Dynasty Warriors 9 May Have Been Sold A Bit Short In Terms of Potential

For those not aware, the Dynasty Warriors series is when someone takes the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms story mixed with real Chinese history and turns it into a hack and slash game.

Dynasty Warriors 9 then changed it up to being an open world game.

DW9, however, released in an ugly, incomplete state and has been critically panned for the longest time for having a huge world that was quite empty, bad balance, broken AI, and other flaws, and I'll be the last one to say it doesn't have flaws, it sure does, and they are severe, though since release it has been patched quite a bit and many of it's worst aspects have gotten fixed, though if you really want things fixed, you'll have to buy the DLC that declones characters.

Not exactly great on the last item, a step back from DW8XL which did this by default, but at least they toss in other cool things like interesting what if stories, some of which have some amazing story writing.

But before I get into that, let me address why I say DW9 has a ton of potential: It is a Wide Open Sandbox.

The size of the map is supposed to encompass, with some compression for game reasons, all of China as it existed during the latter end of the Han dynasty, since that is when the game is set, and while it's not entirely period accurate in all particulars, it does cover a world far bigger than even the most ambitious Betheseda Softworks game.

And therein lies the potential, the sheer scale allows for a good story to be told if proper use is made of it.

In many respects, the main plot without DLC makes adequate to good use of it, as the closed arena style of the earlier games had to compress many locations into a much smaller stage, like the Battle of Guandu, which forced areas that were miles apart into an area barely two miles wide at best, which doesn't allow for the proper scale of the fight to be appreciated.

In DW9, the scale of the battle is far closer to real life, meaning you actually have to go several miles between locations and Guandu goes from a dinky little area to it's more realistic provincial fortress and surrounding lands and minor forts like it was realistically.

Of course, those who preferred the closed arena style of the earlier games consider this is a minus, and not unrealistically since it made the player's job of reaching objectives while having fun far more easily, but in terms of realism, I consider it a strength.

However, the true redeeming virtue is when the game makes proper use of the scale to give a greater appreciation of the story it is telling, like in the "what if" stories.

For instance, Chen Gong's DLC is an outstanding example of using the scale to enhance the story.

Historically, he was a strategist who betrayed Wei leader Cao Cao, hooked up with a guy named Lu Bu, that ended in disaster, and he executed for his treason.

The stock game already covers the areas of Xu Province where all this took place pretty well, but the "what if" that presumes Cao Cao spared his life (in a "cruel mercy" fashion) and made him work for Liu Bei (while the latter was nominally under Cao Cao's leadership), and it's here the sandbox style really benefits, as Chen Gong masterminds a plan to finally do to Cao Cao with Liu Bei what he couldn't do under Lu Bu.

Following an altered series of events that extends past when Cao Cao put Liu Bei on his shit list and forced Liu Bei to flee Xu Province after Liu Bei got connected to a plot to kill Cao Cao (which still happens but Chen Gong's quick thinking lets Liu Bei bullshit out of getting fingered for any role in the plot), the game presents a series of stories where, while pretending allegiance to Cao Cao, Cheng Gong and Liu Bei gain allies from all the guys Cao Cao either pissed off or beat the crap out of earlier, and gains their cooperation in a plan to make Cao Cao's path of conquest blow up in his face. In the process, most of the areas that Wei either conquered or attacked are re-covered by Chen Gong and Liu Bei, and the size of the map makes one appreciate how they coordinate forces from disparate regions to take down who was then the most powerful badass in China.

Won't go further, don't want to spoil the plot, but the sandbox style makes excellent use of the huge map to really hammer home the sheer brilliance of this hypothetical campaign, telling a story the earlier closed arena style prior games used couldn't really portray with any justice.

However, not all is sunshine and roses, the map still has vast areas of empty space the game itself doesn't really make a lot of use of, and while the DW9 developers have worked hard to fix this, the gem still needs a lot of polish before the open world gets better use outside of the occasionally brilliant what if story.