Rule 32: Enjoy the little things in life.

Love it or hate it, the Dynasty Warriors series has been around for quite a while, and it probably isn’t going anywhere soon. I find myself in the former category. While I’ll admit the series has its faults (namely the lack of change), there’s something about mindlessly slaughtering hundreds of troops in a few minutes with nothing more than a spear and an over the top moveset. Throw in co-op, and you’ve got a recipe for some good fun. A recipe that hasn’t actually changed much. Ever. But even with just minor changes from game to game, it’s still quite fun.

Believe it or not, Dynasty Warriors actually has a historical setting, and the characters you play as were actual people. Set during the Three Kingdoms Era of Chinese history (roughly 180-290 AD), during which, three kingdoms, Wei, Shu, and Wu were battling for domination of China. Constantly warring. This inspired the great historical epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms (similar to Homer’s Illiad). Dynasty Warriors was based directly upon this epic.

Now, recently released on DVD and Blu-ray was a movie by John Woo (famous for Hardboiled and other Hong Kong action movies) entitled Red Cliffm which in Chinese is Chi Bi. Any Dynasty Warriors fan should instantly recognize the name. It was a very important battle and generally the midway point in DW. In the battle, the much smaller armies of Wu and Shu ally to defeat the much greater and powerful Wei through means of tactics, trickery, and having awesome generals. That’s oversimplifying it, but its the gist. The movie starts a bit before (Chang Ban) and shows the developing alliance and ends with the titular battle. Now, that’s all well and good, but does the movie entertain?

In a word, yes. In two words, hell yes. Filled with action as only the master John Woo can do, it’s a great war movie with spectacular battle scenes. As a fan of Dynasty Warriors, it was with great glee seeing some of my favorite characters portrayed. Tony Leung did a fantastic job and Zhou Yu, a favorite character of mine, and the general tactician for the battle at Chi Bi.  Also appearing are Zhuge Liang, Gan Ning, Sun Quan, Xiao Qiao, Sun Shang Xiang ,Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Cao Cao and more. So while it’s not everyone we’d like to see, it’s still a damn fine list. And the characters really do look their part. Quite excellent.

It’s important to note there are two versions of the movie, the Theatrical version and the International version. See, Red Cliff was originally released in two parts, but Woo shortened it for American release and so it could be viewed in a single sitting. My advice? I watched the Theatrical, loved it, and ordered the International Blu-ray. I advise you do the same. Watch the shorter one, see if you like it, then go order the full one.

I started out with Dynasty Warriors 2 on the PS2, and I was blown away. Had so much fun playing it. I then played all from 4 on, all the way through 6 Empires (4, 4 Xtreme Legends, 4 Empires, 5, 5 Xtreme….) including Samurai and Gundam Warriors and Orochi. Granted each are basically the same with a few small to medium differences, but they’re still fun, and the small changes are enough for die hards like myself. I’d like to make special note of the Empires and Orochi games. The Empires games play like a lite version of Risk and have always been quite fun. The Orochi games are crossovers between Dynasty and Samurai games, and instead of controlling a single character, you set up a team of three you can rotate on the fly, and there’s special team attacks, kind of like Marvel VS Capcom. Fun.

The Dynasty Warriors

The Dynasty Warriors games have always been about over the top action, cool characters and hacking and slashing and slashing and hacking. Red Cliff is an excellent war movie depicting one of the most exciting battles from the era. I highly recommend both.

–theindiegeek.