News had been going around for this video game for quite some time but I decided to wait it out until the entire cast would be revealed, with all images for them up for grabs. Images that appear here are courtesy of the official website of Tecmo-Koei.

Would you believe it’s been 10 years since the release of the Shinsangoku/Dynasty Warriors 2?

Wait, what? Here, let me explain how the Japanese/English ports work.

The first Shinsangoku game was a 2d fighting game which was a lot like Virtua Tekken with Tekken graphics. The characters in this game are real life figures from the Late Han and Three Kingdoms period. We had one non-TK character in the form of Nobunaga Oda.

Now, the ‘direct’ sequel to this was then renamed Shinsangoku MUSOU. Note, the musou part. This time around, it now resembled the game that you know very well: it was hack and slash and featured large scenery and tons of people to fight. I placed direct in quotes since it’s more of a spiritual successor than an actual/direct successor since the format wasn’t retained. However, the first Shinsangoku game had been translated and called Dynasty Warriors 1. Somehow, the people behind the English translation thought it would be a good idea to retain the name and this lead to a title discrepancy. So the true ‘first’ Musou game was baptized as Dynasty Warriors 2. This game was released in Fall of 2000.

Ten years. It’s been that long. I never realized it’s been that long either.

After ten years of the Musou tradition, you’d think that they should’ve have long improved and stepped it up right?

Guess what. They have.

After installments of somewhat similar storylines, we finally have a new set of chapters to unravel and immerse ourselves in. Previous Dynasty Warriors games’ storylines began with the Yellow Turban Rebellion and ended around the Battle of Wu Zhang Plains. Characters have come and go, with different outfits and weapons to boot however the plot never moved much. As much as DW fans love the series, the lack of plot advancement was a turn off for some as there was no actual progress for them to indulge themselves in.

DW7 rectifies this by including the fourth Kingdom, Jin.

Now, who in the world are these people? Well, those that comprise the Jin are none other than the Sima family, headed by none other than the genius Sima Yi. Remember all those musou modes of him where he actually manages to get hold of the coveted title of unifier of China? He actually doesn’t get it, rather it’s one of his sons who does but all his efforts did pay off as it laid the foundation of what would be the Jin.

Not only will we get a storyline expansion, we’ll also have more new characters than before. A new gameplay system is going to be the heart of this installment with more weapons, animal familiars and a shop system. For people who were fans of the classic weapons of the characters, majority (not all) characters will retro back to their old weapons since the system will be similar to the older ones, reminiscent of DW3-5.

Unlike Dw6, we will have DLCs for DW7. I managed to find some art of DLC costumes for Wang Yuan Ji, Lu Bu and Diao Chan. I’ll be collecting more along the way and hopefully post them up here for everyone to view. It will also be just a PS3 exclusive.

Release date for DW7 are as follows:

Japan: March 10, 2011

USA: March 29, 2011

EU: April 1, 2011 (Happy April Fools Day!)

Enjoy the scans from the official website of the entire cast so far. (Unless they add new ones via DLC that is).