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Now that I've gotten this game and played it for a bit, I thought I'd give my thoughts on it. It's got some really cool points and a couple disappointing things about it.

To start with the good parts, damn near 80 characters is very nice, the idea that you can level up in battle is a nice change from the previous character improvement systems they've used and weapon fusing works well too since you can somewhat customize a characters strong/weak points by selecting what bonuses your weapon has. Since they gave up any remaining shred of hope they had of sticking to history and legend and switched completely to fiction, the plot is actually sorta ok and you'll actually read the text before each level. The tag team system actually works really well and helps to make the game less monotonous. You get various abilities by meeting specific requirements with each character instead of items and it at actually works quite nicely. Characters are broken into three classes(technique, power and speed), each with their own special moves. For example, anyone in the speed category dash in mid air, which is kinda cool looking, gets you down a hill or out of a crowd quickly when needed. Although it isn't a big deal, horses can jump on people, providing one more way to make a grand entrance before dismounting and disemboweling some guy you've never met but know is important because he has a big red name hovering over his head.

Now for the bad points. There are only four stories to play through and the characters level up very quickly, so you may run out of stuff to do fairly quickly compared to other Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games despite having the biggest selection of characters yet. Most of the levels are taken straight from DW5 and (I assume although haven't played it) SW2. The levels haven't been redesigned aside from adding a few craters and things to give it a more war-torn look in places. If they don't feel like making new maps, they could at least bring back some older ones that were particularly fun(I find each Hu Lao gate is worse then the last going back to DW2 where it was a really great map). Because you can always switch to a different character while the other two recover their health/musou, the fights are usually ridiculously easy and officer fights occasionally end up just being musou spamfests since you use it for each character pick up one of the five or so musou jars that always seem to be laying around within twenty paces and use another three musou attacks. The reason I say usually is because every now and then an officer will use a powered up attack that can kill you're character(assuming you aren't ridiculously over built up) in a single blow or you'll just get juggled to death as all the nearby grunts and higher-ups who had previously been passive decide to unleash combos in unison from which no amount of counter attacks or mid air recovering will save you. Also, I've played a couple Nanman levels and have yet to see any elephants, I suspect they've been removed. Yeah, they were annoying at times, but it was still fun to use them for stomping on people and crashing through towers and walls.

All that being said, I really the game so far. Sure, there are some frustrating moments where I'm running around with full health suddenly find myself dead the moment I let someone get in one hit that breaks my guard or combo. And sure, a lot of the maps are just ripped from DW5(which I didn't think had very good maps compared to earlier installments). But those things aside, it's still a lot of fun. Being able to switch between any three characters of my liking in a level is great, so are some of the special moves and abilities granted by having three classes. The leveling and weapon fusion systems are pretty nice too. Now if they would just make a Warriors Orochi Empires game along with a custom officer function, that would be a damn fine game.