Name: Dynasty Warriors Fighte'rs Battle
Genre: Action
Platform: Nintendo DS

Dynasty Warriors has never been about innovation. The first game in the series and possibly the sequel made a mark in the gaming world by allowing players to face hundreds of enemies on the screen at once – quite a feat. However, as the games continued to be made they lost all of that cute appeal and became just remakes with slightly enhanced graphics (emphasis on slightly).

Now it ventures from feudal China to your Nintendo DS. The game remains fairly unchanged from its console counter parts in terms of gameplay. Hitting the same attack button over and over delivers combos, and some other buttons do some other attacks. The D-Pad moves and, well, that’s all she wrote.

Graphically the game takes a turn from the original. Instead of throwing big blocks of mediocrity onto the screen in the way of trying to make 3d models, they opted to use sprites on 3d backgrounds. A good move, as the visuals are not the selling point of DS games. However, the selling point of DS games is usually on the gameplay – an absent feature in this new incarnation.

The touch screen is not used in the slightest bit. Not even for menus, selecting items, or any other fun function it could have had. Some of the characters that can be played are able to call down rocks from the sky and other ranged attacks that could have been whimsically mapped to the touch screen. Alas, the developers failed, and decided to make the bottom screen nothing more than a map.

The single player is short. Very short. A quick run through shouldn’t take more than two hours and the game is repetitive enough where odds are a second play through would be your last. The multiplayer does very little to enhance the mediocrity. Unless you are an obsessive fan of the series, don’t buy this game. However I do deem it worth a play, so I say…