very time I review a Dynasty Warriors title, I have to think of new ways to say that it hasn’t changed at all since the last game. If Koei spent as much time dreaming up concepts for this series as I spend thinking up new ways to say "stagnant, familiar gameplay," then this series would be changing significantly with every release.

To be fair, there are a few improvements in Dynasty Warriors 5. As always, some new characters have been added, and each one has a unique story. There are also some tweaks to the weapons, bodyguards, and the like. But most importantly, Dynasty Warriors 5 has a better framerate, vastly-improved draw distance, and can display twice as many characters onscreen as the previous entries, thanks to a new engine. These are certainly nice improvements, but don’t do anything to switch up the stale gameplay, which just flat out refuses to evolve. Sure, you can now hack through larger groups of foes at once, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s exactly the same hacking and slashing as before. The Dynasty Warriors games are brain-dead fun, but each new title is no more or less fun that the one that came before or the 30 that will come after.