DYNASTY WARRIORS 9

Ok, so look, I like this game. It's fun. I don't want to downplay the legit complaints of people who didn't like it, I think they make good points. What it comes down to is I was just looking for something other than what they were (rightfully) expecting.

So what I wanted was an open-world game set in ancient China. I just wanted to vibe out on that, have a little fun. I don't like games that are super hard, or hard at all really, I just wanna China and chill. This game does that pretty well. Ghost of Tsushima it is not, but it's about as close as you can manage in the setting. Had to turn the voice acting to Chinese because the English actors were god awful. The Chinese ones probably are too but if I don't know it can't hurt me.

I like the big map and slowly advancing toward the objective in a full world. I like accomplishing little things to set up your big strategy in the final battle, it's nifty and it kinda rings true to the source material if you happen to have read it. I think this is what turned people off to this game. It takes the action of mosou game and slows it WAY down, I get why they'd be pissed. But I'm into it and you might be too.

I think the main complaint is the insane cash grabbing which it totally is. The price is insane. It goes on sale every couple months so you can get it for a normal game price with all the content of a normal game and you'll get your moneys worth, but the 90 bucks or whatever they are normally asking for it is ridiculous. The sale price is... fine.

I don't understand all the negative reviews, this game is Epic.
It's a Musou with RPG mix, with a multitude of characters. I was new to Dynasty Warriors and found great that many of the characters have their unique point of view of the story through the cinematics throughout the chapters of which the different characters have a different start and end.
Instead of following the story missions, which are sometimes surprising in their mechanics, you can wander around and hunt for dreadful beasts, which you may capture to have them tamed as sidekicks.
Again, there are the negative reviews... but this game is one of the best that I've played!

It has a very huge and wide map, but there's NOT much you can do. Honestly, the price is too expensive.. I don't know why they make such a low-quality open-world RPG game and sell it more expensive than Ubisoft, an expert in making open-world games.
But..
Still, gamers who love the romance of the three kingdoms would buy it. No company understands that era better than Koei.. And I definitely think it's a pretty good game from the perspective of Hack and Slash and Musou genre.
If you want a historical simulation that illuminates the era of the Three Kingdoms of China and an RPG that is maximized for the main character, I would recommend DYNASTY WARRIORS 9. However, this game is NOT recommended for those who just want open world games, military & strategies genres.

I love it, and I feel that the game has been unfairly judged by many reviewers in the past. Yes, there were initial complaints about frame rate drops, slow-loading textures, and a supposedly bland open world. However, many of these issues have been addressed with patches, and in my experience, they’re no longer problems at all.
The game was impacted by those negative reviews, which seemed to focus on minor imperfections more than the game's overall. It feels like some reviewers were nitpicking every small detail rather than appreciating the core of what makes Dynasty Warriors so enjoyable. Personally, I’ve had a smooth and enjoyable experience throughout, without encountering the technical problems that were originally highlighted.
I’m not even a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, but I am a geek when it comes to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I’ve read it more than twice, and I can confidently say that this game delivers a decent experience. While the hack-and-slash combat is as satisfying as ever, the game does a good job of giving players a sense of the warfare, and legendary characters of that era.
It’s sad to see how much sway these negative opinions have, Back in the day, we played video games because we loved the experience not because we judged them based on someone else’s opinion or technical minutiae. I wish more players would give it a chance.

This game as under went many updates and changes since the launch and is much better.

If you've played this game before then give this another try. If you haven't played this before then this will be very similar the previous games but all open world so no load screens except new chapters or cut scenes.

Major change from launch version:
Many many more enemies on the map. Before it was very empty and the major fights took place in a different load zone. Now there are groups of enemies all over the place and plenty of animals and bandits off the road to fight and even some smaller base checkpoints you can take over similar to the Empire games. And the major battles aren't in different zones so you don't transition to take part instead everything is already loaded in like an open world should be but the battles don't start until the player gets near the battle.

This is easily my favorite Dynasty Warriors game for the following reasons.
#1. It has coop on PC that works without crashing. Desync issues, but it's fixed by a quick reconnect instead of having to restart a level entirely.
#2. An open world with free character progression. Seriously I completely ignored the story for a bit and just went resource hunting. I love character progression and, while confusing, this game is very open with it. The open world is great too. Better than ubisoft open worlds.
#3. Simpler combat than other Dynasty Warrior games. Less combo memorization. More special attack based like Xenoverse. Definitely prefer this.
#4. Insane amounts of replayability due to the different characters and their story variances.
#5. They made the notably more PC friendly. This is the first Dynasty Warriors game I've had that actually detected my mouse, and there's way more settings
It's also an overpriced DLC heck-hole. Usually I'd recommend against just for that, but I feel like a positive review praising the good parts of the game is required to offset all the review bombing (most of which lie excessively). There's far worse KOEI games with far better reviews. This is realistically the best or 2nd best KOEI game I've ever played on PC.

Note this review is focused on people have some familiarity with other warriors games so probably not informative for someone who isn't.
I would recommend it if you can get it on sale. My main gripe about the price is the weapons that have been put behind DLC. Even with the DLC weapons there are still plenty of shared weapons (eg Sun Ce uses the same kind of sword Xiahou Ba uses rather than his tonfas and Cao Ren uses a flail like other characters). Without the DLC the clones are even greater and for example Zhang He only gets his claws if you have the DLC and what is worse iswhen not controlled by the player he never uses them even if you have the DLC.
Also I would say that if it is a choice between this and dynasty warriors 8 or 7, definitely chose either of those.
However, while I prefer the normal format, this is your chance to play in an open world setting for a different experience. The positives about that is the actual map on a macro scale is great and it enriches the experience having a bit more detailed geography in terms of how places relate to each other.
However, much of the elements used for the open world elements are both predictable and mediocre in execution, eg watchtowers, fishing, hunting, resource collection, minor platforming to access boxes and the ridiculous use of grappling hooks. Also some elements are fine for increasing the scale of the game when starting but are just filler you will come to ignore, notably there are automatically generated missions (eg fight some bandits or a particular named officer) and there is no reason for you to take over any of the numerous bases/cities/castles unless you have an actual mission to do so, unless you just feel like doing so.
In terms of sub-missions generally these are mostly of the kill a particular officer type (they do mix this up a bit with a few other types of missions, like escort quests, find and kill spy quests, and even some text based ones but they are hardly the main focus). This makes the game easier than other entries, as for the most part other officers are very easy to deal with and at worst they are HP sponges where you just have to keep at them for a while. Warriors games are not generally that difficult but the main reason why I feel this one is even easier is because there is very rarely any time pressure (other than very temporarily in a few limited defend this character/these units type sub-missions,). Also non-officer enemy units have even less impact than in other installments and you never really feel like what you are doing is turning the tide of battle generally. I think these problems are partly a result of the open world nature as you wouldn't be able to go off exploring if you were under time-pressure/had to worry about what was happening to your side's troops, but that takes away from a core element of the experience
Also the battle maps are by the nature less crafted for particular battles and you can get around pretty much anywhere with the grappling hook, so that makes the battles less engaging, and is another result of it being open world.
Please note that the only hypothetical scenarios are the ones in the scenario dlc. In the base game all the stories just follow the historical record. So if you win a battle the faction did not historically, in the post battle scenes you just withdraw/die etc as happened historically. Consequently characters that are only in the story for a shorter period will only appear in one or two chapters in story mode, like Sun Jian, Pang De, Wen Yang (there is a free mode separate from the story mode where you can use them in other battles).
Having said all the above, there is still plenty of content though (and they have clearly spent a lot of development time on it) and it is definitely a different experience with the open world element (even if I like that less) which is why I'm still giving it a positive, but it would be a mild positive if that were an option.