Will get back to it soon, but I ended up spending the whole weekend playing Sangoku Musou Next instead. Another different from DW7- Most stages allow you to select from different characters to use instead of being forced to use a specific character. A few stages do make you use a character in particular, though.
The most annoying part of this game? The forced one-on-one touch screen battles. Some of the enemies can be brutal and parry fucking EVERYTHING YOU DO. The game lets you immediately restart these battles if you fail, and fortunately you do not have to replay the entire stage. There's also these horse-riding mini-stages that I find annoying. They're not difficult...just boring. Controls are different and feel like a weird racing game.
I think I'm nearing the end of the story mode, BUT I haven't played anything with the new faction (from DW7) and have yet to see the DW7 XL characters pop up yet. Once I've cleared story I'll go through conquest once or twice and I'm done with it.