Bros, due the interest on the Screenshot Thread, I'll do a quick review of Dynasty Warriors Online. I've been playing it form ~2 weeks now, so this should give some good impressions of the game, even if I didn't reach the endgame yet.
First, Dynasty Warriors Online is a Free-2-Play MMO version of the famous Warriors series from Koei, a hack&slash based on China's Era of Warring States, as romancized in the book The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The story revolves around 3 nations, Wu, Shu & Wei, as they fought for control of China, more than 2,000 years ago.
DWO was released in Japan in 2006, and only hit the western world in the end of 2010. While that makes the game feel & play a little dated, it also means that the design philosophy behind it was the same as the PS2 era games, like DW4-5, IMHO the best in the series before the popamole PS3 games arrived.
You start the game by creating your bro and chosing with faction he will join. There are3 4 kingdoms, Wei, Shu Wu and Ma Chaos forces (I don't know why). All factions battle to conquer China, and the players work is reflected on the factions dominion over cities. On the only american server, Cao Cao is dominatin 60% of China, while Liu Bei is compeltly defeated and only has one city. As the bro I am, I'll help Mr. Liu Bei save China!
One thing they did almost right was the tutorial. The game plays exactly like any DW (and supports the Xbox controller very well), so if you already know how to play you can score a S rank on the first mission and skip ALL the tutorial. very smart, they just forgot to tell me that! I spend almost 5 hours grinding the tutorial with my first character only to then read on the wiki abou this... it was faster to create a new one than to finish the tutorial...
Anyway, once you're done with the tutorial you get to try & choose a weapon. The game has insane 56 weapons, all with different movesets and improved versions, and you can still customize some of the combos...very impressive.
Those stars on the weapon stats are the only difference from the console games; during battles enemies will drop upgrade itens, that you can spend to upgrade your stas during that battle. What stats are upgraded depends on your weapon. On the spear above, you can imrpove your attack with 2 itens, your damage (agaisn biuldings) with 3 and your defense with 5. With 4 itens you will always upgrade your litenaunt, and 7 give you a new combo. Empty numbers, like 1 & 6 can be trader for temporary boosts, like 2x attack or 2x defense... all those upgrades reset when you die or the battle ends, and is a nice way to keep battles interesting.
There's also gear, that provide nice stats bonuses and the obvious AWESHUM looks to your character. The attributes work very well, you'll face players that focus on defense and don't stagger with your hits, some that focus on attack and can rape you with few hit and even some annoying people with high speeds that will dance around you, hitting with long range attacks. It certainyl makes PvP battles diversified and interesting.
Once the tutorial is finished (or skipped) you're completly free to take quests, face battles & PvP. Some features like a survival mode are still locked until you level up you're rank, and that involves LOTS of grinding... Gold is also hard to come by, as the only way to get gold in the game is by repeating 5 quests or selling itens you found on the battlefield. But the ingame action house is very good and allows you to cheaply get what you need.
The game has 2 modes, Town and Battlefield modes. In town you walk around, grab quests, craft, chat with officers and chose your missions. When you have a misison/quest, you talk to some NPCs and they will send you to the battlefield, where the game plays exactly like console DW games.
The quests will please old DW fans and are were the game shines together with the PvP. Unlike the PS3 games, where you just rush and kill everyone, the PS2 games had complex objectives and sub-quests inside each mission, and DWO goes for that take. Quests are diversified and range from the susual "kill 500",escort missions, base conquering, and the likes to insane stuff like hunt for insects, follow honey scents and solve math puzzles:
Fuck you game, I had to alt-tab.
Your reward will depend on your efficient in the battlefield, S rank will gte you tons of money, but a E rank will give you only a weak iten. Sadly there are very few quests in the game, and they are repeatable, so you're expected to grind them to be able to buy expensive shit and face high-level battles.
A interesting thing, nicely displayed by the game intro movie, is how the game remenbers that you are a rank & file soldier, not one of the badass generals. You'll still slay hundreds of enemies and officers per level, but the important officers like Liu Bei, Cao Cao and all the usual DW rooster are way more powerfull and will destroy you with 1-2 hits if you try to take them down alone.
Since the players also have ranks, this could be masterfully used on the PvP matches, but unfortunally they only support 8 players max, 4 on each side... there is simply no reason for a low rank officer to play against high-rank ones, they will only be killed in 1-2 hits and harm the group. Also, if your team has empty spots, they will be replaced by bots, that are DUMB AS FUCK and will probably be a serious handicap.
Now, for the bad stuff...the game is a old MMO, and it shows. Graphics were updated (the agme looks good), but not the rest. The UI works but is horrible, with countless sub-menus, and even very basic MMO stuff is done horribly, like forming parties or taking quests. You have to go to a quest giver, choose a quest (you can only have 5 at a time), walk to another area, talk to a messenger start the quest, and once finished you teleport back to your home, only to walk all the way back to the quest giver and recieve your reward...
Also you can only change equipments at your home, and have 4 weapons at a time, UNLESS you spend real world money on the game...a small price for a F2P game, but annoying nonetheless. Lag can be a serious problem, one that BR HUEHUE players like me suffers, especially on some crucial PvP momments, where you may miss your Musou or don't see the enemy attacks, but is still very tolerable.
There are still lots of other MMO-ish features, like the Campaign maps (that I haven't seen yet), the survival battles, a arena, domestic skills your character adquires, crafting, weapon upgrades and etc, but that's just extra stuff that you'll pick as you go, I wont explain then here unless someone is curious and asks.
TL;DR.
Good stuff:
Free and still fun
Gameplay & Quests are very good
PvP is good
Lots of weapons
Bad Stuff:
Few quests to do
Lag can fuck PvP
A LOT of grinding
Horribad UI
Some dumb design choices
Honestly, even with the limitations, I enjoyed this game way more than Dynasty Warriors 7 for PS3. If you are a DW fan, download this, play all the quests and try some PvP matches, it's definetly worth your time.
Dynasty Warriors Online is Free-2-play and is available here.
First, Dynasty Warriors Online is a Free-2-Play MMO version of the famous Warriors series from Koei, a hack&slash based on China's Era of Warring States, as romancized in the book The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The story revolves around 3 nations, Wu, Shu & Wei, as they fought for control of China, more than 2,000 years ago.
DWO was released in Japan in 2006, and only hit the western world in the end of 2010. While that makes the game feel & play a little dated, it also means that the design philosophy behind it was the same as the PS2 era games, like DW4-5, IMHO the best in the series before the popamole PS3 games arrived.
You start the game by creating your bro and chosing with faction he will join. There are
One thing they did almost right was the tutorial. The game plays exactly like any DW (and supports the Xbox controller very well), so if you already know how to play you can score a S rank on the first mission and skip ALL the tutorial. very smart, they just forgot to tell me that! I spend almost 5 hours grinding the tutorial with my first character only to then read on the wiki abou this... it was faster to create a new one than to finish the tutorial...
Anyway, once you're done with the tutorial you get to try & choose a weapon. The game has insane 56 weapons, all with different movesets and improved versions, and you can still customize some of the combos...very impressive.
Those stars on the weapon stats are the only difference from the console games; during battles enemies will drop upgrade itens, that you can spend to upgrade your stas during that battle. What stats are upgraded depends on your weapon. On the spear above, you can imrpove your attack with 2 itens, your damage (agaisn biuldings) with 3 and your defense with 5. With 4 itens you will always upgrade your litenaunt, and 7 give you a new combo. Empty numbers, like 1 & 6 can be trader for temporary boosts, like 2x attack or 2x defense... all those upgrades reset when you die or the battle ends, and is a nice way to keep battles interesting.
There's also gear, that provide nice stats bonuses and the obvious AWESHUM looks to your character. The attributes work very well, you'll face players that focus on defense and don't stagger with your hits, some that focus on attack and can rape you with few hit and even some annoying people with high speeds that will dance around you, hitting with long range attacks. It certainyl makes PvP battles diversified and interesting.
Once the tutorial is finished (or skipped) you're completly free to take quests, face battles & PvP. Some features like a survival mode are still locked until you level up you're rank, and that involves LOTS of grinding... Gold is also hard to come by, as the only way to get gold in the game is by repeating 5 quests or selling itens you found on the battlefield. But the ingame action house is very good and allows you to cheaply get what you need.
The game has 2 modes, Town and Battlefield modes. In town you walk around, grab quests, craft, chat with officers and chose your missions. When you have a misison/quest, you talk to some NPCs and they will send you to the battlefield, where the game plays exactly like console DW games.
The quests will please old DW fans and are were the game shines together with the PvP. Unlike the PS3 games, where you just rush and kill everyone, the PS2 games had complex objectives and sub-quests inside each mission, and DWO goes for that take. Quests are diversified and range from the susual "kill 500",escort missions, base conquering, and the likes to insane stuff like hunt for insects, follow honey scents and solve math puzzles:
Fuck you game, I had to alt-tab.
Your reward will depend on your efficient in the battlefield, S rank will gte you tons of money, but a E rank will give you only a weak iten. Sadly there are very few quests in the game, and they are repeatable, so you're expected to grind them to be able to buy expensive shit and face high-level battles.
A interesting thing, nicely displayed by the game intro movie, is how the game remenbers that you are a rank & file soldier, not one of the badass generals. You'll still slay hundreds of enemies and officers per level, but the important officers like Liu Bei, Cao Cao and all the usual DW rooster are way more powerfull and will destroy you with 1-2 hits if you try to take them down alone.
Since the players also have ranks, this could be masterfully used on the PvP matches, but unfortunally they only support 8 players max, 4 on each side... there is simply no reason for a low rank officer to play against high-rank ones, they will only be killed in 1-2 hits and harm the group. Also, if your team has empty spots, they will be replaced by bots, that are DUMB AS FUCK and will probably be a serious handicap.
Now, for the bad stuff...the game is a old MMO, and it shows. Graphics were updated (the agme looks good), but not the rest. The UI works but is horrible, with countless sub-menus, and even very basic MMO stuff is done horribly, like forming parties or taking quests. You have to go to a quest giver, choose a quest (you can only have 5 at a time), walk to another area, talk to a messenger start the quest, and once finished you teleport back to your home, only to walk all the way back to the quest giver and recieve your reward...
Also you can only change equipments at your home, and have 4 weapons at a time, UNLESS you spend real world money on the game...a small price for a F2P game, but annoying nonetheless. Lag can be a serious problem, one that BR HUEHUE players like me suffers, especially on some crucial PvP momments, where you may miss your Musou or don't see the enemy attacks, but is still very tolerable.
There are still lots of other MMO-ish features, like the Campaign maps (that I haven't seen yet), the survival battles, a arena, domestic skills your character adquires, crafting, weapon upgrades and etc, but that's just extra stuff that you'll pick as you go, I wont explain then here unless someone is curious and asks.
TL;DR.
Good stuff:
Free and still fun
Gameplay & Quests are very good
PvP is good
Lots of weapons
Bad Stuff:
Few quests to do
Lag can fuck PvP
A LOT of grinding
Horribad UI
Some dumb design choices
Honestly, even with the limitations, I enjoyed this game way more than Dynasty Warriors 7 for PS3. If you are a DW fan, download this, play all the quests and try some PvP matches, it's definetly worth your time.
Dynasty Warriors Online is Free-2-play and is available here.
