Dynasty Warriors 2 was earth-shattering. Not in the literal sense, but back when the Playstation 2 came out, few Westerners had any real experience with the story of the Three Kingdoms, aside from the handful of intense Koei strategy gamers that had been around since Bandit Kings of Ancient China. That being said, the Dynasty Warriors franchise opened up the world of dynastic China to a whole new generation. Strategic combat, thousands of enemies, and a mythology-steeped franchise based on actual historical events. Personally, I was so entranced that I ended up taking dynastic Chinese history as an elective in university and even read an English translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the 10 most famous Chinese books.
Fast forward a whopping 22 years. The Dynasty Warriors franchise is in its 9th incarnation, musou-style games are well-known in the gaming industry, Koei merged with Tecmo to form Koei Tecmo, and they have released the most recent entry into the series, Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires. For the uninitiated, the Empires series is a strategic take on the Dynasty Warriors series, adding in a few aspects of the strategic management series Romance of the Three Kingdoms (also by Koei Tecmo). Over the years it has evolved into a separate spin-off series that takes the core experience and alters it somewhat, bridging the gap between action gameplay and strategic planning in a unique way.
Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires (let’s go with DW9E for short) is no exception. What you should definitely not expect here is plot. The mainline Dynasty Warriors series contends itself with retelling the story of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms starting with the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 CE and ending with major historical figures from the era saving China. That’s not the case in DW9E, where you choose basically any character from the series you want and use them as an avatar to conquer China, ostensibly under another ruler, but really more for your own edification. There are few major cinemas, no real plot, and realistically, aside from conquest, no real purpose to gameplay.
That might be weird to some people, but half of the fun of a musou game is hacking and slashing your way through hundreds of enemies, dropping special moves and pummelling through castles, barricades, and no-win scenarios against all odds. All that is in DW9E as well, but nothing is quite what you’d expect. This is a game based on the Dynasty Warriors 9 engine and everything feels a bit different than you might be used to, especially if you haven’t picked up a Dynasty Warriors game in a while. The controls have changed somewhat and there are a lot more special moves. The tutorial takes you through different combat scenarios to give you a feel for the gameplay, and it’s just enough to get you going. All the nuance comes later. Then it’s off to the races!
After you’ve chosen a character and your allegiances, it’s time to…well…not play. DW9E tosses you right into the management side of the gameplay with limited training and no real understanding of what’s going on. The limited tutorial gives you a bit of an idea through your first choices in the tactical menus, but you’re mostly flying blind unless you have the patience to read an absolute ream of dialogue, text, and explanation. That would make sense if this was Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but it’s definitely not. Instead you get a cursory explanation of each system as you use it and no real feel for the tactical thought behind the game. Then you’re on your own, guessing. Should you stroll through the city? Should you force the peasants to give up their money and grain for the war effort? Who knows? There are objectives that give you tactical standing by fulfilling them and they’re even flagged on the menus with little blue icons, but this gives you the feeling of literally being led by the hand through a menu system that makes no sense. It probably doesn’t help that half the time you can’t view those objectives either. Manage to do things right and you’ll get level boosts, but they mostly only add a bit of power and some random side missions you can augment the battles you’ll eventually fight with. It’s a weird, messy system.
Now, that may sound like a bit of a complaint and it is, but honestly, this wouldn’t be nearly as infuriating if it weren’t for the horrendous load times in DW9E! This review covers the Xbox Series X version of the game, and that system is a powerhouse. But menu driven segments of the strategy portions of DW9E have significant load times for every single decision and there’s absolutely no reason for it! Want to select to bribe someone? Load time. Picked a menu option to raise gold? Load time. It’s absolutely ludicrous. Oh, and if you take a stroll and decide you want to actually walk through the city to talk to generals? Lots more load time, plus there’s literally no reason to do it because it can all be done through menus! It’s almost as if Koei Tecmo was trying to use DW9E as a soporific on potential gamers! It’s entirely possible that this is the most boring, tedious version of Dynasty Warriors Empires ever released. Just wait though. There’s more.
If you’re a strategy fan, you’re aware that the Romance series is more management sim than strategy. But Empires takes that formula and distills it down so much that there’s no real management. Choose from some main options, select a strategy before combat, and equip some items and gems on your character (if you happen to notice the equip menu, which you very well might not). There is an absolutely massive UI here that really does nothing but obfuscate the actual gameplay, and that gameplay is remarkably light on depth. Simply put, the ‘strategy’ here is non-existent and your decisions don’t have huge impacts most of the time. Sure, you need to pay attention to the defense levels, troop levels, and other factors that both you and the enemy have before deciding who to fight. But you barely have to read anything to do that, and most of it feels irrelevant. Then there’s the combat.
Once you’ve slogged through the interminable load times, menus, meaningless friendship building and other tedium in DW9E, it’s time to conquer some neighboring territories! This part of the game couldn’t be more divided from the management phase if you tried. Instead of having significant impact on your overall combat, the strategy phase feels entirely divorced from the months of planning that goes into each battle. You drop down and things look like most other Dynasty Warriors games. Tons of dialogue boxes and orders flashing everywhere like an epileptic nightmare, blue and red troop indicators all over, and a map. You’re on-screen in 3rd person, running about smashing everyone that’s in reach too. The only real difference between this and a main-line title is that if you don’t follow the directions on-screen rapidly, you lose. Do exactly what the screen orders tell you and you’ll win, provided you’re at least passable at mashing a bunch of buttons. Sadly, that’s not strategy. It’s just more hand-holding. If you try to take care of things in your own way, you’re toast. The enemy gains the upper hand rapidly and defeat is assured. Go to each flashing box, smash some popcorn enemies, fight a few generals, and you win. It’s literally that simple. The lack of depth in live combat is the entire other end of the pendulum from the planning phase.
You’d think that was bad enough, right? But it turns out that combat is broken and god-awful too. First off there’s a GIGANTIC box showing troop movements and key areas almost in the middle of the screen, literally blocking the view of your playable area. It’s not movable and the camera makes it feel like it’s constantly blocking your vision. It’s just there to make you want to smash your screen. That’s probably fine because chances are you’re just looking at the icons anyway since they are the only thing that matters in combat and the visuals, while gorgeous, are wildly repetitive. Dynasty Warriors used to be about finesse, but the controls in DW9E are rough and unresponsive, leaving you jumping past areas you want to be in, missing enemies right in front of you, and constantly trying to adjust a camera that stays in a fixed location rather than tracking your forward attack movement.
You can slash your way right into an empty field and while you’re trying to turn the camera, enemies are pile driving you from behind. It doesn’t matter since they apparently can’t hurt you though. In fact, all you really need to do is try to attack commanders and captains to take over key areas (if you can hit them) and mash on the special attacks. X and Y are your main attacks but they mostly suck and they’re very slow. Special attacks with the shoulder buttons can be spammed to hell and slaughter everyone around you, making for a bunch of tedious grunting and slashing. Afterwards, the hardest part of the game is actually finding characters you need to kill to take over areas and progress. Don’t even think about changing out your weapons either. Throw the wrong weapon on (like a giant sword for cleaving horses) and you’re done for. You can’t even swing fast enough to fight the barrage of enemies and you’ll be conceding, having wasted 30 minutes getting to the battle and facing another 30 to the next. Don’t even try to climb onto a horse either. They might as well be wild boards rampaging across the screen, pulling you immediately away from a battle when you invariably accidentally climb on one. Sounds fun, right?
Well, it’s not. Between the wonky camera, the fancy attacks that become incredibly tiresome, the constant barrage of orders as to where to go next which take away any agency you might have, and the overall lack of responsiveness in the control, DW9E becomes a pointless exercise in button mashing that doesn’t even have a gratifying plot. Each victory increases your level and wins you thanks, but at that point, who cares? Can you progress in the game and even have children? Sure. But why would that matter if there’s no real plot. It honestly feels like taking over China is some sort of booby prize for the most tenacious players to strive for. There’s no hook, no drive to continue, and by the time you’ve conquered a quarter of China or so, no connection left to the characters in the game. It’s the antithesis of what you’d expect a strategy-based game set in the Han Dynasty to be and it’s honestly ridiculous.
Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires looks amazing. The visuals, while a bit more androgynous than perhaps they need to be, are outstanding. The combat is smooth and fluid on the XSX in gameplay mode. Sure, the ever-present Dynasty Warriors popup is present and some texture pop is noticeable here and there, but that’s kind of like coming home to an old friend for fans of the series. It doesn’t matter. The battlegrounds are lush, well-designed places, even if they’re all just small boxes that force you into the same few situations over and over. In short, the game is a treat to look at and the music is the expected intense thrust of sound that it should be. All the potential is there for the taking in DW9E and it just never happens.
Here’s the thing. Musou games are insanely fun. Koei Tecmo has always been good at making strategy games too. But Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires is more like playing two entirely separate games and making both of them boring. It doesn’t matter how much you polish something up either. If it’s not fun, it’s not fun. And Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires is an irritating broken, irredeemable mess. It might be a different type of mess than Dynasty Warriors 9 was, but it’s certainly not any better. This is one cross-genre experience that’s best avoided all together.
This review was based on a digital copy of Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires provided by the publisher. It was played on an Xbox Series X using a Sony 55” 1080p TV. Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires is also available Steam, PS5, and Switch. Please note that some screenshots are from cinemas and difficulty was encountered taking screenshots during musou gameplay on the XSX due to automated pause menus.