Dynasty Warriors Online is a new MMORPG developed by KOEI and distributed by AERIA Games. It is an online version of the console Dynasty Warriors series which takes places during the Three Kingdoms era in Chinese history. After the fall of the Han Dynasty, three new dynasties with three leaders form: Cao Cao of the Wei Dynasty, Liu Bei of the Shu Dynasty, and Sun Quan of the Wu Dynasty. These three dynasties fought each other for control of mainland China which was a very bloody period in Chinese history.

As you first start out creating a character, the customization is fairly ok. You can choose from a good amount of options of size, facial features, and hair. It isn’t as detailed as some games but it is pretty good. There is no class as your fighting style will be determined by your weapon. You also choose your home town, and most importantly, which of the dynasties you will ally with. This choice is important because it will be the side you will be fighting on for every battle and quest you take. There is no way to fight together with people of another dynasty.

For anyone that has played the Dynasty Warriors series on console, the battle system is basically the same. The character has a basic attack and a charge attack that can be comboed together. There is a gauge for Mosou which when full you will be able to unleash a devastating attack. Unfortunately since the controls are basically the same as a console, it is hard to control the character with a keyboard and mouse. The camera stays locked so it can be hard to see what you are fighting at times. This game is much easier to play with a gamepad and does support this for a PC.

Every character can use all the weapons in the game if they have the overall rank for it. Each weapon has different damage, length, speed, and other stats that make them each unique. They also have different powered up moves based on weapon type. The weapons follow a rank system to determine which is more powerful while armor uses a +1 system. Stats are pretty easy to understand like attack, life, and defense. The speed of the weapons is important as it effects how fast you run as well as swing. A big bulky weapon will make you much slower moving from base to base and swing slower but it will do more damage when it lands compared to a smaller weapon.

Combat in this game is fairly simple. Even though the weapons are different, there really isn’t a huge difference between players. There is no healer, mage, or tank class, though some weapons do have special effects like healing. For most battles and quests the game follows a similar concept. You start on a map with your bases, your enemies’ bases, and neutral enemies. Goals can range from killing the most enemies, destroying all their bases, or killing their commanders a certain number of times. There are plenty of NPCs all over the map and both enemies and neutral NPCs will attack you. You can easily dodge most of them as you run from objective to objective or if you want round them up and kill them all with your attacks.

There is PvP in this game in the form of 4 vs 4 and 12 vs 12 fights between dynasties. These are only slightly different as there is still an objective like capture all bases or defeat a certain number of enemies. In this case the enemy commanders are controlled by other players which add a more fun twist than fighting the computer which is fairly easy to kill. There is also more chance of items dropping and lieutenants showing up in these fights.
4 vs 4 Melee Queue

DWO has a pet system in the form of lieutenants and a housing system. To acquire a lieutenant you must find them in a melee battle and defeat them. Then if you win the battle they will join you. Lieutenants can level up as you use them more. These are mostly humans though there are some animals as well. The housing system is fairly basic as you can add furniture and decorate. You can also add crafting locations to your house.

The crafting system in DWO is just refining and enchanting your gear. Gear can be purchased or from drops and then tempered to make them more powerful. You can also add enchantments to change attributes on them. There is also the ability to dye your clothes to change the colors. The system is fairly basic.

The music in the game is fairly repetitive but it does put you in a mass slaughter mood. The game isn’t very detailed graphically but this could also be due to the large amount of enemies that can appear on your screen when fighting. The opening CG cutscene looked really nice but there hasn’t been another cutscene since. There isn’t much of a storyline to the game besides the battle for domination of the other dynasties. After you complete the tutorial you basically do PvP melee fights and random town quests to gain fame with your dynasty.

DWO is basically the Dynasty Warriors game put into an MMORPG. It doesn’t have anything unique or breathtaking in it. It is the familiar hack and slash gaming that made the Dynasty Warriors series popular. If you are a Dynasty Warriors fan or love to run into a horde of enemies and kill a bunch at a time, it’s worth downloading and playing DWO.