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Forts and other encampments are a huge part of the Three Kingdoms novel, so it's fitting they're the basis of victory in Empires. Simply put, there are forts scattered all over the map, usually with most of them starting in the hands of the enemy. Each fort has a series of guards and regular soldiers to defend it. Kill all the guards, and the fort is yours, including the random power-ups it'll generate. Not so easy as it sounds. The guards will gain random power-ups during your attack, healing or adding to their defense, and enemy generals will often rush to protect their property, forcing you to take them down as well before claiming it as your own.
Defeated generals don't stay down either. After an appropriate delay, they'll respawn and return to the melee, requiring you to slice them up several times to succeed in capturing them, and keeping them from bolstering the enemy forces. Though these generals won't mindlessly whack at you and hope for the best either. If they're getting pummeled, they'll break off combat to rush to the nearest fort, where they can heal and make ready to charge out again when you least expect it. There are even different levels of courage. Cao Ren will stick around until he's only got a sliver of life remaining, while Lu Bu will make for the hills the instant things don't seem to be going his way.
Why just slash your foes when you can set them on fire?
Then there's tactics. Every general has a little trick up his uniform to give his side a momentary advantage, like boosting the attack or defense of their personal troops. You're also allowed to bring two of over a dozen tactics into battle. Some have an immediate effect, like doubling the experience point gain for this conflict or equipping your archers with fire arrows, and some can wait for the proper moment, like planning an ambush, or setting the whole battlefield ablaze. Before you start feeling too secure, the enemy also has the same option, and won't hesitate to bring in ice archers to give your generals the cold shoulder, or slow your movement speed to a crawl.
Another downside is the use of the same old DW5 fighting engine, complete with its usual annoyances, from its terribly uncooperative camera to its useless first person bow. It seems like they did improve the split screen co-op, however, no longer feeling like you're fighting the ghost brigade as enemies pop up right in front of you, though the occasional moments of slowdown in single player become more common when you have two screens full of action.
While something that's a bit mixed is the voice acting. No Japanese voices this time, and the English ones vary from first class to drunken hobos with severe colds. Also the generic officers, of which there are something like two hundred, only have a few different voices between them. So it's not always easy to tell just who is speaking in battle, and leads to the occasional moment of confusion. On the plus side, the soundtrack contains many tunes from past Dynasty Warriors games, and allows you to select your music before every battle to get into the mood for bloodshed.
Just because it's a mutt doesn't mean it doesn't have teeth
This is Koei's second shot at Empires, and while it's refined over the previous incarnation, there's still room for improvement. The strategy is somewhat shallow when compared to the Romance for the Three Kingdoms series, where generals have specific talents in and outside of battle, and the player can choose to be a free officer or prefect, instead of being forced to manage the whole thing as a ruler. While on the other side, the reduction in cut-scenes and other story events takes away some of the rich flavor of the mainline Dynasty Warriors series. The result is something that's more than just another expansion pack, but less than a full game in its own right.
Given more care and attention, Empires could have been the best of this genre-spanning series, but it's still an absorbing experience in its own right, which won't just leave you longing for Dynasty Warriors 6.
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