3/5 ★ – sheldoman's review of DYNASTY WARRIORS 7: Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition.

Well I'm continuing my Dynasty Warriors marathon. Dynasty 7 is maybe one of my favourite games of all time (surprisingly) so I thought I would really like this, which is basically just a stand alone expansion of that game but it doesn't quite hit in the same way. First off, the gameplay is still great. It's quick and easy to control. Graphics are solid. Great selection of characters and the new characters are all cool (but why only new characters for one faction and the not the rest?). Lots of good maps. I had a lot of fun trying to break the records on challenge mode (well Speed run and bridge melee were a little frustrating until I figured out the trick to do it easier). Let's talk about game modes. There's no real story mode in this. There is "Remix mode" which I think is like an updated version of 7s story mode but I couldn't play it on PS Now so basically I can't say for sure. Instead it has Legend Mode which is basically a random assortment of levels sorted in a roughly chronological order that either tells a random story about a character or is an updated version of an older game level. Between levels you hang out in a castle town that you can "improve" but really all you do is buy stuff or talk to people there. These sections feel kinda pointless and the levels are alright but feel more like a free mode than an actual story. My big problem with the game is difficulty related. So the first level took me four or five tries on normal mode. It's supposed to be the easiest level in the game and its literally the only level that gave me any trouble on normal mode. At one point in the level you get slammed by Taishi Ci, Ma Chao, and Pang De (along with 3 or 4 generic officers). These are some of the strongest characters in the game and they fight you all at once before you've had the chance to learn skills or buy new weapons or anything. After that I never lost again or even had a slight bit of trouble... until I tried playing on Nightmare mode (hardest difficulty). Chaos (second hardest difficulty) wasn't difficult, but the enemies took longer kill. Nightmare is brutally hard. And unfair. That's something I need to mention about this game. When playing on the harder difficulty, I started to feel like the game wasn't playing fair. My favourite character (Gan Ning)'s special combo has two normal hits, a third strong hit, and then a like grapple that does a bunch of damage to one target and has an AOE finisher. I could pull this off every single time on normal or hard or even Chaos. Start playing on Nightmare and this combo kept messing up. Like I would do my strong hit and then try to the do the grapple and it would just miss. Or target the wrong enemy. Or not have the AOE go off. It was so weird. Then, I would try to use my special attack and whenever you press the button it zooms in on your character and then the camera goes back to normal for the attack. Somehow, after the camera would go back to normal, my character would be facing the opposite direction and totally miss the attack. Only had this happen on Nightmare, but it happened almost every time. As a trophy guy, I like trying to get the platinum in these games but this one involves a lot of beating levels on Nightmare and also a stupid friendship system that involves setting a character as your advisor, beating six levels, then having a 15% chance of having them become your friend on every level after that. There are like 60ish characters in the game. So that's 360 levels you have to play PLUS however many it takes to get the 15% proc. I played probably about 50 or 60 levels and only got 3 friendships so I decided the platinum on this one would be too much work. If you like Dynasty Warriors and you finish 7, this is an okay followup but I think 7 is more worth your time.