My current addiction: Dynasty Warriors 4
Holy crap, I cannot stop playing this PlayStation 2 game. There is such a ludicrous amount of replay value, that I still haven't unlocked all the extra stuff.
I had never played any of the Dynasty Warriors series before this one. If you are unfamiliar with these games, let me give you my best quick summary of what the gameplay is like --
"You saw LOtR: Fellowship of the Rings, right? You remember the flashback scene where the men and elves are fighting against Sauron in Mordor? You saw Sauron wearing the ring and weilding a mace. Whenever he hit a group of men or elves, like 10 of them would go flying 20 feet in the air. Remember that? In Dynasty Warriors, you are like freaking Sauron!"
Yesssss, it's all about killing tons of guys. It's not uncommon to wind up with 250 kills in under 10 minutes.
Not only are you slaughtering tons of little insignificant soldiers, but you also have little AI bodyguards to protect you. These guys help clean up some of the riff raff after you tear up a large group of them.
Also, there are other "officers" and "generals" in the game, and they are powerful like you. You can duel them mid-battle, or charge in with your bodyguards and have an all-out melee fiesta.
You start the game with TWELVE different playable characters, and THREE different "clans". Each character has his or her own unique weapon and attack combos. Lots of fun stuff. All characters have different RPG-ish stats too, such as life, strength, speed, etc. You can unlock up to something like 45 playable characters, and I beleive EIGHT different clans.
Clans are important. The game is based on actual Chinese history. So, you may play through the game as one of the characters from the Wu clan. Then you play again as someone from the Wei clan, and the entire game is totally different. While many of the same battlefields will be present as were in the Wu clan's campaign, you'll be starting off in a different position, be fighting different enemies, and have to use completely different strategy.
Although the game centers around fighting, strategy is another part of the game. There will be many objectives that become available to you during any given battle, and it's up to you which objectives you undertake. It's possible to actually "fail" all of your little mini-objectives, but still win the battle through brute force, but that's usually very difficult, and frankly takes to long.
I apologize for the disjointedness of the post, but as you can see I am very excited and even fanatical.
So in conclusion, if you have a PS2 and are at all interested in "hack and slash" OR strategy games, you must at least rent this game. But if you rent it you'll probably end up buying it, so you may as well just buy the damn thing.
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