Dynasty Warriors 9 – PC Review

Developer: Koei Tecmo
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Release Date: February 13, 2018
Edited by Lolinia

I don’t know about you, but when I think of iconic hack-and-slash games, the Dynasty Warriors series is right up there at the top. Among Koei Tecmo’s most well-known properties, the series is based on the story of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and more-or-less consists of the player taking control of some absurdly powerful warrior and cleaving their way through massive hordes of hapless enemies. You’d choose a mission, spawn into the relevant combat area, and clear house. The formula’s held up pretty well so far, so I’d say it’s a pretty bold move they’ve taken with the just-released Dynasty Warriors 9. Electing for an open world brings a whole slew of possibilities as well as opportunities for problems.

The plot is the basically the same as that of previous series entries. For those who are unfamiliar with the series, the story takes place in China towards the end of the Han dynasty and around the Three Kingdoms period. It is roughly based on historical events, implementing actual historic figures as major characters, and focuses on the politics, deception, and physical conflict that ensued during the period. Since the “what” of what’s going on in the story hasn’t changed, the characters from previous games remain as well. Honestly, the appeal of this series has generally been the combat and not the plot. Each new installment focuses on the trappings of the game, the systems, visuals, play-styles, and so on, rather than the plot; the story is just there for the sake of having one. Doesn’t make the characters any less memorable, though.

Speaking of characters… there’s a lot of them. Like, literally, over 80 playable characters in the base game, and a few more through DLC, or so I’ve heard. You start off with just one, but unlock more and more as you progress through the story and reach the points in history where the other characters first appear. If you see a unique looking character and think to yourself, “I want to play as THAT person!”, chances are you probably can. The characters themselves are divided into factions based on their allegiance, and each faction tends to have its own story-line that all the member characters follow, with the exception being the “Other” faction that just does it’s own thing. A real nice touch is that each character gets their own independent save file, so you can be playing one character’s campaign, decide you want a change of pace, and start up another character’s story without losing any progress. Even better, they’ve all got a shared inventory, so if you farm or grind for gear with one character, everyone else gets access to it too! So, it’s up to you who you want to play as. You can stick with the starting squad of the boys in blue. Maybe team up with the basket weaver on his journey, or join the boisterous tiger squad. If you want, you can even go around as the first major villain, the dreaded Banana Man, on his dastardly mission to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and protect the poor. …wait, who’s the bad guy in this story again?

It’s worth mentioning, though, that while every playable character has a story, they’re not all long stories. They only last for however long the character was relevant in history, and this is denoted by the game being divided into chapters. Previous games sent you out on missions which were essentially large battles in a restricted field. Since this game is implementing an open-world, each chapter represents a certain span of time during which certain major battles occurred. Scenarios vary based on the character / faction (the who) and the chapter (the when), but all occur somewhere on the same massive open map (the where). What changes between chapters is which locations are important and who has control of which region. Core characters can have story-lines spanning the entire game, while other characters (especially characters from the “Other” faction) may only have a single chapter of story mode. Luckily enough, if you complete a story-line, even a one-chapter story-line, you unlock free-mode, which essentially lets you use any unlocked character in any completed scenario. Cutscenes don’t change, but that’s probably for the better; don’t want to ruin the moment.

The chapter format isn’t the only change resulting from the switch to an open world. If the game’s giving you space to explore, there’s got to be something to actually do in that space. Sure, there are fortifications studded along the roads for you to fight in and seize control of, and wandering bands of brigands to tussle with in the wild lands, but if that was it then they may as well have stuck to mission-based combat. So, the devs tossed in some distractions. The bow now returns as part of every character’s arsenal, along with a literally infinite supply of regular ammunition, and while it can be useful to snipe unwary enemy commanders, where it really shines is with the new hunting mechanic. Well, it’s not that much of a mechanic, but it’s a thing. You’ll now find various packs of animals wandering the world, and they prove to be difficult to fight with standard weaponry; a bow, however, can easily stunlock them into oblivion. Meanwhile, against humans, it’s not very effective unless you score a sneak attack head-shot, or hit an explosive pot with a flaming arrow.

Aside from introducing another optional enemy type, hunting also grants you hunting points that can be traded in for gear. You can also go fishing in this game, but for some reason I always end up catching more jewelry than actual fish. There’s also the collectible token, here in the form of old coins or the like, that can also be traded in for equipment designs, as well as generic resource gathering in the field for more materials. Really, the supplementary stuff is just methods of unlocking new equipment and materials. Hardly necessary or enthralling, but still there. An addition that I do enjoy quite a bit is the inclusion of a grappling hook function to allow characters to easily scale vertical surfaces, climb over rives, infiltrate castle walls, and trek up mountains. Ladders are obsolete. Fall-damage is nonexistent; I climbed up a mountain, jumped off, plummeted for at least 6 seconds, and landed completely unscathed. There are bases, called hideaways, that you can buy scattered around the map; these are more like chill-zones than anything else, which you can fill with furniture or decorations you buy, and where you can socialize with NPCs in a less formal setting. There’s also the dual function bonfires and tea houses. At these, you can cook up meals for a useful buff, or you can rest to pass the time. Oh, yeah, time. To add some depth to the open world, a day-night (well, morning-afternoon-evening-night) cycle was implemented in the game, as well as some weather effects. These aren’t just cosmetic changers, either. The time of day and weather influence your visibility when you’re trying to be stealthy and also determine enemy AI behavior; reinforcements aren’t dispatched at night, neither for you nor your enemies. It’s best to plan ahead to figure out how and when you want to tackle things.

That brings us to one of the things I appreciate most about this game: You’ve got some flexibility in how you approach things. This applies to what you do and how you do it. Each chapter, your character is presented with a sequence of main objectives/quests to advance the story. If you want, you can storm straight through ’em, though that may be a bit of a challenge. Along the way, you’ll also find optional quests of two varieties: one type is just simple missions for materials, while the other are related to military or political strategy and serve to make the main objective easier. So, it’s up to you if you want to charge straight into war or prepare first by cutting off supplies and taking out the reinforcements. Alternatively, you can put-off doing the main story and just ride around China conquering enemy fortifications and killing everything in sight, like I did before even finishing the basic intro crafting quests. Once you get bored of that (which may happen sooner than you’d like, given how enemies can get repetitive after a while) you can head over to your mission marker and get on with things. Could take a while, since it can literally take hours to cross from one side of the massive map to the other, but fortunately there’s fast travel. Seriously, thank goodness for fast travel.

You’ve also got options for how you choose to take out your threats. Now, the staple of Dynasty Warriors is all-out hack-and-slash warfare. The thing is, in this game, you don’t have to do that all the time. I mean, it works in pretty much every combat scenario, but it kinda takes a while. Sometimes you just want to get on with things. In those cases, you can turn to your trusty bow; sneak around, ideally at night, locate the enemy commanders, and snipe ’em in the head. Now, this obviously won’t work against major story characters, but it does make the other conquests up to those points much easier. I mean, I managed to take over an entire enemy garrison with just 4 well-placed headshots. So much quicker and neater than a head-on assault, and, with their commanders dead, the terrified mobs of grunts were easy pickings. Take out the leader and the entire squad panics and runs away from battle; real useful to know if you’re stubbornly trying to take over the entire battlefield.

The last bit of flexibility comes from the available equipment. There are three types of combat equips that can be changed: your weapon, four slots worth of accessories, and your mount. In this iteration of the series, any character can equip any weapon, and you can go into the menus to swap them in-game at pretty much any time. Each weapon type has its own unique moveset (I quite like the Twin Sinkers) that is used by pretty much every character that equips it, with one exception. Each character has a favorite type of weapon, and when they use that particular weapon type they’ll replace part of the standard moveset with special Unique Attacks unique to that character. From what I can tell, a character’s favorite weapon type is usually their starting weapon type. There’s also gems that can be crafted or bought and equipped to your weapons to imbue them with stat buffs or elemental effects. Accessories have a variety of effects, such as auto-collecting dropped loot or passively regenerating your Musou (super attack) bar. Mounts are the horses you can ride; you start off with a generic, default horse, but you can buy new horses with improved speed, stamina, and charging power. The bought horses can even level up and get stronger depending on how you use them. Mine basically ended up as indestructible battering rams.

Now, onto the meat of the game, the combat. The combat system has changed repeatedly over the course of the series, and this game is no exception. There’s three main “attack” buttons here, a general purpose Flow attack, a situational Reactive attack, and your Musou / Special attack button. There’s also a Trigger button that changes your Flow Attack, Reactive Attack, and Jump options to special Trigger Attacks when held; depending on which button you push, the attack will either stun the enemies, launch them into the air, or knock them down. This may sound a bit barebones, but that’s because the action has become much more context-dependent. Flow attacks unleash different combos depending on the state and position of your enemies, or if you just performed a Trigger Attack. Reactive attacks perform functions as varied as counters, knock-backs, ambushes, guard-breaks, distance-closing dash attacks, and finishers depending on the context of the battle. Musou Attacks are… well, they’re your boom-stick. Add Unique attacks from favorite weapons to the mix, and you’ve got a hefty arsenal.

The nice thing about the combat here is that it’s easily accessible. You don’t have to know exactly what you’re doing to succeed; you could just be button-mashing and STILL look like an unstoppable whirlwind of death. At the same time, there’s a variety of mechanics that you can learn to improve your destructive output and get some crazy combos. Mastery is not necessary to play, but is still fun to strive for, and not all that difficult. There is a bit of a caveat though; things can start to feel a bit dull after a while. See, this game allows for really focused, extended combos. There’s a lock-on feature to target enemy commanders, you can pretty much chain combos endlessly once you know the right moves, and, unless your target is way above your level, they’ll probably flinch when you hit them. Even when it comes to story bosses, once you get good at it the general flow of battle becomes “Lock-on to commander, stun-lock it to death, find another commander, repeat.” Major enemies may have some flinch resistance, but even they succumb to the pattern. Additional difficulty in this game mainly consists of enemies being tankier, flinching less, and hitting harder than their cohorts; there’s little added in terms of behaviour or complexity. Occasionally there may be enemies or destructible objects that cause damaging environmental effects or affect the amount of troops on the field, and I appreciate these instances, but they are rare. Now, don’t get me wrong, the combat is solid, fluid, intuitive, and has a really satisfying impact to it. However, it doesn’t feel challenging in a satisfying way. This is a game about dominating hordes of foes from the get-go, not the struggle to improve.

In addition to the updated combat are updated graphics. I gotta say, the visual presentation of the game is lovely, especially for this genre of game. Images are clear, edges are crisp, colors pop, elemental and particle effects are on point. There are a few quirks, like the clipping of bits of cloth or hair on character models, thin strands of hair looking oddly pixelated, or colors washing out a bit too much in the distance, but the game looks lovely overall. This does come at a cost, however: lag. The game can be a bit demanding on your hardware, even on lower settings, depending on where you are and how much stuff is going on on-screen. With a 1050 Ti I somehow managed a mostly stable 30fps on the highest settings, but there were noticeable slowdowns when unleashing combos on the more massive battlefields, and performance seems to be all over the place across set-ups. The visuals look lovely, but the motion and performance depend on whether your rig can handle the demands of the game.

The audio is also kinda a mixed bag. The soundtrack is great, really serving to pump you up for combat. However, there are dedicated tunes for battles, and they only trigger after you’ve been close to combat for a sufficiently long time; while this theoretically isn’t a problem, when I find myself dashing from squad to squad and rapidly taking out leaders, it turns out that the cool battle tunes only kick in when I’m about to finish my fight, and they deactivate while I’m moving towards the next. This isn’t an issue for major battles, but it becomes a noticeable disappointment during the scores of smaller skirmishes. The combat sound effects themselves are great, no complaints there. The voice work is… well, it’s Dynasty Warriors voice-acting. At this point I’m pretty sure it’s intentional that the VAs are totally hamming up the roles of their characters. I mean, it’s so heavy handed that it’s GOT to be on purpose… right? If you don’t like the English, there’s built Japanese audio, and I’ve heard talk of being able to get Chinese dubs in as well through external methods. Oh, and the lip-syncing is just all over the place. Makes for a disjointed experience at times, but I suppose the sheer levels of absurdity involved do help make the characters stand out more.

I’ve mentioned most of the issues I have with this game already: the hardware demands, the questionable music cues, the lack of challenge, and the world feeling a bit too empty. However, there was one aspect that really irritated me, and that was controller compatibility. Now, I’ll preface this by saying the experience is hit-or-miss. Some people will have trouble, others won’t. Where it works, it works great; my editor was able to get both a 360 controller and a PS4 controller to work instantly, with no remapping or anything necessary. On my end, however, things were a bit different. The game simply wouldn’t register any of my controllers. I tried a 360, an Xbox One, and a PS4 controller, wired, wireless, and over Bluetooth. Spent over 3 hours messing with drivers, swapping out my keyboard and mouse for simple, barebones versions, disabling any gaming software I had, and so on. No dice. The keyboard and mouse still worked, but the initial layout before remapping is less than optimal; this is really the type of game you want to play with a controller. I managed to make it work for me after some time, but even then I only think that was due to having a decent gaming mouse with some remappable buttons to act as a pseudo-controller. I expect this to be hammered out following release, either by the developers or by the community, but at the time of this writing this is posed to be a major annoyance, if not utter game-breaker, for those unfortunate enough to run into similar issues near launch. End rant.

Overall, I’ve got mixed feelings about this game. It’s got a lot of potential, and is certainly a step in an interesting direction for the series, but there are a few things holding it back from true greatness. The main gameplay issue is that the open world is massive but there just isn’t enough done with it to make it feel worthwhile; instead, it seems to slow down the combat, the main appeal of the series, because you have to manually travel from battle to battle, which is sad because the combat is actually pretty good. Not challenging, but still fun. This game only seems to be single-player, which I find to be a bit disappointing but also a relief when considering the issue of laggy performance. Lastly, there’s the bugs, which I hope will be ironed out following initial launch. This game can be a lot of fun, but it’s up in the air whether it’ll actually work for you. If you can get it working, it’s a great time-waster;  took over 20 hours of mine even without a controller.

Pros:

• Beautiful visuals
• A massive roster of characters and weapons
• Fluid combat with satisfying impact
• Exciting Soundtrack
• Dual Audio
• Fast travel
• Numerous optional supplementary systems
• Multiple possible approaches for completing objectives
• Independently saved campaigns per character
• Shared inventory across characters

Cons:

• No multiplayer option
• In need of some optimization / patching at the time of writing
• Lip-sync is not synced
• The open world feels kinda empty
• While there are side-quests, they’re just one-offs; no real side-stories

Mileage May Vary:

• Need a decently powerful rig to run at higher settings, due to how much can be going on at once
• Game as a whole feels like it has a slower pace than past titles in the series, due to the amount of non-combat scenarios
• Open-world approach increases travel time between combat (which is the main appeal)
• Game is divided into chapters for each faction, rather than missions, containing optional and required objectives
• Plot isn’t exactly amazing or anything new, but it gets the job done
• Characters and voice actors really ham it up
• Some players may have trouble getting controllers to work properly around release; they may work perfectly from the start or not at all.
• No fall damage
• Dong Bai is DLC
• Enemy behaviour may start to feel repetitive after a while; combat isn’t particularly complex or challenging

CrimsonMomongaSSS gives Dynasty Warriors 9 a Drastik Measure 8.9/10 (89).

Dynasty Warriors 9 is available on Steam for $59.99 USD. As it stands, I can’t really recommend buying it in the immediate future due to the hit-or-miss nature of the performance on release, but I do recommend keeping an eye on it. If you really want to try, then get it on Steam to test if it works adequately on your system, but stay within the 2 hour return cut-off so you can refund it if it doesn’t run properly. If it gets patched to resolve these problems, then it’s a great fun hack-and-slash that I can recommend to fans of the genre who have the necessary hardware; just don’t expect it to be Dynasty Warriors 5 with modern visuals.