As I read through the previews of Dynasty Warriors Origins, one from Noisy Pixel talked about their first experience with the series through Dynasty Warriors 2 back on the PlayStation 2. It made me think of my own history, what the games have meant to me, and how they sparked my interest in video games. So, I thought I would share my history with the series. I love this series and have played every Dynasty Warriors game localized in the West.
Dynasty Warriors 3
You may be confused because Dynasty Warriors 3 isn’t the first in the series, but it is the first I played. I was in elementary school, and my brother said he got a new game from a friend and wanted to show it to me. That game had a lot to love: enemies coming at you and a 3D sandbox of a giant map where you could complete objectives and defeat enemies. One thing I noticed was that you needed to focus on the morale of your troops but also make sure you stayed near them so you didn’t get surrounded and juggled by enemies.
When I first played the game, I treated it as a friendly beat ’em up game. I joined my brother, and we would use the split-screen mode to play together. I found the story segments hilarious as a kid. They treated things super seriously but then pulled off some of the weirdest voice acting. It worked for me since it made me want to replicate the way things were phrased.
My favorite character to play as in Dynasty Warriors 3 was Lu Xun, and I loved the dual swords he used. The Musou mode took characters on a path centered around routes tied to the kingdom they were part of. Shu, Wei, and Wu were the main paths you could follow.
Eventually, my brother had to give the game back, so I spent a few months not knowing what to do or where to get the game. Then, I went to a new video game rental shop called Game Crazy and found another copy of the game to play. I only had a week to play it, and boy, did I play it. I maxed out my Lu Xun and printed off the CheatCC page for Lu Xun’s final weapon.
This was also the very first game I pulled an all-nighter on. I shared a room with my sister, and she had to spend the night sleeping in my parent’s room because I wouldn’t go to bed that Friday.
Dynasty Warriors 4
I wasn’t sure how long it was before I saw the next entry of Dynasty Warriors, but it was a surprise to me since I didn’t keep track of games and their release dates. I was in a local game shop, and I saw the game box. I squealed and brought it to my dad, but he told me I couldn’t get it. It broke me. I lost my sense of happiness. As a kid, every “no” felt like a giant shot to the heart, making it feel like my life was over.
Months passed, and it was getting close to November. I told my parents that what I wanted was Dynasty Warriors 4. We went to the local Fred Meyer, but it wasn’t there to show them. I told them about the local game store and that it was there last time. They said I’d have to wait until the next weekend before I could grab it. That next week’s wait was grueling. I didn’t sleep very well, and school didn’t help. Friday finally arrived, and I pestered my parents the whole day. That night, we made our way to the store. It was there! I used my dad’s money to buy the game. However, there was one caveat: I had to wait until Christmas before I could play it.
Christmas Day came, and I only had one game on my mind: Dynasty Warriors 4. After all the presents were opened, I turned on my PlayStation 2 and proceeded to play the whole day away! The new bodyguard system was intriguing to me, and this time I was able to own the game, so I went all out during my winter vacation. One new feature I enjoyed was the ability to create your own warrior to play as in the game. I was sad that they couldn’t participate in Musou mode, but you could put them in Free mode and level them up!
During winter break, I shared the game with a friend of mine to play in split-screen mode. It was a blast. We spent time strengthening our bodyguards and even gave a random backstory to each one as they grew in numbers.
I was in awe at how fun it was to add a one-vs-one duel mechanic. As soon as a big general pops up and does their famous introduction scene, they ask you to accept their duel. You then have 45 seconds to reduce their life to 0 and win the challenge so you can continue with the battle. If you die in a duel, you die in the battle. So if you are losing, make sure to dodge around their attacks and guard when you can.
It was Dynasty Warriors 4 that got me interested in programming and enemy and ally AI. I thought it was fascinating to watch the soldiers and see how they interact with everything as the battle plays out. That was when I saw Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires at Blockbuster and was shocked. Dynasty Warriors showed up in a mainstream rental store? And it was a new spin-off of Dynasty Warriors 4? It only took one weekend for me to quickly fall in love with the Empires series.
Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires
Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires took the edit mode and expanded on it. It had more outfits, more weapons to choose from, and a whole new way to play the game. You start by choosing your ruler, and you can decide between a historical land of China or a fictional land. Historical China has all the lords and generals depending on which faction they joined in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms book. Fictional China randomizes the entire land and places generals under rulers they normally wouldn’t serve.
It changed up the maps, adding bases all around the battle map with flags that represent resources for the army that owns the base. You have to create a supply line to the main enemy base, or you can’t take ownership of it. To win maps, you need to either take control of the main enemy base or defeat the main commander. This was the game where I fell in love with the Empires mode because it let me feel like I was a strategist commanding an army.
Xtreme Legends
You may be confused, as two notable titles are missing from this list currently: Dynasty Warriors 3 Xtreme Legends and Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends. In all honesty, I did not spend a whole lot of time with these titles. I did buy them to complete the Lu Bu story arcs and enjoyed having Lu Bu as a bodyguard for my character. I never felt I needed to complete these games, though, as they felt almost like extensions of the base games.
Dynasty Warriors 5
One day in the summer, my parents took a vacation to Utah, as that was where my mom’s family lived at the time. While there, my mom took me and my sister to meet up with one of her friends who had a son the same age as my sister. I told her to stop by the Utah GameStop since I had a feeling I would be bored. I was thinking of spending my money on a GameBoy Advance game. Those plans fell through when I quickly noticed a game on the PlayStation 2 side of the store: Dynasty Warriors 5. I spent what money I had on that instead and told my mom I would try to pay attention to the conversation.
That plan also fell through, as an important distinction was made almost immediately—the son of my mom’s friend had a PlayStation 2. I asked to play on it, and for the first little bit, that friend’s son and I played a few maps of the game since he wanted to try it too. After the third map, he wanted to go back and talk to his mom, my mom, and my sister. I spent most of the afternoon on their TV just playing Dynasty Warriors 5. Since Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires was the last game I played in the series, the new change where you take down bases to capture areas of the map and add new resources to your army felt natural.
Dynasty Warriors 5 had a lot of changes that I loved and a few I was not a big fan of. The first one was the actual narrative of the Musou mode, which was changed drastically. In this version, the story is narrated by the character you chose. They have inner monologues, and their desires are at the forefront of their reasoning for being in each battle. It makes each Musou mode feel much more personal, and even if stages overlap, you get a different perspective.
Dynasty Warriors 5 Xtreme Legends
Dynasty Warriors 5 Xtreme Legends is still my favorite Xtreme Legends title to this day that has come from this series. The main reason is that it introduced something that hasn’t been seen since: Destiny Mode. In Destiny Mode, you create your character and start as a common soldier. You have to make a name for yourself by choosing a general to mentor you, and you eventually become a strong general in the army in your own right by completing tasks and sections of large-scale battles. Being a soldier means you get small tasks in large wars, but eventually, you get more and more important tasks as the ruler starts to gain confidence in your abilities.
Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires
Once I saw that the Empires extension came to the Dynasty Warriors 5 play style, it became a must-buy title for me. Though after the amazing Destiny Mode on Xtreme Legends, my expectations became much higher for this title. I am sad to say it was a good iteration on Empires, but it felt like just more Empires with not a lot of the innovation I was expecting from the title.
Dynasty Warriors 6
Dynasty Warriors 6 was a title I was so hyped about playing because it was the first big PlayStation 3 title for the series. Sad to say, but it was a disappointment. The presentation and the story moments were enhanced greatly, but playing the game felt boring. Dynasty Warriors 6 introduced something called the Renbu system. You had a certain number of attacks you could use before a finisher would just end your combo. It got bigger the better you were fighting in the game, but the slow moments would decrease your Renbu meter. If you weren’t attacking enemies constantly, it would make you dread coming to fight a new group of enemies as you had to build it up all over again. Instead of playing the game because it was fun, I played Dynasty Warriors 6 to unlock all the cutscenes because of how much fun and production value were in these new cutscenes.
Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires
I dreaded opening up this game at Christmas, thinking the Renbu system would make Empires feel not fun to play. Luckily, they reworked the Renbu system and added a ton of innovations to the Empires series. First off, there were a bunch of items you could unlock in this game to customize your character. I brought a few friends over to make characters in the game because the creation system was just that much fun. We would make characters from anime, books, movies, and even just our creations. That also made the gathering of heroes map a whole lot of fun. You could see a team made up of, like, Erza from Fairy Tail, Soi Fon from Bleach, and Legolas from Lord of the Rings randomly.
Fun story: My first date with my first girlfriend was essentially a giant day of playing Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires. I just wanted to introduce her to the creator aspect of the game, as she was a big artist and loved designing stuff. After creating her character, she wanted to see how the moveset she picked felt to play. She chose the two swords, and she had a blast K.O.’ing random soldiers. So we made a co-op playthrough using one of my favorite created characters and her character and conquered China together. I have many great memories of this game. It was such a huge turn from my expectations because the new system was restructured completely, and the additions made Empires something new too!
Dynasty Warriors 7
This began a weird period of Dynasty Warriors for me. I still grabbed every release of the game that I could, but its connection to me waned. Dynasty Warriors 7 combined the spectacle of Dynasty Warriors 6 and the combat of Dynasty Warriors 5 together. They removed the Renbu system completely, rather than adding the newly reworked one from Empires. On one hand, it felt fun to play again, but on the other hand, it showed their lack of confidence in trying to get the Renbu system to work out.
Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8 Empires
I am putting both of these here because Dynasty Warriors 8 does nothing drastically different. It mostly adds more to the game. Both Dynasty Warriors titles added a child mechanic that allows you to have children with the characters you romance in Empires Mode. They have randomized looks and abilities based on the father and mother.
They also added the ability to create soldiers and army logos. You can use a pre-made one or make a graphic with an image file and use that for your logos. Though it utilized any general being able to use any weapon extremely well. Characters now just have a weapon specialty that gives them an extra move. Though I did love having the musou attacks being chosen as any other character’s musou attack.
Dynasty Warriors 8
This game felt like the grand opus of the series—a loving tribute to everything that had come before. It expanded on the Jin storyline, diving deeper into the dynasty that ultimately brought an end to the Three Kingdoms era. The sheer amount of replayability was staggering, thanks to its additional side missions and alternate storylines.
The Xtreme Legends expansion elevated the experience even further, introducing a host of new routes, starting with Lu Bu’s. The expansion turned an already massive game into a monumental challenge to complete, offering a wealth of content for dedicated fans of the series.
Dynasty Warriors 9
By the time Dynasty Warriors 9 entered its marketing phase, I had started following games journalism closely. The announcement of an open-world format that would let players traverse all of China got me incredibly excited. The addition of fishing, a dynamic day-and-night cycle, and open-ended siege battles sounded like the fresh evolution the series needed.
At first, these new features were a blast. I particularly enjoyed the large-scale siege battles, where storming castles felt both strategic and thrilling. But as I progressed, the cracks in the formula started to show. After playing through one character’s story, the game became painfully repetitive. The open world, which initially felt like a breath of fresh air, turned into a tedious grind.
The introduction of Flow Motion mechanics also made combat far too simplistic—even by Dynasty Warriors’ standards, where power fantasy is a central part of the appeal. The spectacle was there, but the challenge and depth weren’t.
Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires
This was the first Dynasty Warriors title I reviewed professionally, allowing me to put all my thoughts into words. While Dynasty Warriors 9 received several patches that addressed its technical issues, the core experience remained overly repetitive.
Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires attempted to address this by removing the open-world segments entirely. Unfortunately, this fix introduced a new issue: every battle became a siege. While the focus on sieges added consistency, it also made the game feel monotonous in a different way. Without variety in its encounters, the gameplay loop grew stale quickly, making it difficult to maintain the initial excitement I had for the game.
All that said, Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires looks fantastic, and the fidelity did a lot for the battles. The character creator was the best it has ever been. Still, it feels a bit hollow when the gameplay itself is as annoying as ever. The army of soldiers and even generals you bring with you does almost nothing. Just playing through Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires showed me that generals could catch bases if they were trained. I couldn’t get any of the generals to win a fight, even if they were far stronger than the enemy, and it made it so annoying.
Dynasty Warriors Origins
That brings us now to the upcoming title Dynasty Warriors Origins. As of the time of writing this, I have only played through the demo. Playing the demo, though, was enough for the hype to set in. It reminded me of early Dynasty Warriors 2 through Dynasty Warriors 4 in the sense that you can’t just instantly go and kill every general without a plan. In the early games, you had to take it slow and travel with your army to be able to stand a chance and not get surrounded.
I am excited for the next entry and what it shows for the future of the series. Weirdly, there are very few musou-type games outside of Omega Force being made.
Everything I Missed
I have missed a few titles in this article, namely Dynasty Warriors 1 and Dynasty Warriors 2. I have played the first Dynasty Warriors, but I wasn’t a big fan of it. It is a fighter, and I am not a big fan of traditional fighter games. I do like arena-type fighters like Soul Calibur as well as full-on, well-made arena fighters such as Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero.
I have played and loved all the PSP titles. I also liked the Game Boy Advance game Dynasty Warriors Advance. The Nintendo DS game was a bit weird, but none of these impacted me or my connection to the series. Dynasty Warriors 2 was tough as nails because the normal soldiers could kill you easily early on. You had to replay a few of the early missions to stand a shot on the later-era stages. Granted, if you leveled up too much, your bodyguards could pretty much take down every general on the map by themselves. It wasn’t a good balance. It took me forever to find a copy of Dynasty Warriors 2 to buy, and I was excited to get it into my collection.
Dynasty Warriors is one of my favorite series, and it is still my comfort game. If I need a series to go back to due to anger, frustration, or sadness, this is the game series I turn to. I have so many memories of building connections with friends, all because of sharing this series that is so fun to play. I hope Dynasty Warriors Origins comes with co-op.
Dynasty Warriors Origins releases January 17th, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC.
