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I picked up an ancient copy of DW2 in a charity store the other week and finally got around to playing it in the past few days and I'm finding that it's a great game that I missed out on all those years ago.

One aspect that holds my interest is the ability to improve the stats of the characters as you play through the game, but I have a certain amount of confusion as to the relationship between the characters in Mosou and Free Mode play.

The manual states that characters can be used in either version and that beefing them up in Free Mode is a way to make the Mosou Mode less of a pain, but I'm not sure if the characters in each mode are the same or a different version exists for each.

I can see no way of selecting a character from the Mosou Mode when I play Free Mode and if they are the same character then that's great as I can advance them in the latter and then use them in the former.

But there seems to be no way of telling.

Can anyone help me?

Dang, been ages since I played DW2. If you get the chance upgrade to Dynasty Warriors 7, you'll literally be blown away by the graphical updates, the much more accurate historical timeline for the battles (as DW2 was missing some key ones due to time restraints when they made it) and the nearly doubled character total.

As to the problem, yes Free mode does enhance characters in Musuo mode, however, certain characters need to be unlocked via Musuo mode to get the characters for free mode.

So taking Shu for an example to unlock all the characters it is...

Huang Zhong, Ma Chao, and Jiang Wei - Finish one Shu scenario

Zhuge Liang - Complete all Shu's starting character scenarios

Liu Bei - Clear Musou Mode with every Shu character

Also an easy one to miss when you first play is...
Lu Bu - Score at least 1,000 KOs at Hu Lao Gate; can also be done in free mode

Oddly Yellow Turbans on that lvl has always been one of my fave lvls over all the Dynasty Warriors games, so I was very happy when they updated it as a DLC for DW7.

Thanks, that answered my question.

I'm thinking of playing through the series in order and also looking at the Gundam version of the game as well.

Now a Space Marine version, that would be nice...