Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition Review (PS4)

Dynasty Warriors is a long-lived series from Tecmo-Koei.  The basic premise of every game in the series is to select your favorite Chinese warrior and whoop every ass you can find, whether they be simple peons or mighty warlords.  Essentially, you're playing Final Fight, but with people who really existed and in battles they actually fought.  Some BS is thrown in for added excitement (like superpowers and single-handedly beating a thousand people in a single battle), but it's mostly retelling history for those who are too lazy to study Chinese history.  Some view the series as an action-oriented companion to the more strategic Romance of Three Kingdoms series, which covers the same period of time (roughly from 184 AD to 280 AD) and features the same characters.  Anyway, let's dive into Dynasty Warriors 8: Complete Edition.

At it's heart. the game is the same as it's been for quite some time.  As mentioned before, you'll select a warrior from an impressive roster and trot out onto the battlefield to enjoy an ass-kicking buffet.  You'll beat on peons of assorted colors, almost like you're angry at a pack of Skittles.  Some peons have swords, some have shields, some use magic, but they all generally put up little resistance.  They, usually run up to you and stand there with their weapons drawn, throwing a slash on occasion just to prove they have a pulse.  There are some generic officers mixed in there who have a little more fight in them, but not much.

It's the selectable characters you have to watch out for.  They put up the most fight.  While they are still easy enough to kill by themselves, if these guys manage to come five or ten deep, you'll be in for one heck of a fight.  Seriously, there will be times where you'll be fighting three or four playable characters accompanied by six or seven generic officers (who suddenly won't seem so generic) and they'll all be hacking at you like bloodthirsty lumberjacks trying to cut down a human tree.  Yes, you do have allies, but they tend to be weak and stupid like the peons.

Peons as far as the eye can see.  The screen can fill up to the point where you can't find your character.

Some missions have different objectives.  You may have to protect a base or ally, losing the mission if you for to do so.  Make no mistake, you WILL have to do it, because it doesn't matter your ally is a badass like Guan Yu with a full life bar and facing ten peons.  If you aren't there, your allies will struggle to fight those peons if you aren't at least there supervising them.  In this way, the game can get challenging because you might face weird dilemmas.  For example, you could be in a situation where your commander is on the frontline and about to die, but your base (on the other side of the battlefield) is about to fall.  If your commander dies or the base falls, you'll lose the mission.  You'll have to take a wild guess as to whether to save the commander or the base (and hope you guess right).  And you can't screw around when the warning prompt comes up, because bases can fall and allies can (and usually will) die literally the very next second.  So the challenge isn't (usually) in the fighting, but in the situations the game puts you in.  It can be some BS.

As stated earlier, the roster is impressive, featuring over 80 characters.  Favorites and mainstays like Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang are present, along with newcomers like Cheng Gong and Deng Ai.  For the perverted gamer, there are plenty of cute girls to drool over.  Naturally, you'll find some you like and some you don't.

Look at all the characters.

A game just isn't complete without hot women.

So what all do you get.  You may notice the words Complete Edition in the title, implying that this isn't vanilla Dynasty Warriors 8.  You not only get Dynasty Warriors 8, but you also get DW8 Xtreme Legends and all the content that goes with said titles.  Story mode, free mode, challenge mode (which has five modes of its own), and ambition mode (my personal favorite) are all present, enabling you to beat ass under different stipulations.  Tired of fighting?  Then check out the gallery to ogle your characters and weapons or the encyclopedia for a light educational experience.  There's something here for everyone.

If you like animals, you can ride horses, elephants, and even bears

Story mode is the feature mode, allowing you to play as an officer from the Chinese kingdoms of Wei, Wu, Shu, and Jin.  They trying something different with the story mode in this game.  In past games, you started off with the Yellow Turban Rebellion, no matter who you picked.  In this game, you start off in different places in the timeline.  For example, the Wei story starts off in the unenviable position of escaping Luoyang, a scenario which has you running for your life from Lu Bu.  Trust me, you don't want that guy to catch up to you this early in the game.

Speaking of Lu Bu, this game actually gets him right.  Along with the Wei Wu, Shu, Jin, and Other stories, the is also a story centered around Lu Bu, the baddest ass in the game.  In it, you can play as people like Diaochan, Zhang Liao, and of course Lu Bu.  In this mode, you can really feel his power, doling out beatings and rape all over the battlefield.  Other selectable characters are like peons by comparison in this mode.  Even badasses like Guan Yu and Xiahou Dun are nothing more than flies to be swatted down by his spear.  Lu Bu has always been a selectable character in the series, but he finally FEELS like Lu Bu and he is glorious.

Select this story for a true Lu Bu experience.

Marvel at Lu Bu in all his glory.

In the end, Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition is the definitive version of DW8 and in many ways, the definitive game in the entire series.  Multiple modes enable you to beat ass just the way you like.  The difficulty is upped, so hardcore gamers will be happy.  The encyclopedia provides a nice slice of Chinese history for historians to devour.  If you can't get enough of Chinese badasses beating on peons and other Chinese badasses this is the game for you.  Play it.