Dynasty Warriors 9 Reviews
Where previous games allowed players to feel powerful by defeating an absurd number of dumb enemies, Dynasty Warriors 9 cuts out the middle man, leaving a shallow game feeling completely hollow.
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 has been on a steady run since it fumbled with the divisive Dynasty Warriors 6, and now it's in danger of fumbling all over again. Dynasty Warriors 9 goes open world and the result is a game of extreme ups and downs. For every gloriously huge battle there's a boring stint of traversal across a dreadfully barren map. For every interesting story moment or interaction, there's a horribly ugly graphical glitch. Factor in an unconvincing combat system overhaul, and you've got a Dynasty Warriors title that may disappoint even the most dedicated of fans. There's still some good historical hack and slash fun to be had here, but we expected much more from the return of this flagship series.
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9, and while its open world integration can be seen as a small triumph, this newest entry is marred by its heavily outdated approach to combat design.
There are lots of great Warriors games out there. Hell, Omega Force and Koei Tecmo gave us the fantastic Dragon Quest Warriors II and Fire Emblem Warriors in 2017! You can never go wrong with Samurai Warriors 4. Hyrule Warriors is so good, it is coming up on its third port! And there are times when I still swear Dynasty Warriors 4 is the best entry in this series. Dynasty Warriors 9 is not a good Warriors. It is not a good open world game. It is a broken, tedious mess. Fortunately, fans of the genre have plenty of older entries to enjoy. Maybe in a year or two, after Omega Force has more experience with open world installments, we will see the Warriors formula work with this genre.
Sure, the hack 'n slash mechanics have been improved and remains the main pull of this new sequel. But it's simply not enough to convince non-fans to take Dynasty Warriors more seriously. The diehards will flock to it, of course. But they may even be disappointed with its lackluster quality as well.
Perhaps the game need to improve more and make the changes to the open world so it fit in there and bring more than a wide area to free roam and add more time to play to the game only, the Japanese developer is afraid of change but the one whom changed gains gold era now and appreciation and others needs to get out of PlayStation 2 era.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
Dynasty Warriors 9 still takes a new and interesting turn that may be worth looking into if you've been away from the series for a while.
For long-time fans of the franchise, Dynasty Warriors 9 feels like it has its heart in the right place, but the implementation of the open world and MMO mechanics feels dated, creating a bland experience that does not do the colorful series justice.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dynasty Warriors 9 is a significant departure from past titles, but a poorly implemented open world leaves much to be desired.
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.
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.