Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed shows us how a AAA game should move into Mobile

One of the most popular hack ‘n’ slash game series, Dynasty Warriors have now welcomed their new mobile game title, Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed. Developed and published by KOEI TECMO, XPEC Entertainment and Nexon, the game launched their limited beta test and soft launch in selected region during January and March 2017.

Rejoice guys! The game was launched globally yesterday (30 March 2017). Different from the soft launched version, the global launch version came with new servers and more language settings. Here is my little quick look into Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed (check out what we covered about the soft launch here).

Storyline and Officers

The story of Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed is almost similar with the main series, which revolves around the war and unity between the 3 kingdoms, Wu, Shu and Wei. Bringing back the classic characters from the main series, over 140 officers are collectible. There are also 3 elements for the characters, namely Water, Fire and Wood. You can form your dream team with any of the officer you collected!

Every officer comes with some unique skills including a leader skill and powerful Musou skills. They do come with some separate grades shown as gold, silver, and bronze edges too, while their stats are said to be depending on their grades. Lock your gold officers so you won’t sell or use them as materials accidentally!

Besides, there is a great feature which you could try out every single officer in the index’s practice arena, even those you haven’t collected! Levelling up and promoting your officers unlocks more skills, however I would say it is quite difficult to promote officers up to 5 or 6 stars. Here is a tip for you: Don’t sell your officers, keep them up and feed them to the same character for skills levelling-up or use them as materials for promoting your preferred officers.

Equipments

Same as officers, equipment comes in 3 different grades, each with different stats and add-on effect.

Along with the upgrade and combine options, you can attach gems on the equipment for even more add-ons! Officer-specific weapons with special appearances and options are available too as shown below.

Game Modes

Lots of exciting game modes are featured in the game. Campaign mode is quite entertaining to play, as you could watch some cut scene about the game story before the battle starts. Don’t worry if you are in rush or lazy to watch them, there is a skip button for you. Rewards from completing a campaign battle includes officers and equipment!

While for the challenges, there are daily trials giving you some special challenges, a boss fight mode which you can fight bosses along with your friends, and an exploration mode which you deploy your officer to bring back some exploration rewards.

Battlefield mode features multiplayer mode such as arena and skirmish which you fight across the leaderboards. Raid mode enable you to collect and synthesize treasures while war supply offers you some mine to occupy for equipment, ingots, coins or XP treasures. There is also a conquest mode where you can conquer the lands and get various rewards!

Gameplay and Controls

Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed is beyond fun to play. 3 officers at most can be deployed for battle, with a support officer assisting you. In addition, you can switch between officers for strategy easily. Your officers will face a huge bunch of soldiers and some strong officer (or boss) in almost all the levels. Not need to worry if your officer is strong enough as your officer skills would be able to bring those soldiers flying around, giving you lots of K.Os and chains!

As for the controls, the game uses standard controls which players can learn and master easily. Just like many RPG games out there, you move your officers with a movable joystick at the left screen corner while the attack and skill release buttons are at the right screen corner. If you are lazy just like me, you can also activate auto-attack or auto-skill mode so you won’t need to tap on the screen so frequently.

Graphics

The game is having really great and detailed graphics with pleasant looking environment and colourful combinations. However, there are still some differences on level of detail if compared to the PC versions. Their animations are joyful to look at too!

Conclusion

I would give a rating of 8/10 to Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed as its overall quality is upon my expectations. 2 points deducted because the game is still facing some minor bug issues. Hope they would fix these in the next update. Have fun playing the game!