Another great PSP port for the franchise, and easily the best we've seen on handhelds so far.
Warriors Orochi 2 marks the newest edition in the long running Warriors franchise, once again returning in the form of a slightly remixed port for the PSP. If you've been paying attention, or you're just a fan of the franchise, the PSP editions have slowly been gaining momentum in overall quality, and Orochi 2 is a fantastic port of the first title, including a few new characters and stages that pad the overall experience quite well. There's nothing in Orochi 2 that's going to come as much of a surprise to long time fans, and there's nothing here that'll deter the people who don't like the series for it's repetitive gameplay qualities, but as far a ports go, KOEI is headed in the right direction with this one.
Set just a short time after the first Orochi title, the different clans and kingdoms of the era are fighting once again, with Orochi out of the way there are a couple of trouble starters trying to make use of the lull in action and put their own kingdom forward a bit. However, Orochi's followers are still pretty active, and then there's the often-rumored revival of the demon that's being whispered about behind the lines. The story itself isn't particularly captivating, one the problems this game presents to new comers is that it's not shy in tossing new characters at you in every cut scene spread out against all the different campaigns you can participate in, and there's a lot to remember and catch-up on if you care at all about following who these characters are. It reminds me of an epic scale kung-fu flick, so I don't feel like the story is all that important outside of driving the overall plot forward and getting to the final battle scenario for each campaign. Basically, don't get too hung up on not remember who random dude #2 is, and just remember that you're going to obliterate the hell out of some army or another for the next half hour, and have fun doing it.
There are a number of campaigns in the game separated by the different rulers in the region and for my review I sampled a few and dedicated myself to finishing the Wu one in particular. No real reason for this, it's just the one I landed on and decided to try. From the outset of a campaign you have a pretty limited roster, and you're presented with three characters by default, which you can switch between on the fly while in battle. The idea is to have a well-rounded group, and each character is color coded into a specific class, like Power, Speed and Technique. You can alter this set-up as you unlock more characters, so there's no need to have one of each, you can go with all three power, or whatever you want. I didn't find the need on the standard difficulty to have a well-balanced group; I tend to stick to one character and do my best to max their level, using both the experience gained in battle, and the extra experience you can store up at the end of a stage. I always feel like one super-powered guy is a far more entertaining experience than just having a well rounded group, but depending on how you want to play the game, you could obviously feel differently about that.
From there on out it's a pretty standard Dynasty Warrior experience, just on a portable, and running surprisingly well, with a fair amount of enemies and characters on screen at once. The game had little to no slowdown for most encounters, even during some of the flashier techniques and abilities you can learn, which was nice to see. There's tons of content on the UMD, not only with the multiple campaigns and their individual's stages, but the Dream Stages that you unlock overtime, which present various scenarios for different characters that you can toy around with. There's a huge roster of characters to check out, and if you're looking to get 100 percent out of this game it could literally last you a year or more. One can't fault these titles for the amount of content, and they're certainly worth the asking price.
Of course, on the flip side, it doesn't reinvent the wheel, and if you've never enjoyed a Dynasty Warrior title before, this isn't going to change your mind on the series. I'll admit that combat is often repetitive by itself, you do a lot of button mashing in between the fights with generals, and the run of the mill enemies you encounter provide little to no challenge for the most part. The fun of the DW series comes from seeing how the entire battle plays out though, you can't simply button mash your way to victory, and the conditions for a win on a particular level are constantly changing or altering, with new units joining the battle, both on the good and bad guys side of things, along with different paths opening up or closing, and sneak attacks being performed. There's a lot more to it than what most people tend to think, and Warriors Orochi 2 fits into that mold quite well.
Basically, if you want a portable DW experience, Warriors Orochi 2 is the way to go. It's the best version of the series on the PSP so far, and you can tell that KOEI is getting better and better at porting the console experience over mostly intact, so it's absolutely worth buying for fans. For everyone else, I'd say at least give it a rental if possible, it's worth giving the series a shot, even if you've been put off by it in the past. There are no great changes to the structure in this version that I can think of, but it's certainly refined itself over the years, so it warrants checking the series out again if it's been a while. I definitely enjoyed it, and highly suggest for the fans of the Warriors games.
