Dynasty Warriors

I can think of one thing, which are these three words: Character-specific endings.

@ Memers

But doesn't "Nanman" mean "Southern Barbarian?"

Gameplay, not story. Though yeah, 3 and 5 (but not 2 or 4) had character specific Musou modes which 6 neutered (of the massive cast, only 5 characters per kingdom and two "Other" characters got story modes) and 7 onwards dropped in favor of a single storyline divided by kingdom.

Anywho, the pre-six games tended to be a bit more down to earth in terms of the killing sprees, with the numbers of troops you were mowing down at once being much lower, while still retaining that feeling of being a badass.

To compare, throughout the series:

2 is painfully slow and even completing a stage is a chore and everyone takes forever to kill (officers especially, but that's a whole other mess of worms).

3 picks up the pace, and you can actually finish a stage without spending an hour hacking and slashing at mooks, but you'd probably have around 50 KOs at most, a fair number of them officer kills. While you will kill your share of mooks, there is just no point in mowing them down when you got better things to do.

By 5, gameplay has sped up to the point where you feel good killing mooks as you capture bases and gun for the officers, and when you finish a stage, it's not unusual to have a good 100 or 200 or so (depending on the stage) KOs under your belt.

By the PS 3 games? Having 1000 KOs at the stage end is pretty much expected (while in the PS 2 games, it was a rare achievement), and the "biggest slaughterfest in a single level" achievement is now at 2000 KOs.

Also, the biggest game changer in the PS 3 games aside from the quicker pace and bigger slaughterfest is the introduction of real time weapon change and EX attacks from 7 onwards, which change up the flow of battle and the complexity of the combos you can do a fair bit. (6 tried to do that with Renbu but hahaha renbu)

edited 23rd May '15 3:25:13 PM by Otherarrow

Oh, now the picture's clearer.

Christ, does anyone like Renbu? Even people who do like 6 loathe that system.

I hated the shit out of Renbu.

6 Empires does as much as it can to remove or otherwise limit the impact of it.

Even by 6's own expansion packs were they trying to downplay and phase it out.

That's how much people hated it.

So when did the series start adding more colorful and fantastical weapons like siege spears and such?

Siege spears?

Anywho, hrm. Most of the really outlandish stuff came from the PS 3 era, like the Sima wipe claws, the Lu Bu giant shuriken thing, Zhong Hui's floating swords, and Guo Huai's gattling gun.

There was probably something outlandish from the PS 2 era, I just can't think of it at the moment. There was anachronistic stuff like Sun Ce's tonfas or Zhou Tai's Katana I guess.

Doe Cao Ren's sword-shield thing count?

In terms of "fantastic" we had magic staves and magic conjuring fans since at least 3.

edited 23rd May '15 9:48:16 PM by Otherarrow

All those missions where Yi gets invaded or ravaged by war, especially after Liu Bei calls it home / during Jiang Wei's endless and rather empty-seeming resistance, take on a much darker tone for me because I figured out Zhang Xianzhong existed.

@Arrow: Xiahou Ba's siege spear. Well, more like steampunk drill thing, that makes electricity.

@Nick The Swing: So there was a super evil genocidal Guan Yu cult founder. I should be surprised but I am not.

8 is where the bizarre out of place movesets became standard practice (Even the magic wands and tonfas were somewhat tonally consistent). Zhuge Dan got a police baton, Lu Su gets a rake, Cao Cao and Lu Xun summon ghost versions of themselves, Guan Yinping gets ancient Chinese barbels, so on and so forth.

It also marks the return of 6's movesets. Zhang Chunhua gets her husband's needle claw whips, Gan Ning gets Dian Wei and Cao Ren's flail while Dian Wei gets his Axe back in 7, and Cao Ren gets his shieldsword back in 8, Pang De gets Xiahou Dun's mace because his old moveset was given to Zhang Liao, and then Lü Bu's daughter gets Lü Bu's old boomerang thing.

If you are still with me

8 as a whole had interesting methods of decloning the characters. Spare a thought, however, for Sun Quan. In the middle of the chaos (noregrets) he drew the short straw and kept everyone's favorite sword moveset. Indeed, that glorious, one of a kind beautiful moveset that about 70 percent of the plot crucial characters in 7 had.

edited 24th May '15 8:13:59 AM by mrsunshinesprinkles

The rake isn't completely out of place - just ask Zhu Bajie. The feathered fans are also associated with Taoist priests, if I'm not wrong, although they definitely didn't shoot laser beams.

I can't speak from experience (only played 4 and dabbled in a couple of others), but Zuo Ci's cards are when the weapons start sounding weird to me.

edited 24th May '15 6:29:13 AM by Pyrite

7 was really where things went crazy. Zhong Hui's flying swords, Guo Huai's cannon, Deng Ai's drill spear and so on.

Oh, no doubt about that. 8 just compounded the dodo-bananas for even weirder movesets.

I tried Pang Tong for the first time, and wow, is this guy for real? I have never seen a Musou bar fill up that fast. Not even Wang Yuanji can fill all three Musou bars with one damn charge attack.

edited 24th May '15 7:25:25 AM by mrsunshinesprinkles

7 Empires introduced the Siege Spear, I think. Alongside a crapton of bombs, an awesome lightning sword, a boat and a couple other things.

I'm just amused that Noob keeps restating the things I told him.

But yeah, I never got why in 8, they decided to recycle all the crappy weapons no one liked from 6. At least, the spiked mace seems like it plays better now? (Also, Gan Ning getting Dian Wei's ball-on-chain is weird, as Gan Ning also got a new weapon in 6 in the form of tiny daggers he duel wielded)

What, were they really strapped for movesets?

edited 24th May '15 11:30:59 AM by Otherarrow

I think the only thing people liked from Dynasty Warriors 6 was the AI. Complain about everything else about 6 but know that officers took a little than just juggling them to kill them. Especially the important characters. Also, 6 give us good songs like Welcome to China.

I can only assume the maps were awesome as well, given all the recycling those got, too.

Or laziness, but surely that couldn't be.

I can't speak for the main games, but I noticed that 7XL tended to recycle 6 maps more often than use 7 maps (unlike prior XL games, which would just reuse maps from the vanilla game at another time of day, or just a snippet of it, or etc and call it a new stage)

As for the 6 maps...they are OK? I liked most of them, but a few of them, I got the impression it was the first time Koei realized they could do real elevation and not just slopes and they went kinda overboard with it, making it kinda confusing to get around since the map didn't do a good job of telling you where you could and couldn't go sometimes.

The biggest offender of this was Wu Zhang Plains, which didn't make it into 7XL thankfully (the two Wu Zhang stages in that game are 5, and a Legends stage based on the 7 version)

@Otherarrow: Everything I know is thanks to yooooou.

At least the choices for 6 moveset distribution were oddly fitting. Gan Ning is basically a wrecking ball in more ways than one, and you can follow the train of thought behind giving Lu Bu's daughter Lu Bu's old moveset that Lu Bu doesn't use anymore.

Still though, Koei is just plain weird in handling its movesets. They separated Ling Tong from his clone Guan Suo by giving...Ling Tong a brand new weapon, and the amount of sword padding in vanilla 7 (With guys who already had distinct movesets before) bordered absurd.

edited 24th May '15 4:20:21 PM by mrsunshinesprinkles

Actually, you could argue that Gan Ning's ball-and-chain might be taken from Romance's account of the siege of Huancheng, where he scaled the wall and dragged the defending commander down with an iron chain.

...as an aside, has Dian Wei ever used his traditional dual halberds in any installment of Dynasty Warriors?

edited 2nd Jul '15 8:35:56 AM by Pyrite

Nope. He has the axe in most games and the ball and chain in 6.

I guess you can give him the Pang De/Zhang Liao Halberds. Dunno what his compatibility with them is though.

@Pyrite: Oooh, learned something new today.

Dian Wei not getting actual halberds is pretty weird, but the axe fits him fine as a character. It's better than the alternative at least (Shoehorning their historical signature weapon awkwardly into battle quotes and musou attacks, like Sun Shangxiang).

If we did stick with historically accurate signature weapons, then bows would be the new swords. It does fit quite nicely with Gan Ning, though (what?)

edited 24th May '15 9:09:39 PM by mrsunshinesprinkles

Cao Cao has Zhang Liao, Sun Quan has Gan Ning... and we have many, many arrows for the both of them.

edited 24th May '15 9:52:15 PM by Pyrite

Not as many as that child Gan Ning tied to a tree.

Heck, Cow Cow himself was a good shot, and one of the most iconic pieces of art featuring Lu Bu has him using a bow.

edited 24th May '15 11:26:04 PM by mrsunshinesprinkles

If I recall, one of the big famous Lu Bu stories is how he basically got Liu Bei and one of Yuan Shu's generals to make peace by planting his halberd down in the middle of the field and then shooting an arrow through the blade of the halberd from the camp.

I am not sure if this was something added in Romance or what, but it's still impressive.

Play 8 XL, Lu Bu story, History route, that event is re-enacted right there.