''Dynasty Warriors 2'', known in Japan as , is a crowd-combat sequel to the fighting game ''

Dynasty Warriors is a series of Japanese hack and slash action video games created by Omega Force and Koei (now is Koei Tecmo). The series is a spin-off of Koei's turn-based strategy '' Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' series, based upon the Chinese novel of ...

''. It is the second game in the ''

'' series, but the first in the ''Shin Sangokumusō'' series. The game was released in other countries as ''Dynasty Warriors 2'', leading to the discrepancy in title numbers. In North America and Europe it was released as a launch title for the PS2.

Gameplay

From this game onward, the player chooses a

playable character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

general A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers t ...

, and plays through a number of levels representing particular conflicts in the time of the

three kingdoms The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Han dynasty#Eastern Han, Eastern Han dynasty and wa ...

, eventually defeating both of the other

kingdoms Kingdom commonly refers to: * A monarchy ruled by a king or queen * Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy Kingdom may also refer to: Arts and media Television * ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...

and becoming the ruler of a unified

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. However this game is not a one-on-one

fighting game A fighting game, also known as a versus fighting game, is a video game genre, genre of video game that involves combat between two or more players. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as Blocking (martial arts), blocking, grappli ...

like the original ''

'', but a

beat 'em up The beat 'em up (also known as brawler and, in some markets, beat 'em all) is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) levels, ...

hack and slash Hack and slash, also known as hack and slay (H&S or HnS) or slash 'em up, refers to a type of gameplay that emphasizes combat with melee-based weapons (such as swords or blades). They may also feature projectile-based weapons as well (such as ...

fighting game in full 3D, similar in genre to ''

Fighting Force ''Fighting Force'' is a 1997 3D computer graphics, 3D beat 'em up developed by Core Design and published by Square Enix Europe, Eidos. It was released for PlayStation (console), PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo 64 on Halloween, October ...

''. Unlike previous games in the beat 'em up genre, Dynasty Warriors 2 allowed players the freedom to roam to any point within the limits of the current stage being played. This game was the first to introduce Free Mode and Musou Mode to the series. The Free Mode allowed the player to replay any missions that they have already completed in Musou Mode. The Musou Mode is the character's main story, where you play as the officer until the kingdom you are fighting for has unified China. However, due to the small scale of the game at the time, many important battles were missing. This was fixed in ''

Dynasty Warriors 3 is a hack and slash video game developed by Omega Force (ω-force) and published by Koei (with distribution handled by THQ for the PlayStation 2 in PAL regions). It is third in the ''Dynasty Warriors'' series in North America and the second in ...

'', as many of the missing battles were added there.

Characters

There are a total of 28 characters. ---- ''* Denotes new characters to the series''
''Bold denotes default characters'' ----

Stages

Many of the stages are recreations of notable battles present historically or from the novel ''

Romance of the Three Kingdoms ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' () is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 184 AD and ...

'', while original creations became more common with the newer installments. This is a list of stages in ''Dynasty Warriors 2''.

Reception

The game received "generally favorable reviews" according to the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. Daniel Erickson of '' NextGen'' said of the game, "While it is the first third-person, 3D action game to feature a real-time battlefield, the gameplay is strictly old-school. Fun but not terribly deep." In Japan, ''

Famitsu formerly ''Famicom Tsūshin'', is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly formats as well as in the fo ...

'' gave it a score of 31 out of 40.

Notes

References

External links

Koei's Official Site
* {{Musou series 2000 video games Dynasty Warriors PlayStation 2 games PlayStation Network games Koei games Crowd-combat fighting games Video games developed in Japan Video games set in China Video games based on Chinese mythology Single-player video games