Dynasty Warriors 9 is a hack n' slash game for several consoles. I played it on the PS4. It is notable for being the first entry in the series on the PS4/Xbox One, and also for attempting to translate the series' older, self-contained mission focus into a more modern world open world game.
Dynasty Warriors 9 is an absolute train wreck. To be clear, the Dynasty Warriors games have never been "good" in an objective sense of the world. The storytelling is extremely garbled and difficult to understand. The dialogue is silly. The characterizations of many characters are totally bland and uninteresting. The combat is over the top, lacking in interaction, and empty fun. The RPG mechanics are thin, at best. But Dynasty Warriors 9 somehow manages to take what was good and fun about the series and water it down, while simultaneously extracting the worst elements of modern open world games and transposing them on a franchise for which they were never suited.
In theory, open world and Dynasty Warriors should be interesting. The older Dynasty Warriors games were a series of missions that told the story of a conflict between powerful Chinese families that spanned multiple generations. These missions, however, fell fantastically short of communicating the broader scope and gravitas of the outcomes of said missions, as the player is left without any idea where Chi Bi is, or Nanman, or who these people are, and why we should care. The geography of such a story should be interesting, and Koei Tecmo has experimented with that through the Dynasty Warriors Empires series, which intercuts the hack and slash action with a turn based strategy interface that allows you to command your armies and gradually take control of the Three Kingdoms. However, this series is completely divorced from the actual quasi-historical tales from which Dynasty Warriors takes its inspiration, so it really feels more like Risk. So attempting to place your character in a real world setting, and having their actions impact the outcomes of battles, was very interesting to me, despite my general distaste for the modern approach to open world gaming.
However, Koei Tecmo has succeeded in creating an open world game with nothing of interest between the missions and a lack of ability to change the shape of the conflict beyond rote reduction of your foes' power. Finishing smaller missions has the effect, basically, of reducing the levels of the officers in the final mission. Sure, you'll see some water in a place if you execute a flood attack. Or there may be fewer small troops between you and your foe. But in reality, you always just sprint past every obstacle to reach the primary enemy, kill him, and end your mission anyway, so these smaller changes (which are rare when they exist), fail to communicate the import of the mundane tasks that always made Dynasty Warriors so delightful.
All of the tropes of modern open world games are here. There is crafting. There are towers that reveal nearby landmarks. There is a huge map with missions and icons everywhere. There are a wide variety of shops. You can hunt. There are hidden items everywhere. Ultimately, none of it is fun, beyond the basic Dynasty Warriors hack 'n slash formula, which makes you wonder, why do the open world part anyway?
In fairness, I really despise the open world style of modern games in most cases. A few, like Breath of the Wild, have succeeded in creating a world that is vibrant, filled with fun, and the exploratory delights that are rooted in classic games like The Legend of Zelda. I would count Grant Theft Auto 5 among these as well. But Dynasty Warriors 9 falls so far short of these benchmarks that it's laughable. The fact that most reviewers say the same things as me encourages me that I'm not just biased against this particular genre of game.
All of that would be enough to give this game a dismal rating, but when you throw the insane amount of bugs and genuine lack of polish to this game, it becomes an absolute train wreck. Riding horses is a hilarious enterprise that will result in you routinely shaking your head in disbelief. There's an auto ride feature that will take you to your destination, but will more likely have you running around in weird circles, going the wrong way, and taking very long routes to your destination.
When the game launched, it did not have any multiplayer. Now, there is both local coop and online coop, which is at least better. But for a game built on a long history of fun couch coop to launch without any...what a mess. However, when you play in coop mode, the graphics take a serious hit, so beware. It is slightly more fun with a friend to enjoy laughing at all of the ridiculous bugs you will find in this game.
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend Dynasty Warriors 9 to anyone. Dynasty Warriors 8 was actually a really fun experience on the last generation of consoles, so there's really no reason to play Dynasty Warriors 9. This is a truly awful game that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, and lost a lot of what made the original games so fun to play. I'll give it a 3.0/10.
-TRO
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