Format: Advance
Genre: Action
Developer: KOEI
Publisher: Nintendo

Mostly shit design of a heralded game series. Dynasty Warriors Advance, is my first introduction to the Dynasty Warriors series. I can safely say, I think, that this game is decidedly not a good representation for the series in any possible way shape or form. To start out, this game doesn't have credits. Yes, that's right, no credits. This immediately led to the conclusion that a single campaign victory was going to be the limit of my play. The game itself plays like a sword of "secret of mana" style combat hack'n'slash combat. You have 3 modes to choose from and a bunch of other stuff to look at, but mostly it's the 3 play modes in this game. Musou mode which is the story mode, free play, and challenge mode. Free play and challenge mode have their own styles but I stuck to Musou mode which is the storyline campaigns. You get to choose between one of the 3 kingdoms (Wu, Shu, Wei). For my playthrough, I went with the Shu Kingdom. Now this is where it gets creative in a bad way. From what I hear, most dynasty warrior games allow you to switch between multiple generals you control, HOWEVER, in this game you only control 1 single general. I choose to go with the guy named 'Zhao Yun'. Because of this limitation, the gameplay of the actual game is severely suffering. Dynasty Warriors is designed around the concept of thousands of soldiers/units and generals all going to war on a massively expansive land mass and the player is supposed to switch between generals to push towards their goals. This game you only control one general so you have to run around like a chicken with it's nuts cutoff to get to whoever is in trouble so they don't die and game over you on every other turn. I'm not even joking on that, this game is 100% locked into specific movements. If you don't make those specific movements, you will game over. Luckily this game has a quick-save feature that allows you to infinitely retry if you mess up. Unfortunately this also means that you can quick-save into a no-win scenario and spend a few hours trying to scrape your way out of it before realizing you simply don't have the turn-count to rescue a unit in time all because you didn't remember to move 2-spaces one time. You move your units on the map similar to a board game. Each turn you can move 1 space into red circles, or 2 spaces into circles you've been on before. When you enter into a circle with an enemy unit, you fight them. Enemy units usually consist of about 25-45 Soldiers, Spearman, Bowman, and occasionally an enemy Commanding Officer. The kicker in this game is that only about 5 enemy units can exist at any given time. This lead them to having a 'timer' in game and made the victory conditions based on that time. If you clear all enemies fast enough you get a 'Triumph' which gives you a bit of health restore and an extra map move at the end of combat. 'Victory' is your basic win. If you take too long you get a 'Close Call' which lets your enemies have 2 turns next turn. There are also buffs you can invoke during gameplay, finishing a whole scenario with tons of buffs unlocks better weapons to use. This game has A LOT of weapons you will never see. Each enemy is weak to a specific type of attack as well, and in order to get a good time for triumphs you need to master which attack is best for which enemy. There's also a 'Musou' and 'True Musou' skill that you can use which is basically like a big rush attack that continuously does damage. During critical health 'True Musou' builds up over time, so you can semi-cheese the game. The campaign I played through had 6 scenarios in it, and a lot of plot with confusing similar sounding names. The concept of being so tightly constricted on movement and the constant reloading of some fights left a bitter and bad aftertaste in my mouth. The music was probably the best part of the game, but also had no build-up(Which it should have). The intensity of the music stays throughout the entire game, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you view it. The biggest problem with this game is that the hitboxes SUCK. They suck. Just suck. Often I would get stuck on nothing or drag an enemy with me while he was knocked out. Enemy officers also seem to be immune to my bullshit which lead to being perma-locked in place until death. Had to pull some real cheap shit on this one, didn't enjoy it. Did I mention this game doesn't have credits? Beat 1 campaign and call it quits.

All in All, This game earned a 4.0 out of 10 possible points. Sticky hitboxes, overtly intense theme with no buildup, no credits, enemy super armor, extraordinarily tight advancement constraints, ridiculous timers, extreme repetitive movements, general un-fun gameplay.