The problem with open worlds, and something even greats like Breath of the Wild struggle with, is filling the map with things to do. Omega Force, which had essentially been making the same mechanics for years, was suddenly tasked with creating a fully-realised open world map. It was a god complex made manifest and it was glorious. Dynasty Warriors was always about moving around a fixed stage, with multiple paths, carving through an army of cannon fodder. After a decade of mediocre critical reviews, though, Koei Tecmo tried to change things up.įans of the series have longed for something to kick the series up the arse, but I don’t think many of them wanted that to be an open world. The series knows what it is, and until the sixth or seventh installment of the main game, players didn’t mind (for the most part). For the uninitiated, Dynasty Warriors is a series based around single-button (and if you’re feeling risque, double-button) mashing until the hordes of Chinese (or Japanese) peasant-soldiers and officers in front of you are vapourised in a display of flashing lights soundtracked by wailing guitar riffs. Dynasty Warriors 9 looks upon that challenge and laughs, because it is just about the emptiest open world game in existence.
In case you haven’t checked, China is a big place, and populating even medium-sized open worlds has been the bane of many developers. That risk is Dynasty Warriors 9, and it has not paid off.Įyebrows were raised among many Warriors fans when it was announced that the game would feature an open world spanning the entirety of Three Kingdoms-era China.
Finally, after decades of being labelled as stagnant, take-it-easy companies which avoid innovating a main IP, Koei Tecmo and Omega Force took a risk. If you think that’s a large number, I’m not even counting the expansion Xtreme Legends and Empires titles, which also run into double-digits. The two have released no less than 32 mainline games based around the Warriors format.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is quite possibly the mantra of Japanese publisher Koei Tecmo and its development studio Omega Force. Reviews // 23rd Feb 2018 - 5 years ago // By Alex Hamilton Dynasty Warriors 9 Review
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