495 Words About: Killing 276 Yellow Turbans, Dynasty Warriors 4
I decided to once again fight the Yellow Turban army that sought to overthrow the Han Dynasty, and in order to do that I needed to choose a great warrior.
Obviously I started with Guan Yu.
And if you have to ask why, you clearly haven’t seen the man’s beard. It is…literally legendary. Legendary beards typically don’t optimize one’s ability to slay 276 digital dudes, but they don’t not help. Besides this is Dynasty Warriors 4 I’m writing about, so there’s at least a one out of four chance I’ll be playing as a dude with expertly manicured facial hair.
I’ve played the level Yellow Turban Fortress for Dynasty Warriors 4 more times than I’d care to admit and that’s entirely because I always used it as an easy way to level up dudes before tackling campaigns. Every character (with the exception of Lu Bu) starts off relatively weak, and as campaigns progress difficulty levels steadily increase. I understand that some players play videogames to enjoy the steady progression of strength and watching their character become stronger; the problem is this is a hack-and-slash Koei game, which means I’m here to decimate thousands of dudes and feel like bona-fide god.
So, whenever I unlocked a new character I would typically have them fight the Yellow Turbans to beef them up a bit.
Guan Yu towers above every character on the field, and as I swing his glaive through waves of Yellow clad grunts I recognise how quickly the game creates this beautiful power trip. Whether it’s the visuals of watching the dramatic death animations, the sound files of dudes screaming hyperbolically as they perish, or the numbered scores that flash on screen like the best (and worst) slot machines it’s all a visual and auditory spectacle that works in creating the perception that I am an indestructible god of war.
Because I am.
Yellow Turbans are the weakest enemy non-playable characters (npcs) in Dynasty Warriors 4 because they are the first-level enemies. It takes typically one swing to kill a Yellow Turban soldier, two swings for a squad leader, and then typically eight to ten swings for captains. The point is all of these dudes are made to just run up and be destroyed, and even at a lower level Yellow Turban Fortress does an incredible job of introducing the mechanics of fighting while also establishing the expected flow-state of gameplay.
Which is killing a ton of dudes.
As a design the Yellow Turban missions provide a series of quick, easy kills to instill confidence in players, and Dynasty Warrior videogames are superhero narratives as they are historical fiction. All these kills generate a perception that I’m playing an unstoppable titan rather than a flesh and blood man. Eventually enemy soldiers will attack Guan Yu, enough to cause real damage, however by then the man will be a true god of war.
And the majesty of his his beard will inspire fear in his enemies.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
10.6.2025
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