The Dynasty Warriors series has always held a special, if not small, place in my heart. There’s something alluring about the minute attention to accuracy paid to its source material mixed with the one versus all mentality that keeps drawing me back game after game. When Dynasty Warriors is at its best, it’s the embodiment of courage against staggering odds and the sense of empowerment that comes after surmounting them. If I could best describe the feeling of sending fifty nameless, faceless enemy soldiers flying with one swipe of a lance, it would be “exhilarating.”
Dynasty Warriors 9 looks to up the ante for developer Omega Force and publisher KOEI, transitioning from the series’ traditional battle-to-battle layout into a bold new open world environment. Those unfamiliar with the series can still tell by the 9 attached to the end of the newest game’s title that Dynasty Warriors has had many iterations, and making a change like this is a huge step into the possible future of a much-beloved franchise. Is something as epic as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the story from which the game draws most of its narrative, really improved by a larger-scale world" The answer, unfortunately, is a complicated one, and Dynasty Warriors 9 serves as an indication of what could be coming later in the series rather than the arrival of something innovative and special now.
Bloodline of Kings

A lot of what Dynasty Warriors 9 has to say abou...