Yeah, it was great when it first launched. It's a shame there are still major characters from the story that still aren't playable in the mainline games with unique models/movesets
@@jayplayspoorly8293 it could've had potential to include way more. massive army fights, generic officers with unique movements, cut scene interactive policy making, strategy motivated game-play. it's already a 4.5 game to me but my ideas invisioned in it could make this become a 10 out of 5 star game.
"Do you want to accept Lu Bu's proposal to restore forces to a key officer who has no troops, but don't want to enact his other, much dumber and more expensive policy? Tough luck, the policies are a package deal." While annoying this also sounds like an unfortunately realistic portrayal of policy making lol. I feel like it could also add some interesting dilemmas and decision making rather than just letting you choose a single policy.
For the first step into the Empires format, this was actually my most played between this and 5E. The fact you couldn't control what battle strategies were available was annoying but I also felt it added strategy because you could control officer friendship and promotions based on what character's policies you accepted. That was probably most fun for me and the first real RPG element in Dynasty Warriors outside of the character progression system. The fact that this was the first game without auto lock was probably what made me so fond of it. Also, character specific cutscenes are something I wish would combo back, like the scenes in the ending where only certain characters would be featured that really highlighted their personalities and that pre-existing character relationships were recognized in game, like Sun Jian and Sun Shangxiang having unique dialogue. Sadly, this kinda stopped starting with DW6E where you could marry officers/have sworn siblings. I get it, but the option to toggle historic relationships would be nice, too. Speaking of historic content, it's gotten way too complicated to trigger historical battles like the yellow truban rebellion or the anti dong zhuo campaign. The conditions pre DW6E just felt like they were simple to have naturally occur, plus unique cutscenes with the imperial envoy recruiting you to the historic battles was a nice touch. I get many people put DW5E on a pedestal, but there's a reason no Empires game after it made you manually position your officers on the map. DW6E was a lot of fun for me because it fixed a lot of issues with vanilla DW6, but it was also, for me, the start of the downfall of Empires games being fun and strategic for me. Anymore, there's literally zero reason to be anything but a commander. At least in DW6E you had a plethora of side missions that had impact on gameplay, like defeating all the bandits/pirates lowering shop prices permanently or the Cai Wenji escort missions making it easier to befriend officers. Literally every side mission contributed to unlocking some kind of added skill, be it in battle or out of battle. Also, while the random policies in DW4E were annoying, the new sorceress units were both fun to recruit and hilarious to kill because, in English, their death noise sounded like someone stepped on a cat. One other thing I don't think has ever come back in other empires games is how every character had a unique ability they could use in battle, like Liu Bei being able to summon peasant troops for support or Diaochan being able to steal an enemy unit's troops. I always played with Da Qiao, and her ability was a team wide attack buff. I'd like those to come back on top of the strategem system. Like, give everyone one specific strategem that is their "signature" strategem and you can't change that particular one. I have strong options of post Strikeforce DW games and the weapon swap feature, but I'll save that for a later video. Hope you don't mind my novel of a comment, but I'm hella passionate about Dynasty Warriors, so I'm probably doing this for every subsequent game, maybe even older ones if I go back and haven't already commented.
Characters not having unique abilities like what you mentioned really baffles me. I get it now in this age of almost 100 characters on the roster, but they should have tried to keep this feature for at least 5 Empires, if not 5 proper (or wedging it into 5XL for that matter).
4E was so cool when it first released. I agree with the lack of choice bringing more strategy to some degree, and I didn't mind so much at the time, but I don't think it makes as much sense from the point of view of being a ruler who can basically do whatever they want. It was still a great start, and forgivable considering it was the first game and from such a long time ago. Agree with the dialogue stuff entirely! Yeah, it really keeps the game from reaching the same level of "historical strategy" as some of KOEI's legitimate strategy games, and there's such a rich history of character interactions in the novel that I think they'd have plenty of potential scenarios to pull from. I haven't played 9E yet but from what I've heard I'm going to be disappointed with it. We'll see, I was really hoping this one would be good
yeah, this game and DW3 are the ones I've played, and still own to this day. hoping to one day expand my collection but I'm hesitant about online shopping for physical copies.
Nice review. I wasn't big on Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires, but it started the formula which led to 5 Empires and Samurai Warriors 2: Empires, which are my favourites.
4E was a very barebones system if you compare it to empires games now but god dam was it hella addictive. I played this game and 5E way more than their base games. I really wish the modern empires games were more like these older ones or at least get these ones port to pc
when i was younger when, literally like 18-20 years ago, i played this game. I started the series in dw3, it was a lowkey game my cousins had that hooked me, put in so much of my childhood into these games lol, loved it. When i had dw4 empires i massed played tf out that game to the point i had my own challenge runs where if i played a npc character i would try to act/play like a actual npc (-minus the slow guard movement they do). Doubled down if i played a commander (even named) that i would just chill in base like they do, for regular officer npcs, depending on the battle i would try to recreate their movements like waiting for a certain before moving out, use more of their combos and not player combos, time wasnt a concern. it was a fun time tho
DW5E is still great. I just put about 20hrs in the game recording the footage for the review. It's still a few weeks away, I have to find the time to put DW5/XL reviews out first, but it's on the way!
@@jayplayspoorly8293 I'd honestly love to see that! There are hardly any good reviews on DW5 and I've been thinking about buying it again but I would love to see your take on it. Will sub and hit the bell👍
Dynasty warriors 8 empires isn't complex in any way since the strategy is barely present because you just choose a bunch of menu options and nothing else. Empires 8 is easy and basically a copy of 8 Extreme edition with some added weapons,very barebone game
I would like to know how many hours you put into each of these games while making the reviews. Edit: 9:30 he said 100+ hours at the time of release. Now I can comfortably smash the like button.
I got a used copy of number 4E that skips a little but is alright condition still it's probably the better expansion in my opinion (4Hyper is the best.)
I actually already have everything ready for Samurai Warriors 2 (gameplay, script, etc) and it's been done for like a month lol. I started recording gameplay after that and got sidetracked. All three SW2 games coming up!
I recommend 4 the classic and there's alot in the game before it's time on combat combos and interesting story line mechanics. I play the other ones and I like them as well but dynasty warriors 4 was the only one that had its own type of fighting mechanics I would say as well as the base of where all the other games got there fighting mechanics from. I enjoy them still to this day four is like my favorite. If they could remake dynasty words for I would honestly Play it again but nothing changed.
Good video. Dint care much for this title I bought it tried to play it but got bored pretty quickly it's very barebones and too dated these days and I'm already not the biggest on Empires games I found dw6 Empires to be alot better.
For the dynasty warriors versions of empires 6 and 7 are probably my favorites. 8E's CAW was cool but overall I found it to be a really sloppy title. 4E hasn't aged the best now and I'd choose most other empires renditions over it but when it first launched I loved a lot of the additions the game brought.
I love that for the first time I could finally play as Hua xiong, yuan shu, gongsun zan,zhang bao,yu Jin. Loved it at the time
Yeah, it was great when it first launched. It's a shame there are still major characters from the story that still aren't playable in the mainline games with unique models/movesets
@@jayplayspoorly8293 it could've had potential to include way more. massive army fights, generic officers with unique movements, cut scene interactive policy making, strategy motivated game-play. it's already a 4.5 game to me but my ideas invisioned in it could make this become a 10 out of 5 star game.
"Do you want to accept Lu Bu's proposal to restore forces to a key officer who has no troops, but don't want to enact his other, much dumber and more expensive policy? Tough luck, the policies are a package deal."
While annoying this also sounds like an unfortunately realistic portrayal of policy making lol. I feel like it could also add some interesting dilemmas and decision making rather than just letting you choose a single policy.
For the first step into the Empires format, this was actually my most played between this and 5E. The fact you couldn't control what battle strategies were available was annoying but I also felt it added strategy because you could control officer friendship and promotions based on what character's policies you accepted. That was probably most fun for me and the first real RPG element in Dynasty Warriors outside of the character progression system. The fact that this was the first game without auto lock was probably what made me so fond of it. Also, character specific cutscenes are something I wish would combo back, like the scenes in the ending where only certain characters would be featured that really highlighted their personalities and that pre-existing character relationships were recognized in game, like Sun Jian and Sun Shangxiang having unique dialogue. Sadly, this kinda stopped starting with DW6E where you could marry officers/have sworn siblings. I get it, but the option to toggle historic relationships would be nice, too.
Speaking of historic content, it's gotten way too complicated to trigger historical battles like the yellow truban rebellion or the anti dong zhuo campaign. The conditions pre DW6E just felt like they were simple to have naturally occur, plus unique cutscenes with the imperial envoy recruiting you to the historic battles was a nice touch. I get many people put DW5E on a pedestal, but there's a reason no Empires game after it made you manually position your officers on the map.
DW6E was a lot of fun for me because it fixed a lot of issues with vanilla DW6, but it was also, for me, the start of the downfall of Empires games being fun and strategic for me. Anymore, there's literally zero reason to be anything but a commander. At least in DW6E you had a plethora of side missions that had impact on gameplay, like defeating all the bandits/pirates lowering shop prices permanently or the Cai Wenji escort missions making it easier to befriend officers. Literally every side mission contributed to unlocking some kind of added skill, be it in battle or out of battle.
Also, while the random policies in DW4E were annoying, the new sorceress units were both fun to recruit and hilarious to kill because, in English, their death noise sounded like someone stepped on a cat.
One other thing I don't think has ever come back in other empires games is how every character had a unique ability they could use in battle, like Liu Bei being able to summon peasant troops for support or Diaochan being able to steal an enemy unit's troops. I always played with Da Qiao, and her ability was a team wide attack buff. I'd like those to come back on top of the strategem system. Like, give everyone one specific strategem that is their "signature" strategem and you can't change that particular one. I have strong options of post Strikeforce DW games and the weapon swap feature, but I'll save that for a later video.
Hope you don't mind my novel of a comment, but I'm hella passionate about Dynasty Warriors, so I'm probably doing this for every subsequent game, maybe even older ones if I go back and haven't already commented.
Characters not having unique abilities like what you mentioned really baffles me. I get it now in this age of almost 100 characters on the roster, but they should have tried to keep this feature for at least 5 Empires, if not 5 proper (or wedging it into 5XL for that matter).
4E was so cool when it first released. I agree with the lack of choice bringing more strategy to some degree, and I didn't mind so much at the time, but I don't think it makes as much sense from the point of view of being a ruler who can basically do whatever they want. It was still a great start, and forgivable considering it was the first game and from such a long time ago. Agree with the dialogue stuff entirely!
Yeah, it really keeps the game from reaching the same level of "historical strategy" as some of KOEI's legitimate strategy games, and there's such a rich history of character interactions in the novel that I think they'd have plenty of potential scenarios to pull from.
I haven't played 9E yet but from what I've heard I'm going to be disappointed with it. We'll see, I was really hoping this one would be good
Yeah, I agree 100%
I loved reading a lot of your opinions are similar to mine. I would love to hear more of your thoughts
This was the first game that brought me to the DW franchise. These games are so great! Awesome review!
yeah, this game and DW3 are the ones I've played, and still own to this day. hoping to one day expand my collection but I'm hesitant about online shopping for physical copies.
Nice review. I wasn't big on Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires, but it started the formula which led to 5 Empires and Samurai Warriors 2: Empires, which are my favourites.
After the regular DW experience i was glad to play a alternative game. Create a character was awesome amd strategies was fun!
This was my first dynasty warriors game that i played when I was kid and I loved it lol
Nice review. I remember playing this game and always feeling like it needed more strategy. Glad to see that was implemented and the newer games
In* the newer games
Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, they really improved the mechanics over time for the subseries
4E was a very barebones system if you compare it to empires games now but god dam was it hella addictive. I played this game and 5E way more than their base games. I really wish the modern empires games were more like these older ones or at least get these ones port to pc
4E was great, until 5E came out lol
@@jayplayspoorly8293 NO
Never had a revolt happen! I didn’t even know that was possible lol
when i was younger when, literally like 18-20 years ago, i played this game. I started the series in dw3, it was a lowkey game my cousins had that hooked me, put in so much of my childhood into these games lol, loved it. When i had dw4 empires i massed played tf out that game to the point i had my own challenge runs where if i played a npc character i would try to act/play like a actual npc (-minus the slow guard movement they do). Doubled down if i played a commander (even named) that i would just chill in base like they do, for regular officer npcs, depending on the battle i would try to recreate their movements like waiting for a certain before moving out, use more of their combos and not player combos, time wasnt a concern. it was a fun time tho
The most underrated Dynasty Warriors Empires game.
Seeing that intro again was so nostalgic
Literally the only Empires game I like to this day is DW5 Empires. Tried 8, but the empire mode is too complex, and that's the selling point.
DW5E is still great. I just put about 20hrs in the game recording the footage for the review. It's still a few weeks away, I have to find the time to put DW5/XL reviews out first, but it's on the way!
@@jayplayspoorly8293 I'd honestly love to see that! There are hardly any good reviews on DW5 and I've been thinking about buying it again but I would love to see your take on it. Will sub and hit the bell👍
@@someguy1865 Thanks!
Dynasty warriors 8 empires isn't complex in any way since the strategy is barely present because you just choose a bunch of menu options and nothing else.
Empires 8 is easy and basically a copy of 8 Extreme edition with some added weapons,very barebone game
I would like to know how many hours you put into each of these games while making the reviews.
Edit: 9:30 he said 100+ hours at the time of release.
Now I can comfortably smash the like button.
Me: red hair, neutral start, charge!
I just ordered this game from Amazon for $13
Nice!
I got a used copy of number 4E that skips a little but is alright condition
still it's probably the better expansion in my opinion (4Hyper is the best.)
Hey Jay will you be doing Samurai Warriors 2 Empires at some point? I'm really interested on your review on that game, and Samurai Warriors 2.
I actually already have everything ready for Samurai Warriors 2 (gameplay, script, etc) and it's been done for like a month lol. I started recording gameplay after that and got sidetracked. All three SW2 games coming up!
I recommend 4 the classic and there's alot in the game before it's time on combat combos and interesting story line mechanics. I play the other ones and I like them as well but dynasty warriors 4 was the only one that had its own type of fighting mechanics I would say as well as the base of where all the other games got there fighting mechanics from. I enjoy them still to this day four is like my favorite. If they could remake dynasty words for I would honestly Play it again but nothing changed.
It'd be great if they get around to rereleasing them some day
Nice, will you ever be covering Samurai Warriors games on this channel?
Working on Samurai Warriors 1 review now
@@jayplayspoorly8293 look forward to seeing it my dude. Hope this channel does well!!!! :)
Thanks!
I can’t figure out how to get weapons
Hey Jay will you do Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires?
Fully planning on it!
Hi,do you know which Warriors game on PS2 that has dual audio(English/Japanese) other than this game?
You could probably look them up on the KOEI wiki pages, but generally, most of the games have only English or only JP
Good video. Dint care much for this title I bought it tried to play it but got bored pretty quickly it's very barebones and too dated these days and I'm already not the biggest on Empires games I found dw6 Empires to be alot better.
For the dynasty warriors versions of empires 6 and 7 are probably my favorites. 8E's CAW was cool but overall I found it to be a really sloppy title. 4E hasn't aged the best now and I'd choose most other empires renditions over it but when it first launched I loved a lot of the additions the game brought.
@@jayplayspoorly8293 yeah I've heard bad things about SW4E
@@JackalGoldKick like what? I played it and seemed like a return to form from what i could tell
@@Mattznick just heard it was boring and bad but haven't played it