Dynasty Warriors 9

Dynasty Warriors 9 has launched with a fully renewed proposal. This game is something fresh, but the change may be too significant for those looking for an old school hack'n slash game. On the technical side the game could've been much better, but it offers a gorgeous map to explore. Dynasty Warriors 9 delivers in offering many hours of play, thanks to its campaign which is full of action and a variety of situations.

Dynasty Warriors 9 brings an overdue and very welcome change to the series, introducing a massive open world with lots of missions to do, an impressive characters roster and effective gameplay improvements. It's a real pity that much of this gets offset by a very lackluster technical production and some bad design choices. It's definitely the first step in the right direction for the series, but it needs much more perfecting.

Dynasty Warriors 9 is a set of mechanics that do not finish working. Its bad optimization in Xbox and its little ambition make the game has not ended up being the reinvention of the saga we expected.

Even though the story holds a ton of content for those interested in the narrative adventure, the lack of fan favourite modes, the unnecessary crafting system, the constant repetitive nature and the boredom of a map that is unpopulated across large areas means Dynasty Warriors 9 is more of a step back than a progressive improvement.

Dynasty Warriors 9 is a game that's just too sparse and too easy for its own good. But what's worse is that it's perhaps the worst performing game I've played on the Xbox One X.

Although it attempts to take a massive step forward, Dynasty Warriors 9 ultimately fails to deliver an open world worth exploring. Thankfully, smacking around waves of enemies is as delightful as ever.

I enjoyed playing Dynasty Warriors 9 a lot. Yes, it's enormously repetitive and the open-world elements don't really add all that much to the well-worn formula, but there's something appealing about the whole grand historical affair and the simplistic gameplay. You'll hack, slash and stomp your way across feudal China, grinning like a loon. Then again, there's that whole repetitive, lack of depth thing I mentioned before.

While not quite an unmitigated disaster, Dynasty Warriors 9 is pretty bad. Even if you can live with the subpar presentation, the game quickly gets boring due to a lack of important or interesting things that can be done in the world. The combat is fine, but with fewer opportunities to use it, the button-mashing joy inherent in the series is nowhere to be found.

There is a lot of content in Dynasty Warriors 9 and the ideas are sound, but the execution is just atrocious. I hope they continue to iterate and spruce up the genre. I love seeing new takes on familiar formulas. Sadly though this outing feels like a half-baked idea that no one on the team was really behind.

Dynasty Warriors 9 is a platter full of mess. Take your pick; delayed rendering, lack of rendering, jittery camera, framerate drops, poor animation, dated visuals, bad voice acting, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest shame is that this game reeks of potential, potential that’s never fully realized due to all of its faults and shoddy design choices.

Somehow Dynasty Warriors 9 fails to meet even the lowest expectations.