Joystiq hands-on: Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce

by Majed Athab { Feb 19th 2009 at 9:30PM }

This isn't the first time we've played of Koei's new Three Kingdoms beat-em-up for PSP, Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce. We mashed the same buttons last year at TGS. Back then, we focused on the familiarity of the combat action, while noting how character transformations and other nuances affected the gameplay. Since then, little has changed in terms of general combat; however, we've learned new things about other aspects of the game.

The latest build of Strikeforce, a demo that can be found on the Japanese PlayStation Store, contains quite a lot more content than the previous one. This new sample contains a full roster for all three major kingdoms in the game. (Check out what the full roster looks like here.) Upon choosing a character to play as, players will be taken to the unique introductory cut scene for each kingdom. These cut scenes are gorgeous, pre-rendered CG equal in quality to thoe found in previous DW games.

Gallery: Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce

After watching (or skipping) the cut scene, the game opens in an explorable town. It feels a bit RPG-ish, as the player's character can walk around talking to merchants and buy weapons and items. Players won't be able to buy anything right away, though, as goods will have to be paid for with more than just a few gold coins; there also seems to be a need to collect metal fragments, which can be used to make armor or weapons. To collect these fragments, characters must approach the signboard at the far end of town and accept missions.

In this build, there were only two missions available. Unfortunately, Koei -- again -- did not include the massive mythical creatures we were hoping to run into the last time. The maps for the initial missions were generally small with only three to five areas (the mission map is partitioned into individual sections and is not one big map). We should note that battlefield load times seemed to have improved since our last encounter with Strikeforce. Gold is gained upon completing the mission objective, and metal fragments are dropped by random soldiers upon defeating them.

When we completed our mission and returned to town with enough supplies, we decided to make some new weapons. We discovered that players can purchase any weapon -- even if it is not the primary weapon of choice for that specific character. Characters can wield two weapons and switch between the two by tapping the circle button.

So far, our second run-in with Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce has left us slightly more impressed with the game. We say "slightly" because we were disappointed about still not being able to test out the beast boss battles. We've been teased by the images and video clips of battling giant snow tigers, so where are they? Perhaps they're something we won't find out until release day, March 24.

Tags: action, dynasty-warriors, dynasty-warriors-strikeforce, hands-on, koei