Dynasty Warriors 9 Reviews
The musou genre needed new ideas - but reinventing it as a shoddy open-world game wasn't the answer.
After the resounding success of Dynasty Warriors 8, Dynasty Warriors 9 feels like a major step back. What's lost in the move towards an individually-centered story spread across a massive open world far outweighs the minor benefits that are gained. While the excellent button-mashing gameplay stays intact with great tweaks and additions, it wasn't enough. The lack of multiplayer, missing alternate game modes, and emptiness of ancient China left me far from satisfied.
Dynasty Warriors finally gets the overhaul it's long been waiting for… and while it addresses a few old problems it creates just as many new ones.
A new open world breathes life into this ancient franchise.
Battles were raging and allies were calling for help, but for once the game offered me the option of deserting the fray and contemplating the larger world around it. It's a shame that everything else in the game works so emphatically against it.
Unfortunately, the changes in Dynasty Warriors 9 are a bit too superficial and kept too much of what made the series suffer in previous titles.
The hack-and-slash moment-to-moment action works in its favor even when transitioning to a new style of play, but Dynasty Warriors 9, like some of its predecessors, is clunky and unwieldy; hampered by the aforementioned bugs and performance problems. If you're into the idea of playing an open world game where its arcadey elements are entwined with therapeutic but sometimes dry exploration, maybe give it a shot.
The open world, RPG elements and new battle system make Dynasty Warriors 9 the first refreshing entry in this old series. This is without a doubt the way to go for future games in the Dynasty franchise.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Sadly, this isn't the breakthrough fans were expecting. Omega Force took a pretty big risk with Dynasty Warriors 9, and while its open world integration can be seen as a small triumph, this newest entry is marred by its heavily outdated approach to combat design.
Admittedly, many of the flaws or problems I have with Dynasty Warriors 9 are nothing entirely new to the series. It's just that now there's a whole new layer of problems that have been put on top of them that make the original issues that much more apparent. For almost every aspect of the game's features that I felt were on par with the quality of past titles, there is a contradiction.
Dynasty Warriors 9 is a perfect example of why you should be careful what you wish for.
Dynasty Warriors 9, with the new open world sandbox-style, is a nice new approach to a formula too exploited, but that can not stop it from being tedious within a few hours.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
With Dynasty Warrior 9 Koei Tecmo makes a decisive turning point for the saga, and despite several structural flaws, the game turns out to be a solid framework for the next episodes.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Dynasty Warriors 9 felt more like an experiment than a single, cohesive experience. At times it felt like Dynasty Warriors, sometimes an open world RPG, occasionally neither and sometimes both. But if Omega Force learns from this endeavor and buckles down for the next entry, the result could be spectacular.
Dynasty Warriors offers a plethora of playable characters, large-scale battles, and a feeling of godhood as you smash through scores of enemies with a single thing. What more could you ask for from a Warriors game?
Dynasty Warriors 9 still has the 'levelling hundreds of dudes without breaking a sweat' core loop so you feel like a badass, but the open world removes some of the depth. Fans can still enjoy, but it won't win any new hearts this time.
Whether a die-hard fan or a newcomer to the series, Dynasty Warriors 9 is sure to delight lovers of the hack and slash genre. The story is interesting enough to keep you playing, but the main focus will be on the combat. The open world aspect of the game gives you more freedom of choice, which players will appreciate. There are a few issues, but nothing too overwhelming.
There is a lot of content in Dynasty Warriors 9 and the ideas are sound, but the execution is just atrocious. I hope they continue to iterate and spruce up the genre. I love seeing new takes on familiar formulas. Sadly though this outing feels like a half-baked idea that no one on the team was really behind.
Dynasty Warriors 9 is a game that can be recommended only to hardcore fans of the genre: the formula is absolutely the same, with its inherent boredom, further stressed by a subpar open-world experience. There are some new elements here and there, but the gameplay is basically the same.
Review in Italian | Read full review