Well…It’s certainly a game.
Dynasty Warriors Godseekers is a turn-based strategy game released on January 31, 2017 in North America. Published by Tecmo Koei and developed by Omega Force for the Playstation Vita, Playstation 4 and Playstation 3.
It’s quite the different direction for the Dynasty Warriors series but not the right direction. Boring gameplay, janky animations, and an uninteresting story just make this game so…..Mediocre.
Story
You take the role of series protag, Zhao Yun accompanied by two new characters, your companion Lei Bin and the goddess Lixia that you and Lei Bin find trapped in a crystal inside a cave. The story features a lot of familiar faces to the Dynasty Warriors franchise and it’s interesting to study up on them and their role in the story which is essentially a retelling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Not much can be said about the story besides that it’s dull and uninteresting, no hype moments push me towards progressing through this story and no amount of cool historical things that really happened could either.
Gameplay
Gameplay is where things take a total shift from the series, as it’s a turn-based strategy game where you control units on levels that have grids based around them. You can move your unit a set amount of blocks in the grid before you have to either defend or attack, from the time I’ve had with Dynasty Warriors Godseekers I felt like that’s all I had to do to meet a victory condition. It gets quite monotonous at times and the only somewhat satisfying thing to do in this game is to use the Synchro Meter attacks and Musou attacks where you use special abilities to take down huge waves of enemies. The simple attack animations are very limited as well, feeling like some early beta of a game and not the actual finished product, their static and boring and bring no joy in killing enemies. Attacks usually cover a large area where you can hit multiple enemy units–kind of like an excuse to make it feel like a traditional Dynasty Warriors game–and each attacks take up a number of bars, so essentially the more bars the attack takes up the less you can use it in one attack phase and vice versa. There’s also a weapon enhancing system as well a leveling up system where you fill up nodes on a grid and in both not much thought needs to be put into it. During your enemy turns you can watch every action take place or hold the Circle button to do a kind of fast-forward which is still slow enough to get on my nerves, whenever I’m not in control I feel like just dropping the game. The camera is also extremely wonky at times and the options to zoom in and out of the stage aren’t that great as you’ll start spending more and more time trying to fight the camera to see where enemies are placed.
Presentation And Music
The game is presented in the same old Dynasty Warriors art-style and stages can look quite nice to kinda boring with nothing interesting in them visually. Cutscenes are fully animated and are done pretty well, and the Japanese voice-acting is pretty good too. The music is also quite nice, what struck me most was the music that plays during the intro, it’s enough to get you sorta pumped and definitely enough to make you notice it but nothing interesting enough to really stand out.
Side-note on the Vita
I came to know that this game is on the Vita, but for this review I played on the Playstation 4. I think that if you play this game on the Vita it would be an okay game to have around as it’s mindless and you can essentially pick it up and play, so if you have a Vita and need something for the commute home then I guess you can pick it up when it’s on sale. I don’t feel like it’s worth a full price.
Verdict
Dynasty Warriors is by no means a bad game, but it isn’t a game that is great either. It’s bland and boring with only a small amount of satisfaction to be had with the gameplay. If some more depth was added and more interesting mechanics, interesting enemies and even better attack animations I could see this game being a fun little experience. The historical figures and the time period it is set around is interesting but not interesting enough for me to power through how bored I was playing this game. It’s probably one of the least offensive games I’ve ever played. With a game that does nothing interesting in a market where so many interesting things are being done I don’t think this game has any right to be more than it is. In the end I can only say that it’s a game.
I would rate Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers a 5 / 10