The "intellectual" counterpart of the Dynasty Warriors Saga, the Empires spin-offs have been offering for many years to add a strategic aspect to the uninhibited and naughty beat 'em all of Omega Force. This side, even if much less pronounced than on pure and hard strategy games, has found its audience among loyal players and evolve over the episodes to try to be more and more complete. But what if the Empire formula were adapted to the most problematic opus of the series?
Answer in this test.
I have to confess something to you first: I haven't played Dynasty Warriors 9. I just heard about its flaws, its failed attempt at open world without having been able to test it. So it may be that things described in this test as a first for me were in fact introduced in 9.
Like all Dynasty Warriors Empire, you don't just fight against hundreds of enemies, since the battles will be the scene only of invasions or territory defenses. The heart of the game will be in your kingdom, whether you choose the role of leader, vassal, independent or create your own character. Depending on your hierarchical place within the empire you serve, you will have various possibilities of actions specific to your rank. But the goal of each campaign will be to unify the country under your colors, whether you keep your status, gain rank or lose it.
Each round of play is worth one month. You can only perform one action per turn and every 6 months, you will have to take stock and propose projects for the next 6-month cycle.
The possible actions vary according to your rank as specified above, but the effects of each of your actions will be impacted on your kingdom, its gains or losses of resources, its military, agricultural and commercial development, on relations with a territory, an empire opponent or with other characters.
Or else, you might as well go for a walk by sacrificing a lap. In this case, you will leave the menus to act directly, talk to people, try to recruit new subordinates, explore the open world that is offered to you, gigantic... but terribly empty. It is not the few NPCs with whom we can interact, the brigands or the animals here and there that will break the monotony of this absence of content and activities.
A good idea these free rides, but don't expect a GTA, think more about the lack of open world interest in Dynasty Warriors 9 that I've heard so much about.
The Dynasty Warriors series is above all a series of Beat them all and the Empires spin-offs are no exception to the rule. However, the course of these battles differs since you can only trigger the confrontation to try to invade a territory or to defend one of your own on the condition that it is attacked. From there, the game switches to a pre-battle preparation menu that will be familiar to anyone who has hit a Dynasty Warriors once in their life and with a few more options for giving direction to your subordinates.
Unfortunately, each battle will be more or less like the last. And for good reason !
The problem does not come from the familiar gameplay of Dynasty Warriors on which are grafted the usual "strategy cards" of the Empires opus, capable of reversing a situation, even if the game will make you pay for your possible numerical inferiority, while you do all the work without too many sores. No.
The problem comes from the cards. I'm not going to dare to say THE map, but the few maps available are so similar that if you don't pay attention to a few generally minimal details, you would swear to attack the same fortress over and over again or defend the same place throughout the game.
For a title that prides itself on having a host of historical generals from ancient China to embody (some of whom, from more withdrawn clans, often remain clones of lambda models), it is downright lacking in content in terms of battlefields !
Already it's a genre that accuses a lot of repetitiveness in its gameplay, if the rest is also redundant, the game quickly ends up tiring even its most fervent fans such as me.
And this is the overall feeling that this Empire 9 inspires: while the opuses of this spin-off have until now offered an interesting variant which disturbed the monotony and repetitiveness of their numbered correspondence in the basic series, here it does not there's not much to break this monotony and restore rhythm to the game.
We see that Omega Force wanted to try to do something with the corpse of the open world of Dynasty Warriors 9, but that the whole thing, in the end, is not successful and lacks ambition so as not to disorient the players. If you want my opinion, the open world should have had a big place to play in the strategic aspect of the game with in particular the topography and more life, because there, we just feel it present because linked to Dynasty Warriors 9 without even get to give it a real use. And that's a shame.
Let's hope that a possible Dynasty Warriors Empires 10 quickly rectifies the situation, or better: that this spin-off takes more independence from the main series to take off. It has plenty of potential and deserves not to follow the path of the affiliate number when it is of questionable quality...
- Xbox (version testée Xbox Series X)
- Playstation
- Steam
