Quick Look: Dynasty Warriors 9

Lu bu!

Lu bu! Its just fun to say.

Name seven kingdoms better than Brothers.

Yeah, it’s a mace.

And you have my sword?

I get that most think Dynasty Warriors is kind of a joke, but i wish the first 10 minutes of this quick look wasn't just them shitting on the entire franchise lol.

They also have barely acknowledged the open world nature of this game and how that is a pretty HUGE change for the series.

Instead, they keep talking about how it hasn't changed. *shrug*

I get that it isn't for everyone, but the changes in this game are probably the most dramatic in years for the series

@bearpawb: Agree completely. I really wish Austin was back for Warriors' QLs...

I don't buy every installment, but I do consider myself a Dynasty Warriors fan. Couldn't really explain why, but I like 'em. It's me, I'm the guy getting hype for DW9 and the changes they've made to the series with it.

LMAO

The yellow turban rebellion is a go!

Was kind of hoping they would show the post-mission menu stuff and some of the hunting/using resources to craft and upgrade...

I've always enjoyed the DW games because of the strategy involved in the game. Sure, it's basically mindless hack n' slash for a good chunk of it, but the character building has a lot to it. I personally like the Empires branded games the most because of the additional strategy layer.

I am looking forward to the open nature of this game.

I got the game on Friday. I'm trying to enjoy it, but the open world just isn't working for me. The game is also pretty buggy to boot and performance on my base PS4 is pretty mediocre.

@thedrumkid92: there isn't a post-mission menu. Your rewards just show up on the screen and the game moves on to whatever is next.

@abczyx: Yeah, I got it yesterday, and it seems like its missing frames of animation or something, and the fact it has a black border all around the screen is driving me nuts.

This looks terrible..

We get it Dan and Alex your video game tastes are so much more refined than the rest of the world.

@bearpawb: As someone who is a huge fan of a similarly crapped upon franchise (Earth Defense Force) I agree 100%. The idea that someone with "good taste" in games liking this franchise is somehow shocking/surprising is really arrogant, even for this site. I don't understand the obstinate refusal for the staff to consistently (minus Jason) hand-wave the musou and EDF games away as 'trash'. It's really infuriating.

Two Kessen shoutouts by Dan within a week!

Have a lot of love for the Warrior games, especially some of their offshoots like Hyrule Warriors (which was way better than it had any right to be). I totally understand why folks dislike these games but there's something to them that is addictive.

But why even do a Quick Look if you already know you're going to hate it?

Feel the power of my maaagiiiic!

Fun fact, for a Dynasty Warriors this game looks good (but runs like shit)

also:

Because, even if the Staff hates a game, a viewer on this site might say, "hey, that looks ok to me". There's plenty evidence of that on these forums.

It's a double-edged sword, really. If GB only quick-looked games they liked, I guarantee these forums would be peppered with comments of "Bwaaaaaa Giant Bomb likes all the games because the publishers gave it to them for free! Corporate shills! Raaaaaaargh".

Also, I don't recall anyone complaining about the GB staff hating on games like Ghost Ship Aftermath or Pineview Drive . :b

@bearpawb: I think that was a fair introduction, and actually spot on. I've seen so many videos of games in this series over the years, and they still look the same (I'm talking about the combat, which I'm assuming is still the main meat of the game. I've not seen the open world parts, which I do think they mentioned in this video quite a few times...). Instead of looking like a game from two generations back this time they've actually created a PS3 looking game.

You know there are people who enjoy objectively bad games, like Musous and MOBAs? Shocking! I will never understand those people. Now, let me talk about Destiny for five hours.

(This installment seems surprisingly half-baked and terrible, btw)

Please, for the love of pete, don't put emoji into the video decks. It looks disgusting.

Put it this way.

"How can anyone like Call of Duty? All you do is run through corridors pressing L2 and then R2, killing thousands of faceless [terrorists]/[nazis] while it celebrates military jingoism and American exceptionalism while endorsing interventionism (and occasionally giving money to war criminals). Why do people buy these games yearly when it's, essentially, the same thing with the same kind of story?"

To me, these are the natural extension of the 90's beat 'em up. If Streets of Rage continued on, this is what they would look like except it would be the streets of a city and all these enemies would be corrupt cops. There's some depth to them for sure, especially in the Empire games, but it's mainly just a chill game where you do over-the-top attacks against thousands of foot soldiers until you come across a guy who can do the same thing you can and just duke it out.

I'll probably skip this one, though. I'm getting Dynasty Warriors 6 vibes off of it. I'm sure 10 or Empires will see more improvements to the engine and whatnot. I really like the idea of this going open world, but from what I've seen, it doesn't look like I'd like how they're doing it in this game.

Here's a really easy way to grasp why people you wouldn't expect to like DW, do, and can like it to an extent and get invested in it far beyond what you can comprehend:

Fighting games.

Monster hunter.

Pokemon.

Any number of sports titles.

Any number of indie platformers and adventure games.

Professional wrestling, especially the actual real-life show.

Dynasty Warriors.

All can be dumped on quite easily, especially by naive, reductionist jokes. All have far more depth than you can ever take in from a short period of half-heartedly playing. (Or watching, in the case of wrestling.) Generally they're liked most by people who like the idea of the game enough to get them through the first few hours, where the gameplay finally clicks.

No, Dynasty Warriors will probably never be a huge mainstream title. No, it isn't gratifying in the first five minutes, ten minutes, or even hour that you play. There's a lot going on in it that nobody notices until they're already deep in it. But the same can be said of Soulcalibur, Monster Hunter... if you can see how those games built up their following, you can see how musou games got theirs.

I mean, there's some severe whiplash going from Dan getting heavily into Dragonball, then questioning how people could be into Dynasty Warriors.

God help me I'm in pursuit.

Edit: is this the first recorded use of an emoticon in a GB video subtitle?

I think they did a better job trying to objectively explain it rather than just shit talk it than has historically been the case (without Austin). Nevertheless, the overview is still kind of pointless because they never get deep enough in the game to understand what the point is, which is basically a time challenge - get here and kill this before you get a bad outcome.

I tried out DW8 and the latest Xtreme Legends game after skipping them altogether for a few years and found I enjoyed both, but not enough to pay full price for this.

I do like dynasty warriors. All this QL did though was make me go throw my copy of Xtreme legends dynasty warriors 8 Complete edition. So at some point in the future I'll upgrade to nine. I did have a thought of laziness though were if I bought the new one digitally I wouldn't have to get up.

@jimbot: that’s a lot of -isms attributed to a silly military shooter videogame.

I'm looking forward to this game and I was excited to see that there was a quick look of it up on the site. Turns out it's just two dudes talking about how much they don't like the genre. Why would I want to watch that?

I don't mind that neither Dan nor Alex are big fans of this particular game nor the genre as a whole, that's absolutely fine and I certainly don't expect all Quick Looks to be positive, but I also didn't feel like they gave me nearly enough information about Dynasty Warriors 9 beyond discussing the common general traits of the series.

Considering this is the first drastically different Dynasty Warrior game they've made in ages, you'd think they'd show all the different stuff instead of, as Dan puts it, intentionally showing off this battle because it looks like old OW.

"Why do people buy each one?" is not that hard of a question to answer. This is really the only thing that actually bothers me anymore about the weird way Dynasty Warriors is treated in games media in general, because it blatantly ignores the trends other popular franchises have lived on. The question can easily be turned and asked about Call of Duty, or Madden, or Assassin's Creed, or Civilization, or Castlevania, or Mega Man, or Street Fighter, or so on and so forth.

It's fine that there are folks, even if it's a majority of folks, that don't like the streamlined character action game that Dynasty Warriors is. This is true of all genres! I bet there really is a lot of people out there going "Why do people buy each Call of Duty? It's the same game every time, and they pump them out so quickly." You just don't hear that very often in mainstream media.

All that said, I'm a little disappointed in how far the "open world" goes. It's essentially just larger stages with side content you can chase after instead of being worried that if you dally your AI allies will get overrun because they're terrible. But there's also a LOT of huge changes this game has made with how it works compared to previous games, and I'll probably look at picking it up later on.

Ha, it is against the law for them to mention Dragon Quest on GB.

You could argue that the lord of the ring action games where dinasty warrior like, i liked those

By the way, there are usually different endings to a mission, and to do things in the "right" way usually involve knowing how the "history" (aka the "Romance") goes.

I seriously cannot imagine how open world would work in a DW game.

Can someone tell me if Lu Bu is in the game?

@danryckert The game is based on a book written in the 1300s which is based on a war which occured around 200.

People sure are whiny about Dynasty Warriors. Seriously, you knew what you were going to get when you clicked play, so why did you do it?

Also worth pointing out, as it keeps coming up, this series didn't start as a fighting game. Dynasty Warriors 9 is the 8TH game in the spin off series, called Shin Sangokumusō, from the fighting game, which was called Sangokumusō, in Japan. They're just all named the same outside of Japan.

Man why is this so damn brown looking. I still enjoy these games but my heart will always be with ROTK.

@danryckert People with good taste in games can enjoy lesser experiences too. Just look at you and Mario Sunshine. That game is garbage, and you enjoy it despite also enjoying the rest of the series.

I'm pretty sure this guitar solo has been going on since like Dynasty Warriors 3.

@ottoman673: Lu Bu confirmed

"Devil Kings" was one of the early Sengoku Basara games. They sadly haven't brought any more of them over to the US.

If they did, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dan would *love* them - they're essentially the cracked-out cousins of the Dynasty Warriors games. They're much sillier, and take themselves much less seriously.

For example - Masamune Date wields six swords at once, and rides a horse with motorcycle handlebars and working exhaust pipes. Tadakatsu Honda is a mecha.

Is this the first emoji to make it in the deck description?