The grappling hook just negates much of the game’s challenge – so much so that it feels game-breaking. And then there’s the inclusion of the grappling hook, which makes laying siege to fortified areas and navigating developed areas trivial.Ī mission early on in the game required me to fight my way inside a castle to put an end to the Yellow Turban Rebellion (what else?), but while my allies were battering the doors with a giant ram and moving in other heavy siege machinery, I just grappled my way up the battlements and opened the doors from the inside. Not that Dynasty Warriors 9 is particularly difficult though, especially on normal difficulty or less.Įnemy AI is alarmingly stupid, and groups of soldiers are often spread so far apart that it’s difficult to find yourself swamped. Each chapter of the game is now a scenario, full of missions and quests for you to seek out and complete, but you’ll spend much more time travelling between each of them than actually engaging in action.Ĭompleting missions and quests provides valuable experience that allows you to increase your character’s level, and as you expand your area of control and eliminate enemy officers a scenario’s main mission is made much more manageable too. While occasionally scenic, it’s a largely flat and dull expanse that’s void of life. As you can imagine, for a Dynasty Warriors game, that’s a major problem.ĭynasty Warriors 9‘s recreation of China is certainly ambitious, but apparently little thought has been given as to how it improves the gameplay. Now, the whole world is a battlefield, yet somehow the game manages to feel less action-packed. No longer are battles self-contained events, prefaced and book-ended with a myriad of menu screens. With Dynasty Warriors 9 the series has gone open-world, and while on paper that sounds like a good thing, in practice it has mixed results. And it has, in many ways, but with it comes untold tedium and horrendous technical issues. As of late though they’ve started to feel a little all too samey, and with Dynasty Warriors 9 promising to mix things up, I had hopes that the tried and tested formula could somewhat be revitalised. I’m fond of the Samurai Warriors games too, and all the anime tie-ins that feature largely the same gameplay. I’m quite fond of the Dynasty Warriors games.