Dynasty Warriors games aren't exactly new to excess, of course, but the endless list of side missions - none of which gets that much more advanced than going to a certain destination and dealing with a mob or two - and hollow distractions makes it all feel a lot more like bloat. So there are watchtowers to climb and a map that's slowly filled in over the dozens of hours it takes to see through it all - and there's a lot to see through, with some 83 characters to tinker with throughout the campaign. Dynasty Warriors 9 too often feels like a pale imitator rather than having its own sense of purpose.
Yes you can hunt, gather resources for crafting or even purchase your own hideaway to decorate with trinkets - because, well, that's what other open-world games offer. It's a map with plenty of scope but not much by way of spectacle, or satisfying diversions. You can take to your horse and ride from one end of the map to another in a feat that'll take up to two hours - although you'll have fallen asleep in the saddle well before then. It's a fairly unimaginative reinvention, at that this is an open-world game, the more familiar musou action pasted thinly across a staggeringly vast depiction of Three Kingdoms-era China.Īnd, as an open-world game, Dynasty Warriors 9 falls miserably flat, mistaking breadth for any kind of meaningful depth. Dynasty Warriors, the vanguard of the musou genre having helped start it all some 18 years ago, has born the brunt of the criticisms in recent years, and Dynasty Warriors 9 now has to take the strain of the series' reinvention. Maybe it's a symptom of over-familiarity with Omega Force's industrious output - if you've inclusive of all the various spin-offs and side entries, it's easy to count over 50 entries in the series since its inception - but these remain games with more detractors than devotees. You're still cutting through swathes of enemies here - though, weirdly given the size of the open world map, the battles don't have quite the same sense of scale as in previous Dynasty Warriors games.
In all that chaos there's something soothing to be found if you know what you're looking for, there's something quite excellent there too. After all, who doesn't like a good dust-up? Even better when it's tied to a game of ruthless optimisation, where you're trying to clear a map as efficiently as possible as you level up members of the impossibly large cast. Omega Force takes that same spirit and outrageously embellishes it, until you're a swirling dervish in the midst of a crowd of hundreds.
0 kommentar(er)
