It's been about 18 months since the Dynasty Warriors franchise made its Xbox 360 debut with Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires, but Koei has been busy ensuring we don't forget how to play the same game by dropping two Samurai Warriors games as well as Dynasty Gundam and Bladestorm in that time. My review of DW5: Empires likened the series to a veteran prostitute, the workhorse of Koei's stable, turned out regularly with a bunch of old tricks to service an established clientele who don't necessarily want anything flash. It's not the kindest metaphor, granted, but it seemed pretty apt, given how little had changed and how virtually no effort was made to optimise it for the Xbox 360's enhanced performance.

But if a "Warriors” game bears a subtitle, it means it is a different style or version of the existing generation of the game. What we have now is Dynasty Warriors SIX, a whole new iteration of the franchise, and for the first time, the game has been developed exclusively with ‘next-gen' hardware in mind. So has the new number ushered in a whole new experience, or is it just the same old Dynasty Warriors? The answer, not surprisingly, is a bit of both. Dynasty Warriors 6 is an incremental update just like every other version has been, the difference being that the increments are just that little bit bigger and better than usual.

Most obvious are the visual enhancements: the draw-distance is greatly improved, the character models are more detailed, and the levels are much more organic and natural-feeling than before. For anyone who has been following the series for a few years, there will be little doubt that this is the most substantial visual overhaul that the series has undergone in a very long time...but let's be honest, it was also an overhaul long overdue. And even then it still doesn't stack up against other games on the Xbox 360, because there is still pop-in or enemies magically appearing around you, the levels are still too simplistic, and the visual effects are rudimentary at best.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the venerable Dynasty Warriors series and just how resistant to change it has been, here's two of the listed improvements: characters can now climb up ladders and swim. Yeah, it's kindergarten stuff, but until now, these were two things – among many, many others – that these mighty warriors and warlords couldn't do. And all sarcasm aside, these two improvements actually do make the game a whole lot better because they open up the levels a bit more and allow for more mission flexibility. That's the tragic comedy of the Dynasty Warriors series, really – whenever they do update it, you'll find yourself wishing they'd only done it two or three games ago when everybody else was doing it, because now it's not new or innovative, merely a feature we've all come to expect.

Of course, the core Dynasty Warriors gameplay remains unchanged here, so you will relive important battles and skirmishes of the period of Chinese history best told by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. There are three factions (Wu, Wei and Shu) and you will begin with 3 playable characters for each side. Battling through their Musou mode (essentially a short story mode comprising half a dozen of encounters) as well as meeting other specific criteria will unlock another forty-odd playable heroes, and all told there are 17 with their own Musou mode to slog through. Given that each Musou mode can take a few hours to beat, you are looking at a lot of bang for your gaming buck here...if you enjoy that core Dynasty Warriors gameplay, that is!

Dynasty Warriors 6 doesn't break with its traditional play style at all, so if you're familiar with the X for normal attack, Y for power attack and B for Musou attack, then you'll be able to pick up the controller and begin conquering China. About the only change present to the combat is the new Renbu system, which rewards you for chaining attacks together by granting you increasing power and damage the longer you keep it going. Dynasty Warriors was never super-heavy on the combo side of things, which is just as well, because the Renbu system pretty much negates any need for combos...you just spam the X button in crowds of enemies, and you'll wind up with a bunch of bonus damage for doing so. It may cheapen the experience for hardcore fans of the series, but for everyone else it just makes your character feel even more powerful on the battlefield, which is always a good thing.

Now it's going to sound a little odd to criticise a Dynasty Warriors game for its storyline, but it feels like Dynasty Warriors 6 shirks storytelling even more than usual. The cutscenes look better, but they're shorter, and the dialogue is still pretty terrible, so keeping up with what they're trying to convey is often a nightmare. Again, this isn't something that fans will care about if they're intimately familiar with the various protagonists and factions, but for a Western audience that has little exposure to Chinese history and literature, it can be a little daunting. More importantly though, if you don't know who your character is or what they're doing or why, it creates a real disconnect between you and your avatar, and this is something that happens a lot in Dynasty Warriors 6. For us Westerners, the fact that they're also making an effort to properly pronounce the Chinese names in the audio only adds to the confusion, although it's great for added authenticity if that's your thing.

Arguably, it isn't a massive problem since the game is all about beating up anonymous hordes of identical enemies and the occasional enemy officer, and the way Koei compensates for any shortcomings in this area is with a much deeper role-playing experience. In previous games, your character could gain experience and find new weapons, but it was a largely static affair you had little control over. Dynasty Warriors 6 features an all new skill-tree system, that allows you to spend points earned from level-ups to purchase more upgrades to your core stats, unlock new skills for special attacks, or grant new abilities like faster run-speed, resistance to certain types of damage, stronger Renbu and more.

Better yet, each of the dozens of playable characters has an entirely different skill-tree (although there are numerous overlaps as you would expect), so there's plenty of scope to experiment or hone a character to the way you prefer to play. Adding to this newfound depth is the fact that you can acquire a variety of warhorses to ride into battle who can also level up and learn skills, and the new weapons you find on the battlefield can also have a host of different special abilities now too. Each battle also has three bonus objectives called Targets, such as defeating certain enemies or capturing forts within a specific time, and these can grant bonus experience and weapons too. It all adds up to a much richer experience, and personally I can't wait to see how it translates into the inevitable Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires in a year's time.

Of course it's not all roses for the series' sixth iteration – the dialogue is still woeful, the voice acting is passable at best, the music can be best described as cock-rock and the lack of options for settings and customisation is pretty pathetic, though all of this is sadly par for the course. Even areas that have seen a lot of improvement – like the battlefields themselves – still fall short of expectations. While the levels are a lot more contoured now and feel less two-dimensional, they're still pretty simplistic and lifeless. Likewise, while there's 2-player split-screen multiplayer included, there's still no sign of any Xbox Live support which is just unacceptable these days. Still, even with all these complaints, Dynasty Warriors 6 is definitely the pinnacle of the series so far, and these incremental enhancements have kept Koei's coffers full for over a decade now as we continue to begrudgingly fork out our cash just to get the newish and slightly improved versions.