Dynasty Warriors returns… again… with a whole new… not much. If you aren’t familiar with the series, let me bring you up to speed. It’s China, you pick one of many characters to play and then you repeatedly mash buttons to slay armies in a bid to rule the land. You’re a powerful warrior versus thousands at a time. Good fun. It’s been done a few times already and then crossed-over a few more, so you figure once they hit the sixth entry in the series they have perfected the art, not missed the mark.

Consistent with previous Dynasty Warriors titles, the soundtrack simply rocks.  Fans of the series will be happy to know Empires contains a very large back catalog of music from previous Warriors titles so you can rock out to pseudo maniac electric rock riffs until you are sweaty and have a headache. Empires also features most of the characters from other Dynasty Warrior games, along with plenty of unlockable costumes, armors, and other neat stuff to add small bits of replay value. Koei has thrown in plenty of DLC to add more armor, weapons, and the such for the collector inside of you. After completing a campaign you can roll over your horses, weapons, and other character items earned to the next campaign. Empires adds a nice strategic dynamic of allowing the player to wander about fighting as a mercenary vagrant, become an officer or ruler. You can step down from your post, defect to join another army mid-battle, or overthrow your ruler.  A great mechanic to change the pace of the game if you are bored with the button-mashing hack and slash affair.

As dementedly fun as Dynasty Warriors is, it does fall short in a few areas.  I haven’t seriously played through a Dynasty Warriors title since 4 on PS2 and not much has changed, which is disappointing.  I expect some evolution of the title over time. For a game where you are slaughtering thousands of warriors, you expect a lot to be on the screen, but throw in 3 or more officers and you start to have things disappearing from your screen, like Tiger Tanks, bad guys, and parts of the environment.  All things you need to actually see what’s going on in the game. The voice acting leaves quite a bit to be desired. One-liners are exactly that, one line. You won’t hear it just once. You hear the line every time you defeat someone of any value, which happens on average every 2 minutes. If you decide to kill three officers at once, then you get a nice little backlog of one liners that takes 20 seconds to play though. Very annoying. I got sick of it quickly and so did everyone else in my house.

Dynasty Warriors has always been therapeutic for me. Nothing like brainless button mashing and laying waste to thousands of enemies to forget about a bad day. Bored on a Sunday, grab a friend and enjoy dominating ancient China together. While repetitive, there is something naturally enjoyable and challenging about taking on hordes of enemies, facing multiple bosses per level, and unlocking more characters that gives Dynasty Warriors it’s lasting appeal for me. Where it falls short is the lack of any improvement throughout the series. Online multiplayer would go a LONG way here, but we have to wait for Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce. So if already own a Dynasty Warriors game, save your cash. If not and really really need one, fine, buy Empires but you are only hurting yourself. I suggest waiting until the game can handle more graphically and has online multiplayer. This would be a one star if it wasn’t for my love of the series, it was painful enough to finish the review, but come-on it’s Dynasty Warriors.