Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires Multiplayer
Elvina Cannizzaro
Koei Tecmo's Dynasty Warriors series has followed much the same rhythm of releases since way back in the early noughties, with each mainline entry in the franchise since 2003's Dynasty Warriors 4 followed by both an Xtreme and Empires spin-off, the latter of which adds a little bit of strategic tinkering to the usual Musou mix. It's nothing particularly complex, for sure, but as fans of this genre we always look forward to the arrival of a new Empires variant as it gives these hack-and-slash action-fests a little more in the way of depth and replayability.
Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires is the very first Empires game to hit Switch, and only the second Dynasty Warriors proper to arrive on Nintendo's console, following on from 2018's thoroughly decent Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends. We've been excited to get our hands on this one, then, eager to jump into some all-conquering action, cutting swathes through screenfuls of enemies whilst expanding our empire across the length and breadth of China.
There are already quite a few excellent Musou titles floating around on the Switch eShop these days, with the likes of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Fire Emblem Warriors and good old One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 providing plenty of satisfying hack-and-slash action for players to dig into. However, one problem that all of these games share on Nintendo's hybrid console is a tendency to struggle with frame rate issues during the genre's signature mass brawls. Get a big scrap going, start firing off some fancy special moves and you're in for a bit of a stutterfest. It's not ideal but it is, to some extent, understandable given the hardware that developers are attempting to squeeze these ludicrously large battles onto.
In an attempt to avoid these issues, the developer has really gone to town with downgrading all graphical aspects of Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires on Switch, resulting in a game that looks hugely underwhelming in action. It sucks a lot of the fun out of playing when it looks this rough but, we guess, it could be a trade-off worth making if the game held a solid 30fps. However that's not the case here, with a frame rate that consistently hovers around the 20fps mark and often dips lower during intense action sequences. It doesn't feel great to play and, when combined with visuals that have been rendered utterly bland, devoid of any texture detail and plagued by a ton of very noticeable pop-in, you're left with a premium-priced product that looks and feels like real bargain bin material.
And all of this is before we even start on the actual gameplay itself. Fans of the franchise will know what to expect, with your time divided between the usual running battles against hundreds of foes and extended periods of menu navigation where you'll choose how to spend your months before the next war council; training up your armies, raising funds, doing a spot of farming, ensuring you've got enough rations to go around and so on. None of this is particularly in-depth at the best of times, but it suffers hugely in this latest Empires entry because the action that it's attached to is so absolutely naff.
Getting stuck into the action here reveals a game that expects you, as a solo soldier, to do all of the heavy-lifting. No matter what plans you've made in the build up to battle, it turns out your armies haven't a clue how to organise themselves during a ruckus. Stick the game on Normal difficulty and you blaze through equally matched enemy armies with ease; up the difficulty and you'll get one-shotted by opposing generals in the most unfair and unavoidable ways possible. There's no nuance or intelligence at work here, Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires is just shockingly poor for the most part; janky, repetitive and stripped of almost all of the fun that regular entries in this franchise provide on account of the fact that you're boxed into these tiny, ugly little arenas and forced to run ad nauseum between the same handful of map icons in order to thwart enemy attacks. Move from one map icon to the next, whittling down opposing forces until your army eventually gets a battering ram onto the field and clears a path to an underwhelming decisive battle.
Away from the actual gameplay and the problems continue. There's no multiplayer options whatsoever here, not even the series' standard co-op to fall back on, and so a Conquest mode featuring eight scenarios to muck through is all you get at release. The character creation suite is impressively flexible, and we have no doubt some fans will knock plenty of fun out of this aspect of the game, but here too we see a downgrade from past entries in the series, with a real lack of unlockable armours and outfits to play around with owing to the fact Koei Tecmo has decided this stuff should be released as DLC.
We could go on. There's a completely useless open-world aspect crowbarred in. You can run around massive empty environments for absolutely no reason during diplomatic strolls. There are tons of re-used assets, cutscenes from previous entries in the series and, in the end, the whole thing just comes off as a sloppy effort that's been stitched together with the minimum of effort and booted out the door with a premium price-tag attached.
PJ is a staff writer across Pure Xbox and Nintendo Life. He's been playing video games pretty much nonstop since the early 1980s, loves his RPGs more than most, and continues to pretend to himself that his reflexes haven't slowed at all over the past four decades of continuous play.
@Fujimoto-San There is no multiplayer at all in 9 Empires. It's a shame but makes sense due to just how bad the core code frame work is for the game. It really put pressure on the main Dynasty Warriors 9 game when they added it in.
As for Samurai Warriors 5, have you played any of the earlier Samurai Warriors titles? (I actually have a review done for it on my KT site - can find in my profile, don't think community rules would allow shilling my stuff). I quite enjoyed it, but it is a much different take compared to the 4th entry, and focusing on Oda clans more so than the entire Warring States. SW5 has co-op however you have to progress through the first 4 or so battles in Musou mode to unlock it.
Bought this game on Xbox and it was the worst Warriors game I have ever played. Needless to say I won't be buying it again here. The Open World has literally nothing in it except empty space and maybe a few bland trees here and there but that's it.
Not really a fan of Dynasty Warriors. I think the series stopped being good after Dynasty Warriors 3. I'm more a fan of the other Musou games though just not Dynasty Warriors right now. The Empire series itself never really click with me either. I would just stick with Samurai Warriors, Warriors Orochi, etc., and many of the other theme Musou games.
The reviewer also clearly fails to understand that emipres games are not just hack and slash like standard Warriors games. You need to stop and think about the political aspects and other things inbetween battles. Actually do some research and learn. Not just jump blindly into the game and complain when you fail due to a lack of preparation.
Whatever happened to the high standards of Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition? I know it's an enhanced port of the Wii U and 3DS versions, but the Switch wasn't that big of a jump from the Wii U in terms of hardware, and there was just so much more going on in that game than any current Musou game, including Age of Calamity.
I suppose that this is a bit of an indication that we should be looking more towards the spin-offs; games that were made with the Switch hardware in mind. Dynasty Warriors is most definitely something to play on other platforms, unless Koei Tecmo reassesses their quality and slows down development.
@the8thark I've played all of the Empire games and I actually mentioned in the review that I understand compromises need to be made for musou action to run on Switch. I don't know what else to tell you.
And is it just me or are the Switch games becoming less and less impressive, even first-party and second-party ones? I mean: Luigi's mansion 3 looked soooo impressive but everything looked far below after that. Take Xenoblade chronicles 3 for example: Sure they can get much more juice out of the Switch?!
Why do they keep trying to put Musou on Nintendo platforms? And why does Nintendo keep partnering with them to make Musou Nintendo themed games? Nintendo hardware will always be the very worst hardware to play a Musou game on since the series' main gimmick is its enormous battlefields with ridiculous number of NPCs at any one time. Of all the series that you can do a "this should be on Nintendo hardware", Musou seems like the worst choice this side of a hard simulator or RTS.
@XenoShaun no, the only warriors games I've played are the Zelda and FE ones. wanted to pick up and try Samurai 5 but was holding off on it. I'll def take a look at your profile and read your review on Samurai 5
@Fujimoto-San I play Samurai Warriors 5 and really enjoy it but that's only cause I love the Japanese Sengoku era stuff. If you're playing it to see if it looks good or ran good or if there are variety in missions or extras you're probably gonna be disappointed.
@sword_9mm I play a lot of these Musou games on multiple consoles and a majority of them ran better on Nintendo systems. Of these the PC versions are usually the worst ones, avoid those if you can or if you had really good graphics card or fast processors as they tend to struggle or crash on medium or low end PC.
Ouuuch. I only play Samurai Warriors (and orochi since it has both rosters) and the Licensed Musou games, but it's never good when the flagship starts listing to starboard. I am enjoying Samurai Warriors 5 (and I loved AoC) so I am not as worried as I would be otherwise, but perhaps K-T are spreading too thin. Hope they keep the new art direction in the Samurai line.
Anyway, I really like the Berserk musou gme on PS4 as it's the only one of these I've played that has actual blood. Not that I'm a gore hound, it just helps to elevate the sense that you're partaking in a massive medieval battle, as opposed to batting around a bunch of plastic npcs. These games are still mindless fun regardless though.
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