Dynasty Warriors is quickly becoming the London buses of the gaming world. What I mean by that is that fans wait for a while for a new release and then all of a sudden two come out in quick session. Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 was recently released on the 360 and now here is this new game on the PSP.
It is the second time the franchise has appeared on Sony’s handheld machine and in truth this is a much better game than has gone before. Even fans of the franchise as a whole have moaned that it dosent seem to have changed much since it began but here at last, small changes have occurred, nothing major but enough to encourage the fans for the future. At the start of the game, as usual, you have to decide which of the Dynasty represented in the game you wish to fight for. This means selecting the warrior you wish to play as, for quite an impressive list it has to be said, and then you play through their storyline. Unlike previous games where you would just find yourself in a battle, destroying wave after wave of seemingly mindless warriors to then find yourself in another and another, in this game you find yourself in a village with market vendors selling you items such as weapons, ability upgrades etc. This also acts as a place to store things that you might find during your campaigns and surprisingly you can also upgrade the village itself further into the game. To access a quest you look on a bulletin board near the entrance of the village. The quests can be anything from defeating a bandit king who is raiding the area to stopping a rival dynasty expanding their boundaries by taking over bits of land. Each quest will have three conditions for you to try and achieve. One of which will usually be a time issue for you to complete the task in, but there can also be a limit to the number of lives you have or specific sub-tasks you have to do. Once you have decided to accept a task then you find yourself in the battlefield and here the game resembles others that have gone before, with you having a number of abilities and fighting styles depending on the character you have and the enemies at times somewhat mindless in their tactics. As well as the single player game there is also an excellent multi-player mode where you can link with up to three other people (Each must have their own UMD’s) by meeting in the village, trading weapons etc and then the four of you can either go on one of the more complicated tasks together or even face off against each other in a versus battle. Graphically this is an excellent game when you consider the machine it is on with excellent attention to detail with the character models and the locations they find themselves in. The animation is smooth and the visual effects especially in the battles look quite spectacular. The game also runs very smoothly in multiplayer mode. Sound wise it is a little bit of a let-down as a lot of the battle effects etc are ones that we have heard before in previous games. The music as well is dated and I am sure taken from a previous title. Overall this is a much better game than I am sure most critics will give it credit. It has enough new touches to make it a least half a step forward in the franchise. Yes the battles in single player mode feel like nothing new and perhaps in the next title the enemy AI could be refreshed but the multi-player game is worth the cost of the game in itself. It is a lot of fun and surely that is what gaming on a whole is all about? I look forward to the next title to see if this bold step is continued and improved upon. | 
PSP 
