Now I know what your thinking, is he about to defend the repetitive releases and mashing nature of Dynasty Warriors? Yes, yes I am and I’m going to make you a believer even if I to give you alternative facts (just kidding or am I?). As someone who has played countless Dynasty Warriors and Omega Force type games, I always wondered why that type of genre always caught my attention. Was it because for hours at a time I could become a demi-god slicing through countless enemies being praised while doing so? Maybe it is the fact that the amount of content in these games are massive, and you could end up playing for 200 hours and not even scratch the surface of 100%. I will probably never figure out what my attraction to this series will be, but maybe I can shed some lights on why sleeping on the depth of Omega Force games is a mistake a lot of people make. Dynasty Warriors is a great series of games, and so are the spin-offs, let me go into three examples of why these games are the most overlooked in gaming.

More than Square, Square, Square

When you first play any Omega Force game the natural instinct is to mash the square simply because it’s the fastest attack and it also does well with most enemies. Of course the average player probably will not like up combos or even come up with a different strategy than the normal button mashing fest. Even as an extreme fan of the series, I understand that the basic Square Square Square mashing actually is pretty effective. Of course if you actually look into the games and find out that they are pretty deep. Let us look at Dynasty Warriors 8 for example, pass the Square Square Square wall there is the hitting triangle after a certain number of square inputs for a strong attack. At first you start with only a level 4 charge attack, but as you get better weapons, you get access to more charge attacks and more combo opportunities. In other Dynasty Warriors games before this one you were only able to use one weapon that was tied to a certain character. With the newer Dynasty Warriors games it actually allowed for the switching of weapons, which added a new dynamic to the game. Mid combo you could switch weapons which of course gave you new combo possibilities. Coming from a fighting game background, even this simple level of depth was very interesting to me as it allowed my experience of the game to be customized even in the smallest way. Also another feature of fighting games (which Dynasty Warriors got their start) video below will show that.

From the fighting the meter on the bottom called the Musou gauge, was transferred to all the other Dynasty Warriors games. The Musou gauge or pretty much the super gauge allows you to become invincible for a brief period of time while dealing damage to enemies on the screen. While this is a basic concept in today’s gaming, back when the game dropped games didn’t really implement a feature quite like this. Other cool features tied on to the Musou gauge were the addition of the True Musou mode and Dual , which added fire and lighting properties respectively to your Musou attack. Fire would do damage over time, while lighting would spread through the enemies. Newer additions to the series would add a Rage gauge which is pretty much a powered up mode, that turned you into a true god of destruction. Rage mode allowed you to not take damage, do more damage, and pretty much made your Musou attack have ridiculous properties. Defensive options such as the traditional blocking, quick rise, and air recovery were added over time allowing for more play-styles and more options for defensive players. These features mention only deal with the Dynasty Warriors base games, spin offs and the Samurai Warrior series have their own mechanics that I could go into great detail on but of course I will save that for another date. The fact that I am able to actually type of this much about the features of this one game, just proves that mashing square is not giving the game its full justice.

Worth the actually $60: Content Galore

Imagine purchasing a game for the holy price of $60 dollars, taking it home and realizing that it was just a multiplayer experience with a tact on story mode. This is something I have never experienced with any Omega Force games, while the story my not be the most breath-taking story you have heard, there still one that is fully worked on and not thrown on. For examples of this I will use the Hyrule Warriors, as it’s the most linear and the most known series among all gamers. In the story mode of HW (Hyrule Warriors) you are able to play Link, Zelda, Impa, even Sheik (still Zelda but cooler in my opinion), plus other characters new and old to the series. All characters are completely different in how they play, of course just like the previous point you could just mash square do well, but what is the fun in that? Now this is just story mode, we haven’t got to the Adventure Mode that the game offers which allows you to play on maps based on the older games, those maps come with their own set of missions and goals for completion. In Adventure mode you get access to more characters, as you now get to play the villains of the series (Ganondolf fans unite!). Story mode takes quite some time, but Adventure mode seems almost never-ending. Now congrats to Koei Tecmo for their proper use of DLC, as even with all these characters you are able to add more to your game. The DLC characters included Ravio, Yuga, Toon Zelda, Marin, Skull Kid, King Daphnes, Tetra, Toon Link and Linkle.

Now I do not know about you, but as a kid I would love playing a lot of these characters, growing up with the Zelda series made this game even more amazing for me. The DLC character packs also come with missions for the aforementioned adventure mode, which added even more content to a content packed game. The Omega Force games also have a leveling up system which allows even further customization and depth to the characters you get. Now you can stop mashing square, and start realizing that a lot of Omega Force games come jam-packed with stuff you can spend hours upon hours on.



Endless Possibilities: Explaining the Dynasty Warriors Effect

For this part we are going to go through a couple popular series, and see how easy it is to make a Dynasty Warriors game out of them. The first series we can look at is the Power Ranger series, with the recent reboot and the countless rangers over the years, this makes this the almost perfect candidate for a Dynasty Warriors type game. Imagine you going into story mode, the first arc you get to play is the classic series with Jason, Kim, Zack, Trini, and Billy while being able to control any one of them. Easy to make it a co-op experience due to the number of rangers available, the enemies are already generic enough to were you can multiply them just like in the series. The combat would be something that might need some work as most rangers fight almost the same, but I’m sure the team could work something out. Add MegaZoid fights, team moves, random explosions and you have yourself a nostalgia filled adventure that anyone could play. You could use the other Power Ranger seasons as other story arcs or even DLC packs if you wanted to expand the already gigantic game. Next series that we could look at is the obvious one of anime fans, Naruto. Yeah now you are looking at it, and it is making sense is it not? Countless characters, countless story arcs, countless maps, and endless possibilities with the combat direction. A lot of characters use different fighting styles in the show, and have that are signature to them which makes them unique. I would need another article just to flesh out the most basic idea of how this game would play out. With that last statement comes the problem with the game, it is too big, way too big! Naruto has way too many unique characters to try to make a Dynasty Warrior type game out of, it would probably fall short of being what it could be and disappoint its fans. Dynasty Warriors while having a lot of content, has a decent size pool to pull from, but the pool is not so expansive that almost every character could have it own back story. Naruto has a lot of characters that have a backstory, personality, style, grace, and so much more. You can not just throw characters in and expect everyone to just be okay with them being a side character. Even with this hurdle of character development and placement, the game would be so crazy, that it just might get looked over. I am sure everyone has a game that could be added to this list and it will work just as well. Now just to hit your nostalgia bone…

Conclusion

The conclusion rather than being a drop the mic ending, will be an understanding with the people who probably hate the series. While I do love the series unconditionally, I do understand that they might seem rehashed, repetitive, or even boring to some. Hopefully this article brings to light the reason why the Omega Force series of games continue to go strong, and why so many have been released over the years. Gundam, One Piece, Arslan, Dragon Quest, and even Berserk have been immortalized in video game form due to the Dynasty Warrior effect and I hope more games get this treatment. As a lover of a certain series, you always want it to last in some type of medium, video games are that perfect medium. It is interactive enough to where you can keep coming back to it for a newer experience each time you play it. So keep mashing square, because maybe you enjoy doing it with a character that you enjoy, or just maybe your triangle button is just broken….