Caltrops - Deleted Posts





	[quote name="False"]It's good. My basic impression at this point is that it pretty much fixes the mistakes they made going from DW3 to DW4. They took out dueling, they took out the leveling up of weapons (replacing it with DW3's system of finding randomly generated weapons), the music is better than 4's, and the level design, while not being quite up to the standards of 3 (i.e. I haven't found anything as cool as the Seige of He Fei Castle yet, although there are some maps that come close) is better than 4's with one notable exception, which I'll get to later. So basically they changed everything that kept me from liking DW4 and kept the little improvements they made; the graphical stuff, making horses better, further differentiating the characters. There are 15 characters this time around instead of 30+ or however many there were in DW3/4, and each one I've played so far has been unique. Magoichi fights with a musket, alternately bashing enemies with it and actually shooting it, Hanzo fights much like you'd expect a ninja to fight, with a lot of flashy jumping and flipping and fast dashing, Yukimura, the generic samurai hero, fights with a spear but still manages to feel different from Keiji, the crazy wild man samurai who also fights with a spear and shouts a lot. You advance characters by gaining experience through the stages, (according to 4 objectives...clear time, item acquisition, mission objectives completed and musou kills. This last is great because it makes you actually use your musou attack when you get it as opposed to saving it as a combo breaker for officers), which turns into stat raises (Melee/Ranged/Horse Attack and Defense, speed, agility, and jump) and skill points. Skill points are used to buy skills, which can do anything from increase the efficiency of healing items, make your charge or musou attacks better, or make it so you always use your True Musou. Musou attacks are changed somewhat in SW as well. When you hit circle, you enter what I like to call Musou Time; the enemies are slowed down and you move at normal speed. You can keep hitting the circle button to fire off your character's musou attack or, if that attack sucks, just attack normally instead until the gauge runs out. True Musou mode basically adds a character-specific series of attacks to the end, once the gauge runs out. These are, again, different from character to character; Keiji swings his spear around in a wide arc in front of him (great for a group of guys right up there or for heavily damaging an officer) while Magoichi fires his gun like a shotgun, which is great for clearing out groups of scrubs but, since it knocks people down quick, isn't that great for doing a lot of damage to one guy. Problems include the fact that the enemies are usually somewhat bland looking. 15 characters means that instead of DW, where you would have from 50% to 95% of officers on a map as unique characters, you now have most of the officers being generic. Also, I think there's one guy who just keeps fucking up the level design over at Koei. For the last game, he said, "Hey guys, let's make every level huge and sprawling with these huge sections you just run through! Great, huh?" For this game, he said, "Hey guys, let's make indoor missions, and have the enemies constantly respawn! Great, huh?" The indoor missions would be really fun and cool if not for the fact that the enemies infinitely respawn and, unlike the outdoor stages (where you can kill a reserve captain to get a small xp boost and stop the flow of enemies from that outpost), you cannot stop them. So your best strategy is to run headlong through the stage, avoiding every enemy (or clearing out groups sometimes to get your musou kills rating up) until you find an officer. Most indoor stages have 5 floors and the map isn't cleared when you enter, meaning you have to wander around like an asshole until you find the stairs. I may actually fix this up and submit it as an article once the new game honeymoon wears off and I start to see more of the cracks. [/quote]