<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Gaming Warlords

Gaming Warlords

Hello! Welcome to Gaming Warlords!

This website is all about the Dynasty Warriors series by Koei. We are obsessed with everything that goes with this series, and that includes delving into the history of the Three Kingdoms era, on which the aforementioned series is based upon. Please feel free to look around, and sign our guestbook before you go! We would like to hear what you think of this, whether it's positive or negative comments!

All of the links below are internal links to pages on our website. Each include my personal review of each game and, where possible, a number of screenshots.

Last Updated: 16.6.2003

For those with non-Java-enabled browsers, these links will get you around the site:
Homepage Dynasty Warriors DW2 DW3(part1) DW3(part2) DW3 - Xtreme Legends DW4 DW4 - Xtreme Legends Dynasty Tactics Dynasty Tactics 2 Related Links Favourite Links Planned Updates Officer Profiles Gaming Warlords Profiles Other Stuff

(c) Apycom

Still needs to finish being developed, please come back soon!

Dynasty Tactics

Right then, this page will not be going through how to play the game. For this, I suggest referring to the manual, as this has many tips and tricks. I may include a short section on how to play the game in the future, but I haven't yet decided.

OK, Dynasty Tactics is a strategy game with a twist. Some of you may be familiar with Koei's Kessen series, which were also strategy games. This game is very different to the Kessen series, however. Dynasty Tactics still puts you in charge of huge armies, but it is played more like chess (Many people fail to understand my analogy, so I will explain). Each of your army's units require thought-out positioning, as well as organsing tactics in order to make the most of them. Tactical Combos are a big part of this game, so it is not advised that you waste your tactics. Also, like in chess, one wrong move can mess up your entire fight, although you can usually recover from mistakes such as wrong tactics used, wrong positioning and so forth. As soon as you play the first match you will realise what I mean.

But enough with the chess analogy. After the introduction to the game, in which you are taught the controls and are shown Tactical Combos (more about that later) and Tactical Links (more about those later too), you get the choice of character. You can choose from Liu Bei, Cao Cao or Sun Ce. The best choice for novices is Cao Cao (incidentally I chose Cao Cao after being advised on the subject), although you are welcome to choose who you like. Be aware of the fact that Liu Bei is very difficult to play with, and you will more than likely get a "Game Over" after just a few matches. He is for the more seasoned player (one of these would be onne who has played through Cao Cao's story at least once). Once you have chosen your character, you are put into your first real battle for dominance of China. This game uses characters from the rest of the games based on the RTK period, which helps if you are already familiar with them, but makes no difference if you are new to the game. You play your first battle in the same way as you did in the tutorial, except this time the battle will have relevance and the enemy will actually put up a proper fight. You will also have a decent size army as well.

After the first fight, you are shown a screen full of paths and cities. You are given a Capital and one army of four officers. You will be shown an objective, and told how many turns you can clear this objective in. At first, this map looks confusing, and the menus do nothing to help. After all, you have the choice of setting up another army, editing the one you already have, as well as sending spies and envoys. The manual is the best thing you can read before getting into this game very much. Or you could find someone who has completed most of the entire game (60 cities to conquer and up to five endings for each of the three characters mean you'll be playing this game for a long time if you're going to complete everything) to help you along the first few matches. I had my brother, Gaming Warlord No.2, to assist me. He had no real help to begin with though, and he got on OK. The best thing to do is to read the manual and play around with the menus, seeing what things do.

As I mentioned above, this game has many cities for you to conquer, and many civilians to enlist as officers for your characters cause of domination of China (there are 225 civilians for you to get altogether, which believe me is quite hard to do). There are five endings to see for Sun Ce, which is quite hard to get, as my brother would tell you. He has managed it, with a bit of cursing when something went wrong and ended up going down the wrong path by mistake. Currently he is working on Cao Cao's last ending, as he already has the other three. He agrees with me saying that Liu Bei's story is hard to clear. He has only seen one of the ending for Liu Bei, and that was after much, much work. If Dynasty Tactics was a job, he'd be a Junior Manager. I'd be a travelling sales executive. But back to the point. Dynasty Tactics is a very hard game until you get used to it. Once you get used to it, though, it's a very rewarding game, especially when you complete a character and see all the endings. It's currently taken my brother about 6 months of very regular play and he's done about 80% of the game. It's a very long game, as you can guess.

Now to mention some other aspects of the game. The music is really quite atmospheric, which helps it feel like a real battle. The graphics are quite surprising. Before the release of this game, I didn't think it was going to be much good graphically, but it looks a lot better than I predicted. There are some FMV's in the game where officers like Lu Bu and Zhang Fei duel. This also helps make the game feel like you are actually fighting the enemy. I don't think I need to mention the lifespan issue, as I've already touched on it several times. Alas, I feel it necessary to mention that you'll want to keep coming back for more after you've seen one ending.

OK, a quick summary is in order. Dynasty Tactics is a fantastic game. It's learning curve is quite steep though. If you are into strategy games, then you'll love this game. It's quite a unique way of playing a strategy game, which might partly be why it won the Best Strategy Game Of The Year 2002 from Official Playstation 2 Magazine. So, I must give this game a rating. Due to it's steep learning curve, this game doesn't quite reach our Seal Of Approval rating, but it's quite close. The music give the game the right atmosphere, which helped the game up to a rating of 8.9, so it gets the Try It Out award. Certainly the best strategy game on the market at the moment.

Contact Details

Having problems with any pages here? Contact us at the address below:
jammasterjules2001@yahoo.co.uk

Disagree with our giving a game/site a Seal Of Approval/Try It Out award? Contact us at the address below:
djdave59@hotmail.com

To give us your views on anything on this site, use the below address:
jjules@happyhardcore.dj

(Seal Of Approval is only given out to the games/sites we REALLY think deserve them. These games MUST score 9.0 or higher to get the SOA. Should we rate a game 8.0 - 8.9, then we will give them the Try It Out award. The games that get this award are very good, but not quite good enough in our opinion to be obsessed with (like us here at Gaming Warlords). Don't forget that this is our opinion, and if you think we were too generous with a rating, or too hard on a particular game, then email us at the address above, and tell us what you think briefly, what we missed out and what you would rate the game as. As for sites, these are a different matter and you should tell who made the site what is wrong with their site. However please tell us if a link to a site doesn't work or the site is offensive, so that we can look at it and decide what to do about it.)

Copyright JD Whitby, Gaming Warlord No.1, 2003.