Review: Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition

Released last year, Dynasty Warriors 8 was the most recent in the popular Dynasty Warriors series. Its release was promptly followed with the Xtreme Legends which offered bonus levels, characters, weapons, and so on. This review is about Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition, a Sony exclusive offering everything from the previous versions plus a little more.

As the core gameplay remains the same, I recommend you read our Dynasty Warriors 8 review for details on how the game works. Please ignore any references to the game’s performance as the Complete Edition addresses almost all of those.

That said, what exactly do you get if you buy the Complete Edition instead of the original?

First and foremost, you get a completely new campaign. Focusing on the infamous Lü Bu, the game follows his battles and betrayals as he endeavours to take over the land. Compared to the core stories this campaign is fairly short. However, Lü Bu is a powerhouse of a character with some great EX moves so it’s an absolute blast to play. Add to this some great new characters like Chen Gong and Lü Linqi and there’s sufficient versatility to keep you entertained.

Alongside Chen Gong and Lü Linqi, you also get access to three other new characters; Yu Jin (Wei), Fa Zheng (Shu) and Zhu Ran (Wu). What makes these guys great is that they’re not just variants of existing characters; they each sport very unique techniques and force you to adjust your play style in order to win. Chen Gong fights by summoning troops to his side whilst Fa Zheng uses a gravitational magic carpet type weapon to control enemies from a distance. Yu Jin sports a trident which he can imbue with magical properties.

The Complete Edition also comes with a few combat tweaks including a second EX attack for each character and a sixth weapon for each weapon type. You can also now manually activate storm rush and the character level has increased from 99 to 150, presumably to help you with the new difficulty: Ultimate.

The extra EX attacks weren’t required but are definitely a nice addition. There’s nothing as satisfying as nailing a combo and sending a screen full of enemies flying. This is true more than ever before with the PlayStation 4 version as its processing power allows for an enormous number of enemies on screen without noticeable slowdown or performance degradation. Furthermore, when you knock down many enemies simultaneously, they each show varying animations. This might not seem like a major thing however was one of the things that made the vanilla Dynasty Warriors 8 feel a little cheap to me so I was glad to see it addressed.

One of my major issues with the original title was the swathe of glitches and visual bugs. I’m very glad to report that the PlayStation 4 version manages to eliminate all these whilst improving the visual quality and performance of the game. Panning is smooth, enemies no longer “pop” and the draw distance is much further than before. That said it’s still running the same core engine so don’t expect any major aesthetic improvements; the bigger, and more important, gain is in graphical fidelity.

That’s not to say no effort has been made to improve the visual appeal, it’s just that the visual improvements seem to be limited to a little re-rendering coupled with some lighting changes. Whilst not overly obvious in combat, cutscenes make the improvements  abundantly clear. Coupled with the technical improvements there can be no doubt the Complete Edition offers a better experience and makes Dynasty Warriors 8 feel more like a PlayStation 3 game and less like a PlayStation 2 one.

If that’s not enough improvements have also been made to the original campaign and ambition mode. All campaigns come with additional hypothetical missions and new, post game content has been added for ambition mode. There are also small tweaks like an improved weapon fusion system and the ability to hire three body guards whilst playing ambition. It’s nothing major but an impressive thing to add to a game already overflowing with content.

Just in case all this extra content still doesn’t have you convinced the Complete Edition offers players a new mode titled “Challenge Mode”.  This is, basically, an online leaderboard mode. You choose from 5 challenges which time you performing tasks like killing all enemies on a map, speeding to a destination or throwing people off a bridge. Completing them within a target time rewards you with a weapon and also posts your score on global leader boards. It would have been a nice addition to see the character load outs other players used to achieve the top spot on the leader boards but it’s still a fun way to test your builds.

With PlayStation exclusivity comes great additional benefits. If you played the original on PlayStation 3 you’re able to import all your save data and save yourself some grind. If you own a Vita it supports game save sharing and remote play (although, for save sharing you’d need to purchase the Vita AND Playstation 4 versions). The game also supports cross platform multiplayer however I was unable to discern whether that was limited to Complete Editions or backwards compatible to Xtreme Legends on PlayStation 3.

The PlayStation 4 version also had some nice support for the console’s social networking features. Apparently (I was unable to test) when sharing via Twitch TV viewers are able to offer assistance (item drop) or hindrance (catapult barrage). It also supports the share button however, unfortunately, when sharing a photo the game doesn’t pause in the background. This was quite annoying when trying to grab screenshots for this review as I often returned to find myself defeated. I can understand not being able to pause an online game but single player?

In summary, this is the best Dynasty Warriors game I’ve played. If you’re new to the series or a hardcore fan then this game is for you. If you already own the game and aren’t fussed on DLC or replaying then it’s probably best to hold off for the inevitable Dynasty Warriors 9.

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