DYNASTY WARRIORS 9

I don't understand the hate, but the game is actually pretty good. I invested 300+ hours on this game without using Fast Travel and I find the open world very relaxing. I do agree a little bit on the Open World setting to be empty, but I don't find it bad. If you want to give this game a shot, I recommend you to play your favorite Officer from the start to the end. Here's my full review below:
Combat
- Obviously, DW9 combat is WAY better than the awful Rembu System in DW6. I've experimented a lot with various items, but I find the Fine Bag of Wind, Gold Crown, Mirror of Transformation and Pike of Judgement to be the best. The combat is fast paced, intense and fun. However, I find Hard difficulty easy, so I crank it to Ultimate after leveling my characters 10 levels above the enemy, and equipped with EX Weapons.
- The Flow and Reactive attack system is so engaging, it compensates the cloned move sets. I never expected how much fun playing as Sun Ce and Wen Yang with the bad weapon choices Koei Tecmo gave them.
Open World Traversal
- In my perspective, the main goal of the Open World system is to relax, relieve the stress of the fighting, and travel as you see fit. The game is NOT forcing you to manually travel every time you need to reach the next objective. All you need to do is to travel and discover the location, I don't get the hate. It's not that bad.
- Most of my play time was travelling by manually or auto-run with a horse, it was relaxing.
- Too bad there are not enough Towns and Peasants in this game to explore or discover, and that's my only complain about the Open World map.
- The Open World causes the Battle of Chibi to be slightly broken. Ready your Exploding Arrows and prepare on defeating Cao Cao in the water lmao
Content
- In Story Mode, you play as the Officer beginning with their service to the Kingdom up until to the end when they died or retire. That means for example, you play as Liu Bei from Battle of Yellow Turbans to the Battle of Yi Ling, that's long.
- Side Missions' battle for some reason, are fixated in 2-3 different locations outside the City, I find it annoying but it kinda works.
- Officers level up so fast on higher difficulties, it becomes easier when you get the hang of it.
- Hunting is fun, but the Bow camera sensitivity is a bit broken.
- Music Playlist is a bit broken, when I tried to reset the playlist to default, it plays the playlist again.
- Needs more Side Missions, but its alright I guess.
- It lacks Legacy costumes, too bad.
Graphics
- I don't care much about the graphics, I find the game beautiful.
Verdict:
To be honest, this is now my 2nd favorite Dynasty Warriors game, 1st place was DW8 and 3rd was DW5. As a hardcore Dynasty Warriors fan, I recommend everyone to play this game and invest your time with your favorite character, ignore the bad reviews saying the game is boring.
I give this game a 8.5/10. I gave DW6 a 7/10, and that means this game is way more fun.

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 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.

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 enjoyed this game, as well as all of the other DW games I have played (DW2 through DW9E). This game takes a somewhat drastic turn in terms of style and game play. Despite my low hours on here, I have played this game for well over a hundred hours on console since around 2022. I have noticed, though I may be misremembering, but there seems to be some minor differences from the console version to the PC version. The online multiplayer, the reason why I received this game on PC, feels different and is quite buggy. Playing as a second player, I could not complete many quests for various reasons. If it was a quest to defeat enemies then there was a very high chance I would not complete it despite me defeating all of the required enemies. I never received any of the rewards/XP and my quest log would never strike out for any of these bugged quests. I also experienced a bug online where I could no longer do normal attacks. The controller button, keyboard key & mouse button would not perform a normal attack, so I had to leave the lobby and join back in to fix it. So far, I have not seen any bugs on single player.

The graphics are pretty good and since it is PC, you can customize the settings to your needs. If you're on console the game will not look the best, but the PC version should allow you to make it look very good if you have the hardware. I do not care for graphics, especially since I always get blown away by the graphics of DW5 or DW6, so how pretty the game looks doesn't influence or persuade my opinion on it. It looks good and there are a lot of enemies, so make sure you have you something decent.

The game is now open world, which means it no longer has any stages. Instead, you can explore the entirety of China to your heart's content. The world itself is generally quite empty but I do not understand people complaining about it being empty. It's 200 AD, not modern-day China, so there isn't going to be constant buildings and city sprawl with stuff to do everywhere, there will be nature and hills and mountains everywhere. There are plenty of animals to hunt or bandits to defeat everywhere. There are also many campfires, watch towers, POI's, and more all across the map. Of course, there are some dead zones but they're usually in areas where that would make since, such as the desert dunes or the snowy hills/mountains. They tried to portray civilization where civilization was, so of course there isn't going to be a hundred cities and towns in some areas. It just doesn't make sense if there were just towns in every neck of the woods, it's okay for things to be empty. Every open world game has empty dead zones, such as the countless ones in TES: Oblivion. It doesn't make the game worse or less interesting, it just makes sense for some things to be empty. This is also Koei's first attempt at an open world game, to my knowledge. I think the map is good and I'll enjoy getting the map explorer achievement a second time. I personally find the empty map criticism to be quite unreasonable and silly though I can see where they are coming from. However, you are basically never required to explore the wilderness as you can just follow the roads or teleport to any mission, even missions you have not yet discovered. If you hate the emptiness of the map just teleport everywhere, almost any location is capable of teleportation, and like I said, you can just hit the button to teleport to a quest, which will typically take you within a 1000m, which is like 2-5 minutes of travel at max with the default horse. I personally ride my horse to most locations unless its +2000m away or if I am playing online.

The designs of the characters are much better in this game compared to the last two games. DW8, in my opinion, has some of worst designs in the entire series. I like that they went with a more grounded design in DW9. Some of the outfits even take heavy influence from the older designs, such as Liu Bei's outfit being very similar to his DW5 design. I am just glad that most of the characters are somewhat back to their old armored ways with the amount of armor seriously decreasing with each release until now.

There are also multiple new characters.
Wei: Cao Xiu, Man Chong, & Xun You
Wu: Xu Sheng & Cheng Pu
Shu: Zhou Cang
Jin: Xin Xianyiang

On top of that, there is also an over-priced DLC that is a third of the games price that adds an extra four characters:
Shu: Xiahouji
Other: Yuan Shu, Hua Xiong, Dong Bai

There is also more DLC that adds in hypothetical stories for a bunch of people. These hypothetical DLC's add in a new short campaign for that character as well as a new costume design. If you're willing to pay, the costumes are pretty good.
I must mention though that I do not have the 4 extra characters or hypothetical DLCs on my PC copy of this game, nor are they being factored into this evaluation of the game.

They also somewhat changed the combat but I do not know all of the technical stuff or remember any of the terms. To note, they added these ability moves which you can activate at anytime. At anytime you can activate a stun, launch, or ground move, as well as a special move which acts as your EX move. These can be activated by holding SHIFT, R1, or RB, and pressing the corresponding button. The special EX move does a lot of damage and usually attacks a large area and kind of acts as a quick mini-musou. The ability is however bounded to a cool down timer to prevent spamming. There are also these reactive attacks which are basically a quick time event attack. You will be prompted to press a button in which your character will charge at that enemy, dealing a lot of damage or stunning them. Each of these moves and reactive moves can be imbued with gems which applies an elemental effect, such as flames, etc. There are weapon clones in this game, more than in DW6, which is a big problem in the fan base, and is another 'problem' I do not understand or care about. People using the same weapon has never bothered me in any game. Also, this is modern DW, so you can just change to a different weapon if you don't like the move set. I have personally never had a problem with anyone's move set (except Zhu Ran in DW8) and I don't get why people get so worked up about it. If you care about weapon clones, then here is your warning, I really don't understand you.

Overall, I personally enjoy the game a lot and it is quite different to other Dynasty Warriors games. It has its flaws, but all of the hate it gets is unwarranted and exaggerated and old. It might not be the best but it isn't bad. I personally find none of the mainline Dynasty Warriors games to be bad, not even this one. I had fun with it on console, now I am going to continue to have fun with it again on PC. I also speak with experience as I have played many DW games for many, many hours.
I have played: DW2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6E, 7, 7XL, 7E, 8, 8XL, 8E, 9, & 9E.
Hopefully you take my opinion well and enjoy the game as much as me. Reminder that many DW YouTubers are incredibly biased. They either eat-up anything they see (DW Origins demo) or absolutely despise something without giving it a chance (DW6 & 9). I know the game was very rocky at launch but that doesn't give you room to hate the game years later unless you genuinely do not have any enjoyment with it at all. There are definitely still some bugs in the game, at least on PC online multiplayer, but a couple bugs shouldn't lead to the chopping block. The somewhat empty open world is a somewhat valid criticism, but it also wouldn't make sense if it was filled to the brim with random junk. Weapons clones are a thing, if you care, but they have never bothered me. Like every other Koei game, there is excessive DLC and it is even more egregious and expensive in this game, one thing I can agree with hating on.

I hope everyone can enjoy themselves and have fun!!!

I honestly can tell why some people dont like this game. They say that its boring. It has performance issues and that they dont like the open world mechanic to it and that it shoudve been the open yet closed maps that the previous games were like.
I have played the trial and played the battles. And Honestly? The battles are actually enjoyable. The different combat mechanics, character quotes during musou and the character on character dialogue interactions during battle are pretty good. So far though I have not encountered any performance issues (Likely they were patched or I just got lucky.) I havent tried the campaign yet as I havent bought it. I think this game is alright but probably wait for a discount as I think the current price is a little too steep. That or I might not be looking in the right area for it.

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.