Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

I rated this game a 9 because i am comparing this to Empires 4, and there were many advancements. However, this game lives up to the expectations of being a addicting, repetitive, mindless slasher where by playing empire mode a few times, you pretty much did all that you could. As you unlock new "storys" in empire mode you quickly realize that certain settings become "unlocked". The "execute" setting is one of them, this is used when you capture a general or lieutenant you can execute them. Although a nice feature it really doesn't come in handy until your playing the game on hard or chaos. You can also unlock a setting that turns off the time, so you cant run out of time, i found this handy, because when playing on chaos, 30 mins isn't really enough time to incorporate a strategy, because even on an "invade" you pretty much have to sit by your camp and defeat the generals who keep attacking. However, even turing time off, the time continued to count down, and just my luck i failed when it hit zero. The 5 different difficulty levels are really 3 -- Easy (Novice, Easy, Normal) Normal (Hard) Hard (Chaos). As you play on hard or chaos you must incorporate a strategy. For example, don't try taking over all the lands, just sit there with the land you started with, make alliances wait till there are only three forces left, and then attack their capital, which if you defeat them you gain all there territories. I know this takes away from the game a little, and like most people when i began the game i kept taking over all the areas one at a time. But as I progressed through empire mode playing at the same areas, listening to the same catch phrases over and over again. It just was pointless, and became irritational. All in all, the game is pretty good comparing it to its predecessors, there are still kinks to be worked out, but that's with any game.

I thought the game was great absolutely fantastic but a bit mind numbing with all the hack and slash. The only problem was that, maybe I'm the only one that did this but, in Empires 4 you got the chance to do an ending edit. I know most of the people that played it must have used their own edit characters in the ending edit. That was the whole point to get a few kicks outta seeing your characters on the ending...well with Empires 5 you don't get that option so I found that a little bit disappointing. As for the game play, the game play was fine there were no troubles with that, but to have to decide what your characters had to do during each month like the traps and other diplomatic events, I found that to be annoying and repetitive. As for the battles, they were good and I liked choosing my own sound track for the game. However, like everything else, it was repetitive. Finally, editing characters, I didn't like the voices and some of the clothing, faces too, but their voices were the worse, why were their voices so feminine, especially the first voice choice for male warriors. The calm voice for the strategist is cool, his phrases worried me a bit and the heroic voice was ok, but the first voice made the guy seem weak...no matter how decked out he was! I mean the character creation was one of the best part of the game...now disrepecting the main characters. Well I hope this review helped in anyway.