As most Warriors fans know, once a main numbered entry in the Dynasty or Samurai series is released, Koei and Omega Force don’t follow up them up with another numbered either, no siree, but basically squeeze the foundations and assets of the newly made entry for many spin-offs, alongside the expected Xtreme Legends and Empires versions.
And Dynasty Warriors 6 was no exception (thought the poor reception had a lot less derivative titles spun from it, not even a proper XL expansion), so back in 2009 they made another one, Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (Multi Raid in its japanese release) to also ride on the “online co op” frenzy the industry was pushing wish during the PS3/360 era…. on the PSP, initially.
Then HD ports on consoles that touched up the graphics, added full in game voice acting for battles and non-battle events. Though worry not, most of the cutscenes are outright recycled from DW 6, with just a slightly different hue overlaid to disguise the fact it’s stock footage.
The story is basically the same as always, there’s really not much to discuss, aside that this time magic, mystical beasts and the such plays a lot more into it, leading to some alternate or new events alongside the classic confrontations like Chi Bi, Wu Zhang Plain, Xia Pi, etc.
This does help to spice up the story most fans known very well by these point, even more since the games (even more than the original novel) kinda forget that in this world people can also summon boulders out of nowhere because MAGIC exists but somehow isn’t a big deal, at all.
Given it’s multiplayer focus and its origin as a handheld game, it makes sense that the game has you undertake mission from a mini-hub that also has various facilities, and the mission themselves take place not in a big “open” map but various connected mini-areas, again, this was originally a PSP title, and like the previously made Dynasty Warriors game for the Sony handheld, this was pretty much a necessity dictated by the hardware, at the cost of many short loading screens.
Which here are made even shorter, to be fair.
It’s definitely an interesting spin-off, for sure, and on paper it should fix most of the usual criticisms leveled at the series: there are plenty of enemy types, the mobs are less big but more aggressive (even goons often sidestep and dodge their way out of your attacks), there are poisonous swamps to Miyazaki’s delight, animals that attack you, they even use a lot of catapults, juggernauts, boulders attack and ballistas to really pack the small areas the map is now divided…
Problem is, i think they honestly went way overboard, because these level designs, combined with the new emphasis on flying, you get plenty of flying enemies, not just spinning blade contraption, but even shaman type goons, lieteunants and officers… which results in you trying to just stunlock their ass non-stop, since the parry is never fast enough, the enemies are a bit too good at parrying yours, and they play cheap too, so yeah, not ideal either.
Also, since this was made for a co-op, now it feels even more unbalanced to play, you can go to the “online hub” but servers are empty (i checked again back in April 2021, surprised to see there are servers at all), and i went for most of the game without knowing i could have IA character joining the missions/quests, which obviously helps in making solo play less frustrating (even if you can’t buy level ups with in-game money), but it’s a feature that’s easily missed and one the game could – and should – tell the player about when you play offline or solo.
Still, this fixes a good number of issues i had with balancing (also, with IA allies now the human officers get shield bars to accomodate 3 extra players, fair enough).. but many issues remain.
Yes, the emphasis on air combat (since the transformation states give the character flight of some kind and hence more airborne combos, in some cases slightly altered movesets) is nice, the new Chi orb items can be equipped to give you some nice abilities like hovering jumps, resistances, elemental damage, various buffs, and you can also bring two weapons in battle, well before DW 7.
some of the ideas ARE used well, like sometimes the stages have power-up statues, some even giving flight to enemies, but stuff like the battle of Xia Pi against Lu Bu in a flooded area is just the perfect example of how it can go just insanely overboard, ironically since the game is based on DW 6 but here you can’t swim…though you can sure get bombarbed by ships you can’t attack or destroy, ON TOP of Lu Bu having to be defeated twice in that area, and the ballistas and the spinning blades wandering about if you dare exist in airborne state at all…
There’s not trying at all and then there’s trying too hard in the right direction.
The giant bosses are better to fight, honestly, as they have weak points, in a pretty much identical fashion to DW Gundam 2 giant bosses, released not too much time before.
Kinda… i really could have done without the Death Phoenix boss fights in the last chapters, just frustrating and nearly impossible unless you have a specific set-up of items and Chi and orbs, because you need to exploit the system to combat the cheap triple bosses (2 humans, 1 monsters), and the monster bosses here are mostly just overburnened with HP, so it becomes more a grating exercise in chipping away minuscule amounts of damage, unless you know where their weak points are…. which isn’t obvious at all, but of course there’s an item to just do that, if you remember to buy it. And even with these setups, it’s still a boring, tedious slog of chipping away at an enourmous HP bar of the boss, which in itself isn’t hard, just time consuming as hell.
No wonder they give you a 1 hour time limit for the entire mission.
Yeah, thinking back this is another thing i could have done without, good on paper but just WAY grating more than fun in execution, and they didn’t bother to scale things if someone were to approach any of it in single player. Even when i discovered i could bring IA allies into the fray it didn’t change i had to still grind a lot, and after almost 10 hours of grinding, which made realize you do need some of the ultra uber Chi skill that take a lot of grinding anyway to tackle these Death Animals quests, not only to max out your characters attack, but also for the materials, money and facilities levels needed to unlock abilities like these in the first place….
So let me be frank, i gave up trying do the Chapter 6 quests, i was bored as hell to keep trying the Death Phoenix one, and even when i made progress, it’s still hard because it’s a utter grind and a boredom challenge to methodically wittle the monsters health bar down. Even after a lot of grind, and of course to be extra cheap you can’t die at all during these 3 post game quest, when otherwise you a limited number of respawn.
I did see the credits, so i’d say it’s quite fair to count them as post game content, clearly even more for the insane amount of grinding required.
Yeah, i’m tired of deflecting the issues because it was intendeed to be played co-op, it should be fun even in single player. And as noted before, “with more people it’s fun” it’s not the panacea some thinks, as some issues are obvious regardless of how many players are involved in the fray.
For example, it can be really hard to follow even locked-on enemies, often you don’t see them because the camera isn’t that great, the lock-on itself doesn’t prioretize officers… so it’s kinda of a pain in the ass to even follow them, especially when they dash in the air above some big ass tower or machinery, most of the times out of the camera’s reach even if they’re currently locked on.
Also, while the air combat it’s improved and more useful to the more airborne nature of enemies and your character, this feels like it comes at the price of a less useful and fun ground combat, as this one doesn’t use the DW 6 Renbu system, but keeps the removal of the Charge combo (aka the typical chaining of light attacks with heavy attacks), while also sponging out the grapple and deadlock systems to accomodate new special moves done with the trigger buttons, demostrating that unlike DW 6 Empires, this one is based not on the improved port/retro release of DW 6 Special, but on the base Dynasty Warriors 6 gameplay bones. For some reason.
Even if it’s a retool that bring out the most controversial system from that game, i’m still not a fan of the combat system presented here, to be honest.
One thing i do like is the Tactics system, you can basically assign up to 4 officer cards (which you can also get by talking to officers that show up in the town hub/base) in a map, distribuiting them over multiple areas, and combining you can activate tactics like “More exp gotten by Wei officer”, summon a fire attack, reduce the defense, pretty simple but a nice addittion to the gameplay.
Also, the cards can used to adjust the rate at which each facility in the hub town levels up, nice since – as already said – there’s gonna be a lot of grind.
BUT still, even if i don’t love as much as reviewers did back in the day, there’s fun to be had, for sure, and even when it errs, it does a loot of good things or things that are in the right direction to improve the series formula, its an earnest, good effort in the right direction, even if its overdone to the point it almost serves as a cautionary example of what NOT to do in a musou game.
I do like the more RPG style elements like the way you level up stats alongside, and how now the number of attacks (basically how long the strings can be) is determineted by your proficiency with that type of weapon, instead of the weapon’s rarity or grade.
Not much to say on the technical side, but Omega Force did a good job on upgrading the game for the jump to HD consoles, the english dub is decent, and there a lot of content, even putting aside secondary missions and crossover missions that see characters from Warriors Orochi as well as the Ninja Gaiden series in (actually this is the first time Koei did this, way before WO3), the campaigns for each faction are long enough but not too short, 6 chapters, but still not short… of course single player-ing them will take you more time, but regardless, there’s a good amount of content.
Again, while i have mixed feelings on this spin-off, i can’t deny a lot of effort was taken to correct the many lamented issues of the series… with mixed results, but often enjoyable and well meaning, even if it a bit too much frustrating for its own sake, i feel.
Definitely worth taking a punt now for Warriors fans, since it should be still fairly cheap.
There was a sequel on PSP, Multi Raid 2, featuring a completely new story and various features, that and also received an HD port on PS3 later, but it was never released outside of Japan in any shape or form, and i don’t know exactly why, most likely it didn’t sell that much, but… then again, outside of Japan these games didn’t use to sell that much and still don’t. Kinda.
Maybe another reason was because of Multi Raid 2 having more emphasis on competitive quests, and i guess less story missions, but still, i wonder why, Koei was never shy about releaseing dozens of these games, with XL espansions, the Empires version, other games using a mainline title as base AGAIN (even if it was 8 years old back then), so it sure as hell it wasn’t because they would have clogged their release schedules in the western markets.
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