DYNASTY WARRIORS 9

Fantastic cleaning game. (Power washer fans will love this as it's a similar game disguised as a war game.)
When you compare this to masterpieces like Warriors Orochi 3 or Fate/Samurai Remnant, it lacks polish and content for the mechanics that make it unique, but when looking at it as an action cleaning game of today, it's incredible.
Large simulated battles, VA story that has comical cutscenes, freedom to approach objectives, lots of characters and items to grind. Local and online co-op for the open world. I hope more games take the unique aspects of this and continue to improve it for the musou genre.
It's insane that this game has local co-op on PC. If you have someone to play it with, it's a lot of fun to just roam around and fight stuff. This game doesn't force you into battles; instead, it treats fights like a cleaning game. You know that you will be able to clean up all of the red dots on the map, and it's satisfying when you do.

Its def the worst dynasty warriors game i have played but its still fun bc its dynasty warriors

It is not traditional Dynasty Warriors that you know.
The game is much less colorful and less pompous than classic DW and most characters will look the same to you.
All the story missions happens on a one big map, they are separated by cutscenes. The combat system is good, even option for new combos. You can climb walls with hook, jump over the roofs.
Many side quests, which you can complete to level up and have a advantage.
The whole map looks like generated, everywhere it looks almost the same, that is pretty sad, because in DW 3 every map was designed for the scenario (but they were much smaller).
Lu Bu did not even touch me on normal difficulty. (Forgot to switch to chaos)
Lu Bu almost destroyed you even on normal in classic DW.
The game lacks a lot of things to do, since there is a big open map, with a little more effort, it could be greater.
But there is a coop, with online play, which is great and you can play with your friends.
It is not a bad game if you like Dynasty Warriors, but it could be better.
7,5/10

game has come a long way with the full version of the game it is very fun

DYNASTY WARRIORS 9 — 114.3 h played
Score: 6 / 10 (Worth a look on sale)
Omega Force’s bold attempt to weld Musou combat onto an open-world map succeeds just enough to be interesting—but stumbles on technical polish, repetitive side content, and a loss of the series’ tight mission pacing.
HIGHLIGHTS
• **Musou core intact** — Chain 1,000-KO combos with familiar charge attacks and new Flow-attack strings; signature “one warrior vs. an army” spectacle survives the open-world jump.
• **All 90+ characters at launch** — Every kingdom hero gets unique weapons, EX attacks, and a personal story chapter, letting Romance-of-the-Three-Kingdoms fans bounce between Zhang Liao sieges and Zhao Yun duels at will.
• **Weapon graft freedom** — Interchangeable movesets plus gem crafting mean you can run Cao Cao with a halberd or Sun Shangxiang with twin swords without waiting for Empires-style edit modes.
• **Siege tools** — Grappling hooks, siege towers, and ballistae add variety to castle assaults, giving veterans a new wrinkle beyond “rush the gate.”
WHERE IT STUMBLES
• **Sparse open world** — Vast China map is beautiful but thin; most side objectives boil down to copy-pasted forts, animal hunts, or ore nodes.
• **Mission pacing lost** — Replacing bite-sized stages with long rides between battles dilutes the trademark Musou adrenaline loop.
• **Technical woes** — Pop-in, frame drops, and stiff NPC animation persist even after patches (tested on Core i7-11700K / RTX 3090 at 1440p).
• **Uneven difficulty** — Early levels melt; late-game officers suddenly sponge damage unless you over-level or abuse weapon gems.
• **Minimal voice direction** — English dub lines often sound first-take; dramatic moments lack punch.
FINAL VERDICT
If you’re curious about seeing every “iconic battle” stitched into one map and don’t mind performance hiccups or a diluted mission loop, Dynasty Warriors 9 offers a unique—if flawed—Musou experiment. Series newcomers should start with DW8 XL or Samurai Warriors 5; long-time fans may find just enough novelty here to justify a discounted dive.

Dynasty Warriors 9 feels like a bold experiment that forgot to ask whether the core idea actually needed changing in the first place.
On paper, it’s the series going open-world: ancient China fully explorable, battles flowing across a seamless map, RPG systems layered on top, more freedom, more everything. In practice, it often feels like the game is stretching itself thin just to justify that scale.
Let’s start with performance, because it’s hard to ignore. Even on decent hardware, the game doesn’t feel stable. Frame drops show up in the middle of fights, sometimes at the worst possible moments when the screen is full of enemies and effects. It’s not unplayable, but it’s inconsistent enough to constantly remind you that the engine is struggling.
Visually, it’s a mixed bag. From a distance, it’s fine—sometimes even impressive in a “vast battlefield” kind of way. But once you actually look closer, textures, faces, and environments start to feel flat and dated. It’s one of those games where screenshots do a lot more heavy lifting than the actual moment-to-moment experience.
The biggest structural change—the open world—is also the most controversial. Instead of tightly designed battle stages, you now roam a large map where objectives are scattered across huge distances. In theory, this adds immersion. In reality, it often turns into long horseback rides between small skirmishes that don’t feel meaningfully connected. You clear a few officers, run halfway across the map, clear a few more, repeat. After a while, it starts to feel like busywork rather than a grand war campaign.
The classic “Warriors” identity—massive, focused battles with clear momentum—gets diluted. Iconic moments like sieges or major confrontations lose impact because they’re spaced out and structurally flattened by the open-world format.
Combat itself is another area of mixed intent. The new system introduces contextual attacks (stun, air, ground, specials) and lets you chain them freely. At first, it feels flexible and flashy. But over time, it also becomes clear that depth has been traded for simplicity. Compared to older entries, where weapon-specific movesets gave characters real identity, this system makes everyone feel more homogenized. It’s functional, but not particularly engaging long-term.
Difficulty is another sticking point. Once you understand the system, the game rarely pushes back. Enemy soldiers mostly exist as filler, and officers—supposed to be the real threat—often fall into predictable patterns or get stun-locked into oblivion. Add level scaling and RPG progression on top, and you quickly become overpowered just by playing normally. Instead of adapting to challenge, the game tends to collapse under your growth.
There’s also the issue of repetition. Even though the map is large, the actual content loop doesn’t change much. You still go from point A to point B, fight similar groups of enemies, and repeat across different factions and storylines. The scale increases, but variety doesn’t keep up with it.
Presentation-wise, the story is still very “Dynasty Warriors”: the Three Kingdoms narrative told through faction campaigns, familiar names, and recurring historical beats. Fans of the series will recognize the structure immediately, though the delivery can feel uneven depending on voice work and localization inconsistencies. Some scenes land well, others feel oddly flat or rushed.
On the technical and design side, there are also persistent rough edges: occasional bugs, awkward AI behavior, and systems that feel like they weren’t fully refined before release. Co-op, for example, can feel unstable or desynced in ways that break immersion rather than enhance it.
And yet, it’s not completely without merit. The scale of battles—when everything aligns—can still be fun in a purely chaotic, hack-and-slash way. The roster is huge, the core combat loop is still satisfying at a basic level, and there are moments where the open world almost works, especially when you’re just riding into a fight and everything clicks for a few minutes.
But those moments are inconsistent.
In the end, Dynasty Warriors 9 feels like a game that tried to reinvent its identity without fully understanding what made it work in the first place. It experiments constantly, but rarely refines. It expands, but doesn’t always add depth. And while longtime fans might find enough familiarity to push through, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that the series would have been stronger if it had evolved more cautiously rather than taking such a dramatic leap.
It’s not unplayable. It’s not a disaster. But it is, very consistently, uneven—and that might be the most frustrating part of all.

Do NOT go into this game thinking it'll be like other Dynasty Warriors, or Warriors games in general.
With a wide open, long, often barren map, this game plays very differently.
The amount of content isn't terrible, but the actual content itself is mediocre. One of the great things they offer is the Chinese audio for characters and voice over; it's far better in contrast to the MISERABLE English voice acting.
I started with Lu Bu (I had heard the tales passed down from previous games, and wanted to be the monster). His father sounded like a sixteen year old boy in the English dub, and as if he was even younger than Lu Bu himself.
What I realized on my second playthrough (Dong Zhuo) is that almost every character plays the same besides their special. Their special, regardless of weapon switched to/used, is always the same and is unique to that character. Furthermore, if a character canonically dies early in the story, they don't extend or what-if their story length. I have no clue if there's a character that spans the entire game, but some characters get a max of two chapters or maybe even less. With how the leader of the Yellow Turbans dies at the end of chapter 1, I highly doubt he makes it past one chapter.
So why I am I even giving this a thumbs up? Because I find it super fun. Despite all the issues it has, it still gives a good enough feeling of fighting on a battlefield to be passable—mind you it's not GREAT. There are many, MANY Warriors games that do what this does on a whole other level. But there's something about this one that just draws me in completely. Not to mention during big sales it's less than 40 bucks for literally everything, which often can't be said of a Warriors game, courtesy of KOEI TECMO.
If I could have any, ANY franchise get a Warriors game to replace this one, it'd have to be based on an MMO like the Warcraft universe or Final Fantasy XIV. While not made out of a historical sense, the amount of monsters and characters in each is astronomical.
Yes, I'm using my DW9 review to shill for a MMO Warriors idea. It's Dynasty Warriors 9, you might've checked out when I said I recommend it. If not, hey, how are you? Hope your day is going well.
I like this game, probably because I don't have a long Warriors history like others do. It's the same situation where a game is a good (mediocre/passable in this case) version of another game rather than itself. Fallout 4 being a good game but not a good Fallout comes to mind.
But even I can tell it has its flaws and isn't as great as the others. If you're going to buy it, buy it at one of the big sales, it's NOT worth 80 bucks for everything. Multiplayer is nice though.