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Dynasty Tactics 2 Review - PS2

In the mid years of our high school education, we go through a phase in our history classes where we learn not only about what happened in the western world, but what happened in the eastern world too. This is often found to have a greater appeal by a lot of students, learning all the dynasties and how long they reigned through Asia for. Now, KOEI are celebrating their 25th anniversary with this brand new game to the Dynasty series: Dynasty Tactics 2. Its fast paced battles and epic quests through vast terrains make this sequel a must for any history teacher - but given most of them probably don't know how to use a Playstation 2, KOEI have made it more interesting with some awesome moves and even some combo tactics, making Dynasty Tactics 2 twice as good as its predecessor.

Gameplay

Dynasty Tactics 2 consists of 2 main parts (for those experienced in the tactics game, you may want to skip the next couple of paragraph.) - the Strategy phase and the Battle phase. The strategy phase involves building your army and deciding on where to go next and what to do with your different units. You take a move, and then the enemy takes a move around the vast Chinese terrains. Not much action and gameplay is involved in this; however what you do in the strategy phase if done properly will make the Battle phase a whole lot easier. After moving your army to where you want, if you're invading on ground where another army is then a battle will most likely commence for supremacy.

The battle phase is the more interesting part of the game, and at first you may consider it to be somewhat like a game of chess, only slightly more complex. You have several units consisting of a leader and other loyal fighters. Each one of them contains a small squad of people willing to attack anything that gets in its way. Moving the pieces around the chess board and positioning for your best lines of attack and co-ordinated tactics including combos (yes, combos!) is the key essential to being a successful strategist in Dynasty Tactics 2.

New additions to the game that weren't included in its predecessor add to the excitement levels of gameplay greatly. It looks better, plays better, and is a whole lot bigger and much more difficult than the original. This may excite you if you've played the original, or you're an experienced strategy genre fan, but the amount of stuff that KOEI have packed into this game is probably going to be a little overwhelming to a newcomer. If you're looking for a game similar to this except where you take control of a person in a fight and actually go around and hack and slash at people, there are the Dynasty Warrior games to try out too which clearly (continued next page)