Dark Souls II: Song of Defeat

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

The bridge leads to the lowest section of the temple where a haunting song is echoing along the crumbling staircases. A small handful of elite knights guard this place, but they are easy enough to turtle backstab or simply avoid entirely. At the very bottom I group up with Benhart of Jugo, Steelheart Ellie the boxer and Jin (the player) to try take on the ugliest siren ever.

One of the more difficult bosses thanks to her adds.

Alas she proves way too tough with her dark magic, teleportation, heavy halberd staff, and most annoyingly her penchant in summoning either a bunch of skeletons, a grand mace knight, or a trio of piggies. Thanks for trying Jin! I must have tried ten times to no avail before heading back to Majula in defeat. The Emerald Herald consoles me, telling me I should probably visit the castle instead now that I have the four great souls.

You mean this castle?

I heed her advice, finding I'm able to now open a once locked door in the misty woods. There's another shrine teleporter to some frozen region but locked doors and poor visibility due to a snow storm send me back quick. The Emerald Herald even shows up there to remind me what I'm supposed to be doing. After fighting a whole bunch of hollows and some elephant knights I soon reach Drangleic castle and its seemingly endless supply of soldiers. Took awhile before I worked out that they needed to die next to the hollow golems so that they can open the main door.

Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends

The eighth iteration of the same game.

Personally, the last one I played I think was Dynasty Warriors 3 a long time ago. While the graphics are better it is pretty much the same action game as that one but with more rock music because its so Xtreme it doesn't need that initial "e".

So Xtreme Lubu's horse can charge-surf through a tidal wave!

If you've never played any Dynasty Warriors game before you basically get put into the shoes of some semi-historic person and spend most of your time in semi-historic battlefields to slaughter knock out thousands upon thousands of foes with attacks that range into the magical and the absurd (but still cool to do).

Important characters (and there are quite a few) have pretty nice and unique models. The less important the character, the more generic the model. This means standard soldiers come from a clone factory and only differentiate themselves by the color of their sashes and head wraps. Not that it matters, you soon learn to pay them no attention what so ever.

There are quite a few modes of play, but my favorites were the Story mode (which you should play in order by the way, starting from Lu Bu and working your way down to Jin) because you learn a bit of quasi-history while watching a lot of cut scenes and Ambition mode which sees you develop a kingdom of your own. Toying around with making a story series for my play through on that one. :P

Overall, I found it to be a pretty entertaining game so I give it three swords out of five.