Shin Sangoku Musou Advance

aka Dynasty Warriors Advance outside of Japan.

The Shin Sangoku Musou series with multiple PS2 games, expansion packs and even a PSP title moves along to Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance. While all of the other Shin Sangoku Musou (aka Dynasty Warriors) games boast endless battles with hundreds of troops to fight, the GBA version is fairly different. The core blend of war tactics and button mashing can’t be done on the GBA’s hardware. Koei went all the way back to the drawing board with this game, to create a unique Shin Sangoku Musou title.

Story mode starts out with you selecting one of three factions, Wei, Shu or Wu. Then you can select a warrior from whatever state you choose. The game does feature nine characters to play with from the start. Familiar faces from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga are Xiahou Dun, Zhou Yu, Sun Shang Xiang, and Zhao Yun. Once you pick your character you move onto a story battle. However, it isn’t a wide open field where you wail on enemy troops endlessly. Instead you start out on a board game like grid. The goal is to move all the way towards the enemy general before enemies move towards your opposing general. Your general, as well with all troops, can only move one square at a time. With each move you can be fortunate enough to find new weapons or enter in battles when you share a square with an enemy troop.

Battle mode switches the game to open field where five to six troops appear at anyone time. You can swing a regular attack by hitting A and a heavy strike by pressing B. Just like in Dynasty Warriors you can mix up different attacks by starting a combo by pressing A and then ending with B. Pressing A then B yields a stun attack, AA then B finishes up with a long combo. The other combo you have, AAA then B, ends with a powerful spinning move that can get you out of being surrounded. No matter which character you pick the move structure is the same. Where characters do differ, slightly, is in their musou attack. Just like in other Shin Sangoku Musou games hitting enemies or grabbing a jug of sake fills up your musou meter. A full musou meter can be activated by pressing L+A to unleash your ultimate attack. Musou attacks are a longer, heavily damaging combos. Some of them like Xiahou Dun’s are designed to corner an enemy and concentrate damage. While attacks like Zhen Ji’s move back and forth to hit as many surrounding enemies as possible.

For a GBA game the battle system is fairly decent, but the continuous fighting may not have been the best direction for the game. Each battle has a K.O. count in the upper left hand corner. To "win" the battle you need to eliminate that many troops. If there is an enemy general you’re confronting they will be the final enemy to fight. Most of the time are only three troops you’ll fight. A melee solider carrying a spear or possibly a sword that has a simple three hit combo. A silver coward that runs away into a corner, wasting clock time. Most annoying out of all of them is the lone archer. They run away like the silver troop, but also shoot arrows that can make you lose your level up bonuses.

On the right hand corner there is a multi colored wheel that with a meter that fills green in the middle. With each K.O. the greet bar rises and when it’s full the top most icon on your level up wheel will be active. If you press R you’ll activate the bonus. Or if you wait for more K.O.s the flashing icon will move clockwise so you can select a different bonus. Bonuses that you can select from are speed up, attack up and other statistics. When you get enough experience points from fighting all of those bonuses that you activated will be added to your statistics. If you want to give your character a big power boost, this is the way to do it. If you’re hit by a seemingly insignificant arrow or are slammed to the ground you’ll lose one of the hard earned level up bonuses before you can incorporate it. The level up system encourages you to avoid hits as much as possible. If you don’t play by these rules you’ll find your general severely underpowered against computer controlled generals.

On the GBA the graphics changed from a realistic approach to a SD (super deformed) look. Characters have huge heads on tiny bodies, which is an interesting choice for game design. There are a couple of battlefields to fight on that are reused again and again. You’ll fight on the same town area, empty grassy field and mountain areas. The gameplay engine seems to handle the amount of troops and extras on the screen fairly well. With only up to seven moving characters, slowdown is rare. The game’s detailed encyclopedia has some more realistic, but static graphics. Sound wise you hear the same battle music over and over. The couple of tunes that are present are reminiscent of prior Dynasty Warriors games. The other major inclusion is a couple of voice clips taken directly from the PS2 games.

Where the game does shine is in replay value. Like other games there are plenty of weapons to collect. The Game Boy Advance version has them hidden so well that you’ll need to explore every space to find them all. Add in three different story states to play as plus secret characters and you have over 20+ hours of gameplay. For the really hardcore there is the possibility to level up your favorite general as much as you. Barring the rules of making a portable title short lasting Dynasty Warriors Advance has plenty of gameplay, if you’re into it.

As a whole package Shin Sangoku Musou Advance is a mixed bag. The core gameplay is button mashing fighting. While other Dynasty Warriors titles are guilty of the same thing, the atmosphere of being in a huge battle made the game a lot more entertaining. Battling five or six troops in waves may not be enough to entertain gamers, even fans of the series. However, it’s unique nature and game board approach makes it worth a look for fans of previous games.

Import Friendly? Literacy Level: 2

If you’re into the series you probably know how the story is going to go anyway, so missing dialogue is not a big deal. Of course the game features menus and a tutorial that are in Japanese, but these aren’t a huge hurdle to overcome. The gameplay is simple enough to understand. Where importers may run into trouble is when trying to decide how to equip their characters.

US Bound?

Nintendo chose to publish Koei’s game under the title Dynasty Warriors Advance.

+ Pros: Plenty of stuff to collect and twelve different characters to play as.

- Cons: More repetitive than other Dynasty Warriors games, if you can imagine that!

Overall: Shin Sangoku Musou Advance has it’s moments in innovation, but endless fighting separates this title from the masses.

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