Dynasty Warriors 9 Reviews
Dynasty Warriors 9 might have managed to reboot a franchise that has been criticized for so long to not take enough risks, but gets hurt by its unmatched technical upgrade and repetitive gameplay. It's still at the root of it a Musou like all games, regardless of its open world setting and added RPG mechanics, but its niche appeal, painful framerate drops and crude textures will probably only make the game stand out in its own genre.
Dynasty Warriors 9 is a set of mechanics that do not finish working. Its bad optimization in Xbox and its little ambition make the game has not ended up being the reinvention of the saga we expected.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
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.
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 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 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.
As it stands, though, Dynasty Warriors 9 is more of a foundation for the next title than the dawning of a new era for the franchise. That's perfectly acceptable, too, given that series like Dynasty Warriors inevitably must evolve to stay relevant. Right now, there are just some growing pains, and anyone who was interested in the newest iteration because of its new gameplay features would do better waiting for the next one instead.
Featuring reworked combat and open-world story mechanics, Dynasty Warriors 9 is a definite step in the right direction. But even without the technical issues around its framerate, Dynasty Warriors 9 feels like a fundamentally compromised game that lacks depth. Fans of the franchise will likely be able to see past its shortcomings, but everyone else looking for a hack-and-slash fix would do better to look at one of Omega Force's other titles, like Berserk and the Band of the Hawk.
Although it attempts to take a massive step forward, Dynasty Warriors 9 ultimately fails to deliver an open world worth exploring. Thankfully, smacking around waves of enemies is as delightful as ever.
Dynasty Warriors goes open world with this ninth installment, which is a good thing, but the game is still awful, repetitive and sometimes boring.
Review in French | Read full review
Cards on the table: I enjoyed playing Dynasty Warriors 9 a lot. Yes, it's enormously repetitive and the open-world elements don't really add all that much to the well-worn formula, but there's something appealing about the whole grand historical affair and the simplistic gameplay. You'll hack, slash and stomp your way across feudal China, grinning like a loon. Then again, there's that whole repetitive, lack of depth thing I mentioned before.
One can't help but feel that Dynasty Warriors 9 had a lot of potential. With more time in the oven it could have been a much better game than it's now.
Dynasty Warriors 9 is a significant departure from past titles, but a poorly implemented open world leaves much to be desired.
Koei Tecmo and Omega Force can neither be faulted for their resolve, nor their aspirations. The franchise has always had its cult audience but the Musou style has rarely broken into the mainstream outside of the big licenced spin-offs, like Hyrule Warriors[i]. [i]Dynasty Warriors 9 feels like an attempt to remedy that. Open World games are this generation's go-to genre and transforming the Story of Three Kingdoms has actually worked in many regards, but this feels like an early and flawed attempt at that bigger picture. Where it works best is in its classic elements, but the open world needs a lot of work. Perhaps by the time Dynasty Warriors 10 they will have learned from their mistakes.
If you are a fan of Dynasty Warriors, there is some mindless fun to be had here, but the open-world design spreads the fun so thin that it is more tedious than exhilarating.
Dynasty Warriors 9 does take the series into new territory, but in doing so it breaks the tight-knit, smooth, action-packed gameplay that we've come to know and love.
Dynasty Warriors deserved better than this, and I hope Omega Force gets another shot to do this franchise justice, because this is not how the tales of the Three Kingdoms should end.
As always it’s a mix of strategy and combat, this time with rpg elements thrown in, but for me it doesn’t really do any point that well. Once you’ve done one mission you’ve done them all. Travel here, defeat this guy and his army, take location, find some supplies. Rinse and repeat. Now there is fishing and hunting thrown in but the mechanics for these aren’t THAT good and won’t keep you entertained for hours Sometimes when you’re absolutely SURROUNDED by enemies the combat is pulled off well and can be really enjoyable but when enemies are sparse it’s not that exciting. Perhaps the clunky controls make it less enjoyable. I need a reasonable combat system when that’s all you’re doing when fighting (No magic or anything) and I couldn’t see myself wanting to use this system for hours. Overall it’s not awful, it just needs updating, a lot of updates. I think there are a lot of elements of a good game underneath but the final product here is a bit of a messy jumble and doesn’t have anything that makes me want to jump back in. Plus they’ve taken away the local coop which was always the best thing about these games.
There are a lot of exciting moments in Dynasty Warriors 9, both those related to the story or bloody clashes, but this does not match the many other problems the game has, whether the virtual world design and the size of the activities it provides, or tasks that become repetitive and similar after a period, or The characters, some of which share the same weapons and combat tactics, add to the limited level of animation, sounds and user interface, making the title many years late for many open world games.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
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.