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While most series thrive on innovation and change, advancing storylines to greater degrees of complexity the Dynasty Warriors series strides the line between stagnation and enjoyable familiarity with great success. Though not as universally loved as some series it definitely has a huge cult following. The newest release for the series follows the formula they’ve established so far: a new Dynasty Warriors title is released with some alterations to gameplay, improved graphics and possibly some extra characters. Then they release the Empires update which is designed to provide a more strategic gameplay experience.

Here’s the basic rundown on the Dynasty Warriors series for anyone unfamiliar: you (and possibly a friend) play as warriors in feudal China and spend your time plowing through hordes of opponents on a variety of battlefields. Many characters have story modes which are held together by text explanations and cutscenes, though this is a fairly optional experience as the game is in no way detracted from by skipping them. The battles are rather epic as your characters are generally larger than life, featuring heavily stylized costumes and bearing powerful weapons allowing you to sweep aside entire groups of enemy soldiers in a single swing. As you progress through battles you improve your character, gain new and superior weapons and collect horses.

The Empires games play differently than the rest of the series. Gone are the cutscenes and detailed stories where you simply go from one battle to the next. The vast majority of the game is still centered around the epic conflicts, but you’re allowed to do things at your own pace. You begin a campaign by choosing your time period which only affects which factions will be the most prominent.

There are three subsections of the campaign mode, vagrant, officer and ruler mode. Which one you begin with depends on which character you choose. In vagrant mode you are simply a wandering warrior unable to affect the overall landscape. You engage in battles by accepting mercenary assignments, though there aren’t any with a profoundly negative spin. They vary between protecting villagers from bandits or ‘monsters’ (tigers and wolves who possess elemental attacks), wiping out groups of pirates or protecting units on their way to an escape point. Each event has its own set of optional objectives which you can do to gain more experience, gold and gems (I’ll get to these later), though these would be far more interesting if there was some variation between them. In these mini battles you’ll find other characters in need of assistance; help them a few times and you can recruit them to journey with you.

Though you can spend quite a lot of time engaged in mercenary work and improve your character eventually you’ll want to join up with a faction to start making your mark on the landscape. The easiest way is to join up with an existing ruler to become an officer (you can move to whichever area has the officer you prefer to side with). As an officer you embark on battles when instructed to by your liege lord, but serve a ruler long enough and you’ll be trusted enough to help dictate policy at the occasional council meetings.

If you’re not a fan of dancing to someone else’s tune you can strike off on your own and invade a land to usurp its rule and begin your own rise to prominence. This is where strategy comes into the picture, though it’s not a terribly complex system. As a ruler you can assemble a cadre of officers, each of whom has their own troops to bring to battle. When you invade a territory you have to choose which officers to bring with you and your choices will determine how much work you’ll have to do to defeat the enemies. As with other Dynasty Warriors games the map has various bases including supply camps, armories, watchposts and each force’s main camp and while it’s not essential to conquer every camp in sight, the enemy commander doesn’t appear until you’ve connected your main camp to theirs by conquering certain bases as indicated by connecting lines on the main map.

As you battle your officers of course lose troops. Do poorly enough and you can have officers defect mid-battle. Of course the opposite can happen with enemy troops changing their stripes and joining your side. While eventually you can get enough officers so rotating out those with diminshed troop counts allows you to invade more often (you can only attack once per month) it’s important at first to be cautious and gauge your strength relative to your enemies. You also have certain cards that can be played to give you an edge, some improve attack strength, others replenish troops while still others offer more resource points (needed to utilize the cards) in future months at the expense of gold.

The greatest appeal of this game relative to standard Dynasty Warriors titles comes in the sheer level of customization. In battle you can give orders to your troops- tell them to attack and they charge forth at enemy bases. Issue an order for defense and they’ll stalwartly guard your bases. You can also instruct them to regroup on you or simply tell them to do what they think is best (which most often just means attacking).

In between battles you can also invest money into upgrading your weapon, training new skills and purchasing better horses. This is essential as unlike many other entries in the series, losing happens quite often at early levels. An enemy officer can occasionally slay you in a single quick combo. Cash gets you a stronger weapon and allows you to imbue it with elemental damage, increase its range and many other things. You also have new special skills similar to the tome abilities in DW6. Send out a sheet of fire to toast your opponents, improve your attack for a period of time, enable a high-speed dash attack or even restore your health by using one of up to four special skills. No matter how much money you have, it’s impossible to imbue your weapon or learn new abilities without the relevant gems. You get these over the course of battles and by purchasing them in shops. You can also put money into the weapons and skills of allied officers, be they the special characters we’ve come to know and love or run-of-the-mill officers, giving you the choice of either relying upon group strengths or simply pimping out your own character and blazing across the battlefield, striking down everyone in your path.

Empires also brings back a feature that has been absent from the series for some time: the ability to create your own character. The level of customization is surprisingly robust- you can change everything from hairstyle to height and even change the pitch of their voice. As you play through the campaign mode you unlock more clothing and armor options which you can add to existing customized characters as you play. While you can choose any existing character’s weapon style, it would have been interesting to have a few entirely new options to choose from.

The character roster only has one addition, Meng Huo, though they’ve addressed the complaint many had with DW6: that most characters felt the same, bearing mostly polearms, swords and clubs. They gave Zhang He back his claw weapons and Taishi Ci his characteristic dual rods. Ma Chao bears an impossibly huge sword, Cao Pi wields a long narrow sword suited to quick attacks, Ling Tong uses a three-section-staff and Yue Ying has a strange weapon mounted on a bracer that’s part sword and part crossbow. The most interesting however is Meng Huo whose weapon is a simple yet massive stone column.

The game did unfortunately drop a few of the more interesting features of Dynasty Warriors 6. In Empires when assaulting a castle or base you no longer have to smash through the door or claim ground for siege weapons. Everything is open to whatever invading army happens by, which while easier overall feels less authentic and takes away from what could have been another layer of strategy. They’ve added in the ability to select the background music for your battles and have included an incredible array of songs from the series back catalog, but unless you have a particular fascination for their odd blend of Chinese/techno/rock music I’d just recommend supplying your own soundtrack.

It’s an excellent game for fans of the series or someone who’s looking for a bit of simple escapism, but if you only had a lukewarm interest in these fanciful, semi-historically inspired tales this won’t likely do much for you.