars that restores health and provides a stat boost to those of that base’s side within. There is also a supply base that doesn’t count for the “capture” total, but capturing it will reduce the opponent’s altars by half, reducing the bonus they get by 50%, and allowing the altars to be destroyed quicker for them to have no bonus at all.
The ‘online’ part of this Pseudo-MMORPG, as well as the RPG part, is how they’ve made it different from Dynasty Warriors and Sengoku Basara on the major consoles. Instead of gaining levels, players gain honor, honor that enables them to advance towards promotions, Promotions allow players to use more powerful equipment, and more powerful equipment is essentially how players gain stats, meaning that skill and strategy are more important to victory than grinding up levels. By killing alot of mooks, other players, capturing bases, and collecting items, players gain honor, win or lose. Of course, if they win they get more honor, but no matter what you do you're still slowly working your way up the ladder of opportunity.
On the battlefield a level up system does occur, where collecting flasks dropped by the mooks wandering the battlefield outside the bases will allow you to power up a selection of upgrades that are specific to your weapon. These upgrades mean things like increasing attack, defense, damage (the ability to destroy enemy structures faster) speed, and powering up one’s lieutenant. They are also power ups, in that there are “???” random slots, which upon acquiring enough flasks, reveal a random power-up, like increased speed, attack multiplier, defense multiplier, and infinite Musou for a short period of time. These all take a certain number of flasks, increasing in rank. So you need 1 flask or rank 1, 2 flasks for rank 2, etc. By getting around 7 flasks you can increase your combo past a 4 hit to a 7 hit, and by repeatedly upgrading the combo you gain access to new specials and musou, as well replacing the combo upgrade with an Advanced power, which is a short term power up directly tied to your weapon. For example, “Reach” for the default spear makes the range of your attacks much longer, meaning you can hit larger groups with your combos. The power-ups and their order on the rank scale depends on the weapon, and stronger weapons will have more upgrades per rank, and have some upgrades earlier.
These upgrades however, only last as long as the battle, so the first part of every battle is mook murder until you’ve gotten enough power-ups to challenge the bases and the officers, and if you die in battle you’ll go back to square one as well. This works surprisingly well, and makes sure that once you’ve defeated an opponent, they will be somewhat out of your hair for a while, but also makes you more cautious about your own hide, especially if you find yourself fighting two enemy officers at the same time.
The towns of Dynasty Warrior’s recent games make a slight return, with players able to waltz about the home base of their side, make purchases, and undertake quests. What quests are available and what is for sell is apparently directly related to how the overall war is going, but as it’s in Beta it’s hard to tell. Quests usually take the form of the basic mode of gameplay, you’re on a map and given specific conditions for victory: destroy x number of bases, kill this many soldiers, but also have extra conditions like: kill all enemy officers except X, find the item hidden in one of the bases, and a few wicked time attacks.
Now, I’ve brought up the leveling up system, which is to say, the lack thereof for your character, but the beginning of the game is kinda slow because of it. You are given simple tutorial quests that give simple items and your first lieutenant (AI helper buddy) and have free access to a Training battle, which is you and three other newbies taking on 4 bot officers for free weapons and items, but only after you have built up enough honor will you be given quests to increase your rank to enter the real game, which is 4x4 pvp battles called the Campaign, where the rewards and stakes are much higher. You don’t do any of that until you become a Guard, which takes three upgrades in rank after an unspecified number of battles/quests, win or lose. Once you’re a Lt.Major, you can start using the more powerful stuff, as well as enter modes like Mock Battle (4v4 against your own side for honor and gold) Melee which is a mookless battle, and another that has a Team Fortress vibe in that characters are given special upgrades and fully powered up weapons to fulfill specific tasks. However, I’’m not there yet, and I’ve been battling for the better part of three days. Furthermore, until you’ve gotten to that level, most quests are too hard and the game engages in heavy handholding until you advance, with constant reminders from both the map and this teleporty old guy.
On the niceties, the game is as pretty as the PS2 game, maybe even prettier, and the number of active enemies on screen is still pretty good, given how much is going on at once in a battle. There is a dynamic weather system, where it goes from day to night, sunny to cloudy, rainy to pouring rain, and I assume that once it’s winter, there’ll be snow. This is reflected not only in the logon screen, but also the town and battlefield. The music is nice and the number of different weapons and equipment allows for a good degree of customization, as weapons can be upgraded, tempered, and imbued with an element on top of whatever upgrades they’ve got installed on them. The character builder is complex enough at the moment that your character’s stats and appearance will be distinct, and notably I’d picked myself to have a ‘pretty’ face with a “pure” personality, and of course my character ended up with a high pitched girly man voice.
The game allows for controllers, so peeps with an Xbox or Playstation style controller will feel like they’re playing the normal game, and it even includes vibration.
Since it’s in Beta, there are a few bugs: The only one I’ve encountered since it started is the Black Screen of Death bug, which is when the after victory/defeat cutscene plays, the screen goes black. Normally after a little while it goes to the results screen for the battle, however with this bug the game goes on with a black screen for awhile, before a pop-up message appears stating that there was a server connection error, and the player is dropped back out to the login screen. It’s somewhat annoying, as it also makes it impossible to complete some quests as it will randomly do this every time you complete one, and yet doesn’t count you as having beaten said quest. It’s part of the reason I haven’t advanced yet in rank, really. Fortunately they said in a recent login screen message that they were aware of the problem, and it should be fixed by Monday Night’s patch.
A nuisance of the game’s design for me is that whenever you win a quest or battle, you are returned to your home. Your home is the only place you can change clothing, and has furniture that serves every function from quitting the game to keeping tabs on your progress (the armory actually displays what weapons you have on it’s rack, kinda cool) and you can presumably add new pieces of furniture as time goes on, and move them around. What’s annoying though, is that you have to go all the way back to whomever you got a quest or whatnot to get the rewards for it, and if you want to gain honor quickly, this means you have to enter a battle by talking to the Instructor NPC, win/lose the battle, appear back in your house, then run back to the NPC, and this continues in cycle. I’d have liked to be able to just pop back up next to the NPC who gave me the quest so he can give me my fat loots.
Now, I haven’t done everything so there’s still much more to talk about, like Lieutenants (they level up like a normal MMORPG character, unlike you), I haven’t seen the effects of Campaign mode or the Server’s Scenario (which is supposedly based on the Book) which can affect where a side is headquartered and what’s on hand in stores, nor have I seen if you can venture outside of your side’s city, or even if the different sides have different cities, external to the battlefields you get to by talking to NPC’s. I also haven’t bothered checking what could be for sale on the point store, because I’m cheap. I might reply to this thread with more, or I might not, and just leave you to see it for yourself or ignore it for yourself.
My thoughts: It’s not bad. It’s Dynasty Warriors, pure and simple, with the usual mass murder and wire-fu, with all the bells and whistles of the series while also being free, and the stress relieving catharsis of going Musou on an enemy officer and their mooks and sending them flying across the battlefield is always worth a spin. It’s not a simple cut and paste branded MMORPG like Aeria’s other branded game, Shin Megami Tensei Online, and very true to the traditional style of play. Like the normal Dynasty Warriors, killing wave after wave of mooks does get boring after awhile, and the new modes seem like a simple rehash of the normal game instead of anything novel. Easy multiplayer does earn it brownie points, and a lot of the quests and particulars of battle are much easier when you’ve a friend or two to take care of it with you (I’m looking at YOU, Flame Breathing Wooden Tiger Tanks). When the game’s out of beta, feel free to give it a spin if you too enjoy giving history majors a brain hemorrhage about which historical war had the highest death toll.
Pyros gives Dynasty Warriors Online a 7 out of 9
http://dynastywarriors.aeriagames.com/