The infamous ‘invincible warrior, Lü Bu receives his own storyline- providing a bit of redemption for the formidable, pheasant tail-donned boss character. Xtreme Legends Complete Edition weaves even more of these into its plotlines, unlocking hypothetical scenarios when players complete certain actions during each kingdom’s story- as well as a concluding side-story mission that’s assured to amuse fans. More recent Dynasty Warriors entries have enlarged the number “what if” scenarios, extended imagined challenges between the Wei, Wu, Shu and Jin clans. While each games’ overarching battles are drawn from literary context, the more personal undertaking of guiding a single character to dispose of hundreds of oft-inactive foes is pure power-fantasy. Since the franchise’s musou-driven mechanics were first established in 2000’s Dynasty Warriors 2, developer Omega Force has offered increasingly loose interpretations of the source material. Concurrently, the recent release of Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita demonstrates unification- appending mislaid characters such as Chen Gong, Lü Lingqi into Dynasty Warriors 8’s already profuse cornucopia of content. A sprawling series which has spawned eight main iterations, a variety of spin-offs and tactically-rooted variants, as well as offshoots situated in the worlds of Gundam, One Piece, and Fist of the North Star, the Tecmo-Koei property has splintered into a mini-industry. The opening lines of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms encapsulate not only the cyclical destiny of a post-Han Dynasty China, but also the trajectory of the Dynasty Warriors franchise. “It is a general truism of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide.”
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