Of course, infantry units are not the biggest threat as their damage isn’t all that great. They are nothing more than fodder compared to bosses and weapons like ballistas, which can deal significantly more damage. Without a character with a high defense or poor positioning it is possible for them to lose, and there is no way to revive characters in a fight. However, because you’ll have a ton of good healing items to spread among the troops, even if they can only carry three at once, it’s doubtful you’ll get KO’d. The only exception is if you rush an enemy far above your level, which is possible at times in levels that require escaping or moving past some dangerous obstacles. In battle there are some other objectives that can be achieved for bonus cash or items, such as killing a certain amount of enemies. Also, after each fight you have a chance of gaining a new weapon. And of course, as you progress through the game you can get weapons that carry up to six stars, which are the best weapons. They are all random, though you can buy weapons from a merchant too.
Unfortunately, everything begins to fall apart for a few reasons. Synchro Mode is one of those reasons. By lining up units a certain way, you can trigger this mode and choose where characters can move and attack foes. Usually this also boosts their stamina back up, and it even works for characters who already used up a turn. At the end of it all, even if you choose to just defend against attacks, you can launch a final assault that can take up to nine units depending on where the last unit you controlled attacked/defended. This causes every character to join in on an assault and bombard the foes, and the damage can even be boosted by mashing the X button. For example, having three characters syncing up can do up to about 60 percent more damage. All units also gain boosted EXP and SP too.
This also ignores things such as walls, heights, etc. Because of this broken ability, you can likely take out the main boss just beyond a locked room or a near impossible area. This also works well against the foes that have their levels boosted much higher. In fact, during the finale of the game, the main boss was level 99 and the game advised me to not engage them, despite the boss being near the target I needed to kill. So I used Synchro Mode to kill both and had my level boosted by nearly ten! In fact, sometimes if used against more enemies and doing more damage, you can have the Synchro Gauge instantly refill, ready for another overpowered attack. I doubt I even needed to grind in some of the early stages.
The designs of each level only really become longer and more complex during story mode, where there are enemies and obstacles that can kill party members if there is poor planning, like level 52 siege weapons compared to your level 20 units. These levels however tend to drag out, though not because of those obstacles. It’s mainly escort missions that become the real problem, as you have to slowly wait for units to get to a certain spot, and the AI isn’t terribly great. In one mission where a character has to escort some civilians, he was stopped from proceeding by a ballista. Rather than move out of its range, as the ballista only attacks what’s in front of it, he just stood there as I had to drag one of my characters around to take care of the situation. He did this twice, and because of the elevated platform there, the AI couldn’t even fight back. The only way ups to those areas are to use ramps or stairs. They are capable of defending themselves at times though. It’s just best to have at least one or two allies guarding them for when soldiers suddenly appear, and they will do that often. However, side missions where you can go back to previous areas and grind are very lacking. Even missions where you have to kill a fleeing soldier can be finished in as easily as one turn. Sometimes certain areas are granted bonuses though, such as more experience, more SP, etc.
There are other ways to break the game as well. The SP gained in fights is used in a grid where each character can gain permanent stat buffs and certain skills to help turn the tide of some fights, such as recovering health, boosting Musou attacks, and far more. Some characters have more of a focus in certain stats, such as attack power or spirit, but seeing as how you can choose where to go, you can get the buffs you want to create monsters for teammates. By the time I was around the 10-hour mark, I had already made Zhao Yun into a godly being capable of defeating bosses in a few hits. The same goes for Lei Bin, who is one of the few archer-type characters and can attack from long-range. Equipment, though, is where the real breaking of the game begins. You can temper weapons to boost their basic attacks for a lot of money, but you can also transfer skills and stat buffs to other weapons, getting as much as a 50 percent bonus to a stat. Because of all the buffing I did with Li Linqui, Lu Bu’s own daughter, I nearly had her with at least double the strength of Zhao Yun. Combine this with Synchro Mode and it’s very easy to see why this game is so, well, easy. You can switch to hard mode for a tad more of a challenge, but it honestly didn’t help in making the game much more fun.
Overall, Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers starts out as a promising title, but quickly becomes bland thanks to the easy gameplay. There’s a fair amount of content here thanks to side missions. It took me about 25 hours to beat the story while indulging in some of those side missions. However, I wasn’t motivated to complete the game to 100 percent once those credits rolled as the game doesn’t feel suited to newcomers to the franchise in terms of the story. If you have a Vita, that version might be the better option to go with thanks to portability. But unless you are a die-hard fan of Dynasty Warriors or of certain characters like Zhao Yun, you can give this a pass.
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Review code provided by the publisher. The game was also played on a PlayStation 4 Slim.
