I have been a longtime fan of the Dynasty Warriors series. Developer Omega Force, and publisher Koei Tecmo has always relied on retelling the Records of the Three Kingdoms. Since the first game in 1997, the property has always been about slaying giant forces of soldiers and making you feel like a god on the battlefield.  While Dynasty Warriors 9 is no different, it stumbles plenty which keeps it far from being the best entry in the series.

Dynasty Warriors 9 puts story in the driver’s seat. The tale of how the kingdoms of Wei, Wu, and Shu rise, fall, conquer and be concurred, is the propelling force that guides the experience. Long gone are the pre-battle menus and preparations, traded in for an open world and a sense that the battle never stops. While putting the story of each faction in the spotlight is a good move, making the switch to open world has a plethora of shortcomings.

The open world is empty, soulless, and just plain boring to traverse. There are materials to collect, towers to climb, surrounding areas to scout, and animals to hunt. Using materials acquired in the open world allows you to craft new weapons and items. However, none of this feels good, and none of it is in any way interesting or entertaining. The ability to fast travel to previously visited locations on the entire open world map of China is a nice feature, but it almost felt like a death sentence when a fast travel point was not near to my next desired battle. I should not feel like it’s a chore to simply ride a horse across a map.

The combat has been changed, and while it works and functions well, I had to unlearn about 20 year of Dynasty Warriors mechanics to learn these new ones. Gone are the two button combos, traded in for a less interesting system. Playing on the PS4, I had to utilize the Square button for regular attacks, and then hold down R1 and then choose a face button to do a specific attack, such as a launch, a stun, a special, or the likes. I can’t emphasize enough that the combat works, and when you get the hang of it, it is efficient, but I just prefer the old style system; it felt like it flowed better.

Combat changes and open world issues aside, the story itself has many good things going for it, but just lacks in overall execution.

Leaning about each faction, the characters in the family, and how they impacted the dynasty are all on display.  A lot of the history is pretty spot on, which really elevates an overall boring experience. Leaning things like Sun Jian of Wu being a descendant of Sun Tzu was such a delight, and it is just one of many examples. While not 100% historically accurate, the information they do use paints a pretty good portrayal of the events that transpired during these warring times in China.

I put about 25 hours or so into the campaign. There are 13 chapters overall in the arcing story of the war, but there are many side stories and arcs such as Lu Bu’s battles. Seeing the “bad guys” perceiving themselves as the “good guys” was pretty entertaining. I was able to complete the entirety of the Wu story, and unlocked the final two chapters that exist only in the Shu story. The game lacks no content, because I could easily dump another 40-60 hours on completing each faction’s story and arc.  While the narrative is interesting from a historical standpoint, the execution is just poor, specifically the voice acting being absolutely horrendous. I am talking the worst in any game in recent memory. It has been a while since a numbered entry of Dynasty Warriors has had English voice acting, and while it’s nice to know what people are screaming about in the heat of battle, it is almost offensively bad in terms of quality. Character animations in cutscenes are also awful, and the lack of effective writing really holds the interesting parts of the historical story back.

Graphics are a huge issue here as well. How does this world look so poor? How do characters look so bad? Are we sure this is a 2018 game? I know Dynasty Warriors has never been known for its graphics, but this was a time for them to show us what they’ve got. While it is the best looking game in the series, the experience is completely marred by pop in of textures, character models, and mission objectives. So while it is the best in entry in the series, their best is many developer’s worst.

The other big drawback is the actual quests and objectives. Every major battle is appointed a level, and you can bring down that difficulty level by engaging in side activities or quests. What’s cool are these quests have context for the changes they will have in the main battle. What is not cool is that every mission is basically go from point A to point B, and kill the thing. This would be less offensive if the main quests were any different…but they aren’t. In the end you can run straight to that main battle, without having done any side missions, grapple over the walls of the castle you are to infiltrate, run past every enemy and officer and right to the commander, and kill him. Nothing is stopping you from doing this due to the insanely easy difficulty. I was taking posts 10-20 levels higher than myself with extreme ease. So the stakes just felt low, and I never felt any incentive to actual fight my way to a commander.

The biggest offense of this game is the complete lack of co-op, be it online or couch. The series has a had a long time standing feature of couch co-op with a buddy…and yet it is missing from the most recent entry in the series. The online feature is less of a missed opportunity as it was never really the best. People however will still miss the online feature, as it is a pretty standard feature in most games these days. The only thing I wanted to do is run across the world with a buddy, split up, and take on different bases and missions…yet they didn’t even attempt to bring any of that into the fold.

I would feel like a criminal if I did not bring up the fun factor in not only this game, but the entire series. There is something so therapeutic about slaying thousands of enemies without having to really think or even be engaged. It is a very fun experience to see the ongoing battles that you are not even a part of, affecting the front line of battle, as forces push forward and back as they lose and win skirmishes.

Being able to jump from small battles to big battles is also a great way to keep the player in the moment. The fun factor alone is what makes this game worth snagging, especially if you are a long time Dynasty Warriors fan. Newcomers are probably less likely to enjoy this game, because it is showing its age and its lack of overall innovation. However, I do see long time fans being able to find the fun a bit easier, I still think they will recognize the many back steps this entry has taken when compared to previous entries.

I wanted to love this game. I wanted to be the champion of this game, screaming its fun from the mountain tops. Because while this title is fun, it is far from good. I don’t foresee patches or updates fixing the strong issues this game has, but if all you want to do is kill a bunch of melee weapon wielding warriors, this game will serve that up just fine. I just wish they had taken this time to do something more, something bigger… something better.