Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires Reviews
Deep but confusing strategy layered over classic Dynasty Warriors.
If Dynasty Warriors is your guilty pleasure, then Empires would be your guilt trip.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires manages to mix two largely different gameplay types into one game and makes it work. There's a lot of content to play through, and a great amount of customization. It provides hours upon hours of content without getting too boring or repetitive.
Omega Force certainly takes the core gameplay of Dynasty Warriors and boosts it considerably. A wider and deeper landscape for networking, invading and scheming, and sometimes playing as a politician, helps to make this title more than just another hack and slash experience. This depth will overshadow the lack of visual upgrade for current generation hardware.
I have to say, I had a lot of fun with Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires. The level of customization here is crazy, the political parts of the game are easy to understand, it’s fun to stroll around with officers, and the combat here is great. I feel like if I were playing this on a higher difficulty the strategy part would get insane, but there are a few different levels to choose from. This means every player can adjust this until it feels right to them. It took me around 10 hours to do one campaign and see a good bit of the events this one has to offer. There is still plenty of gameplay on the table here for me. If you are fan of these games, this one would certainly be worth the $59.99 asking price. There is a lot of meat here to keep players happy for a long time. If you want a graphically stunning version, the Switch version probably isn’t the way to go, but it runs well enough that if you want to have it on the go, it certainly isn’t a bad choice.
Aside from these mild drawbacks, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is a solid, entertaining adventure that successfully mixes depth and over-the-top combat. When off the battlefield, it adopts the feel of a strategy game and when customizing and advancing your hero, you get that distinct RPG vibe. And when you hit the battlefield, the contest explodes all over that small screen.
Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires provides you with the tools to create your own epic tale of love, betrayal and war, but it won't spoon feed it to you; your imagination must do some of the work to flesh out the experience. The change of pace from the frantic combat offered by the strategic elements of Empire Mode helps keeps things fresh, but if you aren't able to invest interest in the characters and the kingdoms, or can't stomach the cathartic but repetitive combat, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires may not win you over. For everyone else, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires is quite possibly the best Dynasty Warriors game to date, on the verge of greatness.
Dynasty Warriors is still gracing consoles with enormous, repetitive, glorious video game brawls.
A Dynasty Warriors title fused with deep strategy concepts that make it much more like Civilization. If you yearn for more than just killing thousands of enemies on a battlefield, check out Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires.
Also, until Koei Tecmo starts localising the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games again, this will be the closest we get to that superb series in English. While I do want to see the Romance games again as well, I'll take this in the meantime.
Ultimately, I came away from Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires extremely satisfied. The tactical elements outside of battle were well balanced as to be challenging while fair, and the combat carries over the best elements from the main game. It's a bit of a specific niche it's catering to -- fans of Dynasty Warriors combat and long-term strategy elements -- but if those two things are your jam, then Empires should have you hooked.
But this is really a game for a subset of an already small audience. It's hard to see total newcomers, or fans of hardcore strategy, won over by Empires' strategy-management RPG blend, in much the same way that you wouldn't expect fighting game specialists to be entranced by the Musou combat system. It's a strange compromise really, yet somehow it manages to work. As such, it's certainly worth a spin, perhaps with the upcoming F2P version, if only to get a taste of the Musou series' most complex and thoughtful offshoot.