Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

I lost a lot of respect for Koei after playing this. I used to consider them to be in the same league as Atlus, importing the Japanese sleeper hits that we would have never seen otherwise. In this case, however, Koei decided to make a quick cash grab, since a genuine next-gen Dynasty Warriors wouldn't be coming out right away. The end result is an absolutely atrocious mess that would have been awful even on last gen's systems.

The concept here isn't terrible, it's a simplified version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms with a switch to Dynasty Warriors whenever there's an actual fight. The execution of these ideas has obviously been rushed, though, and it's extremely obvious that no serious care was put into the development of this game.

Let's start with the graphics. I'm not one of those types that things graphics are everything, but this is ridiculous. Long story short, there's absolutely nothing in this game that couldn't have been done on the original xbox. Except for the textures on the generals, the textures are horrible, even by last generation's standards. Pop-in is still a serious issue, and the game is still scaled down to ridiculous levels (it seems like 1 unit=50-100 men still). Everything is extremely low-poly as well.

The game itself doesn't fare any better. The Empires mode (the only full featured gameplay mode in the game) is stripped to the bone. There are about 6 or 7 different scenarios, but there's no backstory or anything to explain what's going on at all. As far as I could tell, all scenarios were the same---you're placed on the same map and you have to eliminate everyone else through force. The only thing that changes are the initial starting positions and the names of the leaders. The AI is literally nonexistent as well. The average grunt unit often just serves to crowd around the officer units. I only saw the melee units attack once or twice.

Ugh, I'm out of room. Do not rent this, it's not even easy gamerpoints.