In some ways the battles are better designed than past entries and scenarios have never been better with armies ranging into the thousands on screen. For example, the battle against Shu and Wei forces with the Eight Gate Formation. Then you have others like the Battle of Chibi that are just plain pathetic, with boats acting more like scripted events with the AI just standing there and doing nothing as you easily beat them and you go back to shore; sure better than the corridor of boats in Dynasty Warriors 8 but hardly what I call an improvement either. Just as people feared, be prepared to use your horse to traverse large landscapes to get to each objective, and at rare times force you to go across either a long river with no other available means of transportation at the time or 5 minutes to get to a bridge to go further in-land. There is nothing enjoyable about that. Other objectives you see available to the player are optional requests from random NPCs and they’re the typical cliched quests you are all too familiar with: kill this enemy or scavenge the world for X amount of item, fish for X item, etc. The only saving grace is that usually these objectives spawn their targets in the same location so you get them over with at quicker pace, so ironically one bad design choice somewhat salvages another.
Outside of fights, there are a number of things that you do while exploring the world: obtaining items from scavenging or fighting the more tough enemies scattered across the map, destroying chests to obtain a random assortment of material, fishing, buying a hideout to invite famed officers, cooking meals to benefit yourself with buffs, crafting weapons, accessories and gems to further strengthen your character and hunting, to build up points to obtain more items. I wouldn’t call the world bare bones and entirely empty, but its not brimming with life either. There is enough content here to satisfy you. I mean even with 100 hours put in I only got around 20 character endings, 3 powered up horses, and a few legendary weapons, so time wont be an issue. That said, even exploring feels dumbed down thanks to the inclusion of the grappling hook, which in and of itself is quite broken and ruins the conceptual designs of battles. This thing trivializes climbing mountains as the developers left convenient markers to tell you where to climb and with this handy device any and all officers can scale practically anything, even structures like the Hulao Gate. So if you ever complained about the notion of just rushing to each base and removing an officer, well, this game doesn’t actually alleviate that and in fact almost encourages it thanks to this gadget, but your mileage may vary.
With this much freedom at your disposal and with a grappling hook making siege weapons all but pointless for you, they went even further by introducing a sneaking mechanic that they teach you early on in Chapter 2, and it’s as awful as you probably think it is. Enemy AI have limited view scope so as far as the lighting goes, you are easily detectable in the morning but a ghost at night. Crouching, which loosely tries to mask your noise, didn’t seem to matter much and you’re rarely ever forced to use it. More options are nice and historically there were instances where forces snuck into enemy territory, but sneaking is either a feature that doesn’t work or works so well that it makes objectives effortless. You can use it to one shot officers with a Trigger attack or remove dozens of generic officers with the returning bow, helping you capture bases with ease. Along with some other features, sneaking felt tacked on and uninspired like many games that try to implement these elements to change it up.
The open world looks pretty darn good for a low budget title. It looks great on a visual level with its day and night cycle, the weather patterns, and its various geography locations ranging from deserts, to snow mountains, to lush forests. I’d be lying if I said the game didn’t get me to stop and look at the scenic vistas, noticing the valleys that have a dank fog effect shroud over them, or the moon’s lighting piercing through the night sky night. The game’s scope is a sight to behold besides some low end textures. I was also impressed with the game’s character models and physics with the character’s clothing, which I found were easily the best the series had. The game’s true Achilles heel is the technical performance. Before the first patch the game ran terribly, even small groups of enemies had the framerate constantly dipping on my normal PS4. Thankfully, after the patch was released the game runs pretty well with a few hang ups, especially after playing for an extended amount of hours. However, the game still suffers from pop ups and characters taking a while to be fully rendered. This ranges from allies to enemies and at times they can take a full minute or more to load. It’s aggravating and honestly saps my patience. Of course with a game this sizable and ambitious, it has its share of minor bugs and glitches which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point. They finally added a Mandarin dub option and those performances were incredibly well done so I can see why they drew initial praise from the Chinese audience.
The game’s soundtrack is phenomenal, with returning tracks being remixed and a plethora of new ones to make battles intense. This gives the world the ambience and atmosphere it needs when out of combat. Impressive compositions are all around, its an impossible task to pick a favorite when tracks like Bad vs. Bad, Drakeness Nights, and Force or Flood are easily some of the best musical scores the series has had. I can go on and on about the changes of weapons or removal of them here. I feel that it’s pointless to rave and rage when it comes to changes over the traditional weapons like Zhange He’s claws, or my favorite Xu Shu’s blade and hooked dagger, but I’ve gotten used to them changing it up with every new entry. For better or worse, this game does the same. Some changes to weapons were for the better like pikes. Others like whips, feel lacking to me. In the end it’s all subjective and I could spend hours dissecting each character. Even with the game having plenty of clones they at least gave them unique attacks for their favorite weapons so that somewhat alleviated the repetition.
The combat is as enjoyable as ever but I couldn’t shake that sinking feeling that their priorities were clearly all over the place and the game suffered for it. On one hand I was addicted to the game when effort was clearly put there, on the other hand the game felt like a slog to go through with so many characters when there weren’t enough incentives to do so. At times they either didn’t unlock anything or didn’t do nearly as much during the story. Dynasty Warriors games are clunky and this game is no exception. Many fans look past it because it’s a one of a kind franchise and there aren’t many games that explore Chinese warring periods. However, like its predecessors, I doubt the game will change minds and there will be those fans who will absolutely hate this entry and those who are content and may think it’s at least decent or good. If you are willing to give it a chance, I can see this being worth it when the game sales start popping up. As is, Dynasty Warriors 9 leaves me hopeful because it has more potential open for future additions, whether an XL/Empires entry or an entirely new one in 10.
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Review copy provided by the publisher
