Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends is the expansion to Koei’s Dynasty Warriors 4 and the game upgrades the original in many ways. Unlike some expansions to videogames, Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends is a game that you can play entirely without the original, although if you have Dynasty Warriors 4 on-hand it will doubtless make the game more enjoyable since you can continue leveling up your favorite warriors from that game and even obtain for them an entirely new final weapon. In case you struggled with getting each character’s level 10 weapon in the original, you can now obtain it a different way in this one (although this will now be inferior to the new very cool level 11 weapons that have been implemented into the game). These final weapons not only give you more power than the level 10 weapons but also increase other stats of your officer.

Onto the meat of the game, Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends offers two new modes and an additional new challenge in challenge mode. The first new mode is called “Legends Mode” and gives each of the 42 characters in the game their own level. Thus, even if you don’t own the original, you will still have the opportunity to play through a ton of battles. Koei calls the battles in Legend Mode “skirmishes” because they are at times smaller than the much larger fights of the time period like Yiling, Chi Bi or Guan Du. In any case they offer something that Dynasty Warriors 4 couldn’t. If you were somebody who was disappointed that each officer in any given kingdom had the same stages as every other officer in their same kingdom, then Dynasty Warriors 4: XL will allow you to play an extra new level for every character in the game, thus making it worthwhile to level up more characters in the original before taking on each warrior’s legend mode (although you can play Legend Mode without the original, some levels are a bit more difficult than others which makes it tough to beat some stages without first leveling up the characters in the game). The new stages themselves are quite fun and often very different from anything offered in previous DW games. In Dian Wei’s legend for instance you’ll have to defend a gate from enemy troops while your lord tries to escape. To make this much more challenging, you start at low health. Like Dian Wei’s stage, many of the new fights in Legends Mode have special conditions to win and unique missions to offer. You will no longer always be ripping through opponents and then taking down the commander. Now you might need to do things like protect juggernauts, snipe an enemy officer from afar, avoid slaying peasants or kill a rival before he can escape from your clutches.

If you get tired or stuck on Legend Mode you can also start up a new game in ‘Xtreme Mode,’ an entirely new feature that Koei has added to this expansion. Unlike Dynasty Warriors 4: XL’s Legend Mode, Xtreme Mode is mostly the same for every character, so you can just pick your favorite and head out to war. The idea of Xtreme Mode is to go through a series of random missions and see how many you can beat. Sound easy? It might be for some players but it can be extremely challenging for two reasons, these being that you don’t heal after you complete a mission and the opponents you fight will get significantly stronger after each level you beat. In Xtreme Mode you’ll encounter a multitude of allies, adversaries and even shops, where you can use gold that you get from winning missions or fulfilling certain conditions within a mission, to purchase health restoring items or other things that might help you on your quest. In the shops or on the battlefield you might be able to hire certain officers to help you through the missions. These will act as bodyguards and they level up and become powerful pretty fast, making them very useful allies. All in all, Xtreme Mode is a ton of fun and can keep you busy for quite a while on it’s own.

Finally a variety of different things available in the original game are accessible in Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends as well. Although you can get your leveled up characters and unlock the original musou mode from Dynasty Warriors 4 only if you use the Dynasty Warriors 4 game disk, you can still view the encyclopedia, play the challenges in challenge mode offered in Dynasty Warriors 4 and create your own bodyguard unit or character like in the original game. In challenge mode there is also a new challenge called “Arena” where you fight against a bunch of random officers in duels. The whole Dynasty Warriors 4: XL package comes at a modest price, and one that has probably been lessened since Dynasty Warriors 4: XL has been out for a while. The amounts of content that Dynasty Warriors 4: XL adds to the original is amazing and allows the expansion to even function as a standalone game. If you own the original Dynasty Warriors 4, it’s well worth it to pick up the expansion pack. If you don’t then I recommend grabbing both or buying one and renting the other. On it’s own I would probably give Dynasty Warriors 4: XL anywhere from a 7.5 to an 8.5/10. Combined with the original however the game gets a solid 9 for the sheer longevity of a game that has 4 different game modes (musou, legend, challenge and xtreme modes), an educational encyclopedia archive and the ability to create your own characters.

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• Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends Front and Back
  
  

• Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends Disc