Unfortunately, the gameplay itself is decidedly less forward-thinking, offering essentially a no-frills take on the Dynasty Warriors formula. Mobs attack, and you hit the square and sometimes triangle buttons to fend them off, leveling up your character a bit along the way. The control is somewhat unwieldy, the camera is clunky, and there's not a whole lot of skill required. It gets old rather fast.
This formula has been successful on consoles, but it's not terribly engaging on the PSP. Perhaps this is partially due to the very rough graphics. While PS2-based Dynasty Warriors games have been criticized for their graphics, Dynasty Warriors for PSP looks downright rough and unpolished. The largely flat battlefields are shrouded in eternal fog, and the character models are so low-poly that the horses look like they'd be painful to sit on. The game typically maintains 30 frames per second, but is occasionally interrupted by bouts of massive slowdown. The slowdown's not a big deal, but is another example of the game's lack of polish.
While it's not truly bad in most respects, Dynasty Warriors' massive repetition makes it a hard game to recommend. A normal person will quickly become bored, and a fan? Well, there's no shortage of console-based Dynasty Warriors games to keep them busy, is there?
