Dynasty Warriors Volume 2 offers the familiar strategy action gameplay of KOEI's Dynasty Warriors series in palatable bit sized nuggets due to the way the game is laid out for each campaign.
Volume 2 lets players take on the familiar historical battles of the Three Kingdoms era of China's turbulent past, but unlike its full blown console brethren, the gameplay is delivered in short bursts as players conquer a strategic map taking out key areas and moving towards an enemy camp occupied by a powerful general. The concept isn't new, but it's certainly been refined from the last time we saw it on the PSP (Samurai Warriors). The main focus of the PSP game is the single player Musou mode, where historical battles are played out on a map with a multitude of squares that have different objectives and unique bonuses to your forces. As players take turns moving through these occupied squares they engage in short battles, conquering officers and generals and subduing the map location and whatever special global bonuses they afford. It's not all "push forward" and win though, sometimes you'll find yourself having to meet specific campaign objectives or returning to a square that has been assaulted by the enemy and siezed. Ultimately it's the same concept as the Dynasty Warriors games but with more depth and strategy.
As usual you can expect to select a hero from the familiar armies and build them up to your liking by killing lots of enemies and clearing each campaign. Each has their own motivation, delivered via a text-based prologue and epilogue that you've probably already witnessed a thousand times in other Dynasty Warriors games.
The meat and potatoes is still Musou mode, that popular single-player only mode found in every DW games from KOEI where you choose one hero from a line-up of familiar armies (WEI, WU, SHU) and take on several historical scenarios. Each campaign is played out on a map filled with connected squares much like a board game filled with squares that range from average battlefields to special locations that contain structures that help whatever side holds them. For example, a Defense Base square raises allied defense and morale when occupied, a Central Fortress is where defeated officers and allies that have retreated are revived after being defeated and a Depot is for supplies and where you can visit to revive your life.
The goal of the game is still (okay, usually but not always) to defeat the enemy army but there's more than one way to accomplish that. Some maps have victory conditions where simply cutting off the enemy's supplies is enough to do them in, while other times you might have to actually take their main base of operations over. Of course taking away squares that affect morale is always a smart idea because morale is a major factor on every map square.
Each map square has a morale value for each army. The first army to have its morale reduced to 0 loses the battle and retreats on a given square. So the main goal in Dynasty Warriors Volume 2 is to do just that, which is a pretty easy thing because the action is bite sized in nature (battles don't take all that long on each square due to the whole morale gameplay element and your officers) and the map-based movement is very strategic much like a board game. KOEI has refined this style of gameplay above and beyond what they created for Samurai Warriors.
One other thing worth mentioning is how you obtain officers. You can have four officers on the map at a time and depending on how many command points you have, you can have some pretty strong fighters helping you go through each area. It's pretty nice having this massive amount of backup and makes going through some of the areas a little easier than it should be, given the bite sized nature of the action.
There's no denying that Dynasty Warriors Volume 2 feels pretty familiar, but the game does push the series a little farther with a number of interesting extras. In the first game there were 100 or so officers you could find or unlock, while Volume 2 delivers 300 hundred to choose from and now officers have the ability to use Double Musou attacks. And for those folks who can't find or are too lazy to bother, there's the Ad Hoc officer swapping feature. If you have a friend that has some officers you want, simply hook up with them and trade to your heart's content.
DWV2 also features 48 playable main characters (6 new characters), 50 new stages, 31 new maps and a solid multiplayer component.
Multiplayer modes include Bombs Away, Battle Royal, Time Attack, and Sudden Death. Each has its own set of objectives and time limits, so you'll probably find one that will best suit their play style. Briefly, Bombs away is a game of hot potato where defeating another player reduces their KO count and gives them a time bomb. The one with the highest KO count at the end wins; Battle Royal has players knock units of varying strength for points ala "king of the hill." Knocking units off structures will earn you points and getting knocked down will make you lose points. The player with the most points at the end wins; Time Attack is a race to a goal within a certain amount of time -the first player to make it to the goal in the shortest amount of time wins; In Sudden Death players earn points by defeating enemies. As you succeed the risks become greater because the more enemies you defeat the more dramatic the penalty when you die. The player with the most points at the end wins. In all of these modes an item will appear randomly after defeating an enemy that can be used against other players for some added spice.
Finally there are subtle changes in the game that will be immediately familiar to Dynasty Warriors fans. The most notable is the way weapons are handled in the game. In the previous game, weapons changes didn't carry over into stages - that's been changed in favor of allowing a carry over so players don't feel cheated on that front. You'll also find Camp (where you can view an exhaustive list of information on officers and other important aspect of the game and trade them with friends as we mentioned earlier), and the much loved Free mode. Finally and maybe most important of all for PSP users, is better support of the system's wide screen.
While Volume 2 does offer all this new content, there are still a one or two problems with the game that are the result of using the same engine as Samurai Warriors for the PSP. This includes still not being able to see what is directly behind you. While this isn't a deal breaker it's a real pain in the stones if someone is back there attacking you. We can understand the technical difficulty and design sacrifices that have to be made when putting a game like this on the PSP, but Omega Team really needs to address this problem in the next game.
