Introduction:Dynasty Warriors 4 places you into a time when war ravaged ancient China. A bloodthirsty army calling themselves the Yellow Scarves threatens to destroy the Han Empire and it’s up to you to stop them.

The Game:In Dynasty Warriors 4 you take the role of a Chinese general from one of 3 clans: the Shu, the Wu or the Wei. Each character is fully customizable. You can alter the characters clothing, weapon type, bodyguard type and equipped items. DW4 is classed an adventure game, but it’s really a fighting game with twist of action, a dash of RPG and a spoonful of strategy mixed in. There are 4 modes of play in DW4: Musuo mode, free mode, challenge mode and versus mode. Musuo mode is easily the most interesting of the 4 different modes and it is also the mode where the RPG factor comes into play. Musuo mode can also be played as a two-player game(very cool). Free mode is a diced up version of Musuo mode except you can play all of the maps available in Musuo mode without having to actually reach them. Challenge mode and versus mode were both so unbelievably boring that they barely warrant mention.

The battles in DW4 take place on huge 3D maps, with you being able to alter the course of every skirmish and every battle. This is where one of the games biggest flaws come into play; during each battle you’ll spend 95% of your time mashing the X button (normal attack) while waiting for your power metre to fill up so that you can use the B button (power attack). Sound boring? It was. Oh yeah, let us not forget the other attack button, the Y button (charge-up attack), very ineffective and rarely useful. One feature that really makes DW4 shine is the ability duel enemy officers. Once defeated, enemy officers can drop anything from power-ups to magical medallions. Defeating enemy officers will also alter the way enemy troops function. Their morale will drop and they may flee the battlefield. DW4’s biggest flaw came in the form of allied/enemy AI (easily the worst AI i have ever seen for an Xbox game)). I don’t know how many times I ran into to groups of opposing soldiers that just stood there staring at each other; neither side raising a weapon.

Graphics & Sound:The graphics in DW4 were very mediocre. The character graphics were quite nice and highly detailed, but the game lost a lot of points due to lame background/environment detail. There were a few times when I had to actually look at my Xbox just to remind myself that I wasn’t playing on a Playstation 2. ‘nuff said.

The Sound in DW4 can also be filed in the mediocre category. During battle you’d expect to hear the screams of dying men, the clashing of swords and the roar of bloodthirsty warriors. I don’t recall hearing very much of this (if any). I dunno, maybe it was the heavy metal music drowning out all of the sounds.

Innovation:Dynasty Warriors has almost everything required to make an awesome game, but fails to show a huge difference from any of its predecessors (Dynasty Warriors 1-3). Perhaps Koei needs to follow Blizzard’s example and fire their core staff? A fresh start is definitely in order.