Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends

Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition just rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? This game — the Madden of hack’n’slash — forever retelling historic beatdowns in ancient China, finally gets a port to Sony’s new system. While it certainly doesn’t break any new ground, fans might find another reason to once again enter into the chaos of a warring China.

DW8XLCE , abbreviated for your reading pleasure, once again dives into the War of the Three Kingdoms where everyone in China believed they were the legit Emperor and were more than willing to prove it by yelling and stabbing . Gameplay consists of exactly what you think a Dynasty Warriors game should have. You’ll sprint from hotspot to hotspot brandishing your comically oversized weapon to deliver pain and punishment upon enemy generals and hundreds of hapless peons in your quest for glory. Defeating enemies boils down to testing the constitution of your controller’s square and X buttons.  Occasionally you’ll need to activate your musou meter which delivers a super move based on your weapon equipped. The combat pretty mindless but it gets the job done.

Fighting also largely depends on your chosen character, level, and items. DW boasts a massive roster of historical figures and with 6 campaigns, you won’t run out of material anytime son. Just know that each mission feels nearly identical so you better love hacking your way through thousands of lackeys. As this is somewhat of a primer for actual events, you can follow the skeletal plot from several major players between the Wu, Shu, Wei, and Jin empires. Though if you’re hear for the history lesson, you might want to just pick up a book as this game is more SparxNotes than textbook, emphasizing flash over story.

New to the series is Lu Bu’s campaign. Lu Bu is kind of like Dynasty Warriors’ boogeyman in that everyone is inexplicably terrified by him. Maybe you just had to be there. He’s kind of a dick and ends up on the shit list of pretty much everyone. Still he can be fun to play if only because his story is one of the fresher concepts for Dynasty Warriors.

And here’s where we come to the main issue about this game and the series at large. Perhaps the best thing I can say about Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition is that it’s a game you can play. Truth be told, I haven’t played a DW game in years, preferring the Warriors Orochi and Gundam varieties over plain Dynasty as they at least bring something unique to the table. This isn’t to say that those games are any deeper, they just have more fun with the material and mechanics.

At any rate Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition is more fun with a friend. With local and online, I recommend grabbing a friend, vegging out, and remember a simpler time when violence could solve all your problems. There’s literally dozens of hours of content and hundreds of thousands of baddies to pummel.