Dynasty Warriors 4

With the exception of a few minor complaints, Dynasty Warriors 4 is as close to action-gaming Nirvana as you're going to get for quite a while.

It looks better, it plays better, and brings a lot more to the table than any previous Dynasty Warrior. It’s a very worthwhile title for hardcore fans and those unfamiliar with the series.

Graphically, DW4 is a giant leap ahead of the past Dynasty Warriors games. The animation is now smoother and more imaginative, the effects wild and dazzling, and slowdown is thankfully rare.

Koei's obviously performed emergency surgery on the AI routines, because everyone's a thousand times smarter now.

The game still rocks, but as this is the fourth game in the series, we really hoped for some more refinement and evolution. [May 2003, p.34]

I'm amazed at the lack of innovation and improvement Dynasty Warriors 4 brings. [Apr 2003, p.82]

I got bored about halfway through due to the repetitive nature of the gameplay despite some new improvements and a two-player mode... It would be nice if there were more depth to the strategy and story development.

The 4th dynasty warriors, 3rd hack n slash entry, 3nd one I ever owned and first that has semihalf decent voice acting. Scrapping random weapon pick ups for an experience based weapon progression is one of the best things dynasty warriors ever did... once. In this game. And its brilliant. More incentive for using different combos and juggling as well as playing as as many characters as possible. 8 long campaigns instead of 40 middling campaigns with secret items, weapons, levels and characters this game is as in depth and rich as the franchise needed to be without feeling overstuffed

This was Dynasty Warriors at its best. Better weapons and items available at random by playing at a higher difficulty. Bodyguards and on the best move sets.

Story : This game is based on chinese-war sam kok (three kingdom) story. Well it's not 100% accurate, but i love how they smoothly change the storyline based on which side you choose. Oh oh, and also the in-game story and rewards (item) can change depends on the action you take, that's a little plus there. Gameplay : Not much to say here, just a reguler 5 different combo attacks you can do depending the situation (crowd control or 1v1 boss/general fight or both). It gives orb as elemental attack for your weapon for extra damage, freeze, etc. The thing i love here from DW4 compared to other DW games is they give the option to duel several famous general and if you lose, you lose all your game progress which gives out a high risk vibes. Cinematic : ehhh, 4/10

This and DW3 are my favourite games of the series. If I have to compare them I would say DW3 is more "stylish" or "cool" in terms of design and visual effects and has better gameplay (especially weapon drop system), while DW4 is darker/heavier and made every character weapon and attack more distinctive. Other than that DW3 is better. They both have good music though. DW3 is more electronic, while DW4 is more rock/metal. Even if you think this series is **** it might be worth playing the 2 games just for the music! This game should be an 8 but the **** charge attack auto lock system absolutely killed the enjoyment. I wish there was a patch to remove the stupid target auto lock.

Probably the definition of a mid-game. There's a lot to like, it can be mindless fun and the graphics are a big improvement from 3, but there's still lots of issues, anytime there's too many soldiers the game starts lagging, and considering this is a game where you're meant to fight against a lot of soldiers, that's a big problem. Overall, 5 and 8 are the best in the series.