You’ll be invaded every so often, or asked to help another army. Month to month, there is light resource management and you’ll have to make sure the castle have good defence levels as well as ensure each general has a full amount of troops. You can also be a freelance fighter, but your options are very limited. A general is more likely to battle than a ruler, though both have plenty of opportunities to let blood. Here, you can be a Wormtail and slowly inject your influence for an eventual betrayal, or genuinely try to help your ruler succeed. As you rise in ranks, you’ll be able to suggest certain actions each month and sway the ruler into going with your suggestion. The more interesting position is the general. You’ll ally with other armies, you’ll break allegiances, you’ll trade and yes, even battle. As a ruler, you have control over the finances and strategies your army will make and every month you’ll pick an action. The Conquer system is where you’ll choose to either be a ruler or a general and your goal as both is to dominate all of China. The Empires titles break down into two game modes, let’s call them Conquer and Combat. Watch the Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires launch trailer below:

That’s totally fine for a spin-off, so I can’t knock the game down for that. There are opportunities for you to forge emergent stories based on where you conquer and who you talk to, but there’s no meaty plot here. Following Empires tradition, the game puts the plot on the back burner to focus on its gameplay systems. Like every other title in the series, this game takes place during the Three Kingdoms era of China. Today, we’ll be looking at the Empires spin-off of the 9th entry, typically one spin-off I don’t like, but you never know. I’ve played every single title and spin-off to some degree but even as a die-hard fan, I really didn’t like the 9th entry in the Dynasty Warriors series. The Dynasty and Samurai series in the WU (Warriors Universe), typically have a mainline title, an expanded Xtreme version and a strategy version called Empires. Yes, they’re janky games and yes, there’s an element of copy-paste to each title, but every time I play a game in the saga, I have a blast. I might be standing alone on this hill, but I love the Warriors saga.

Forge of empires critic reviews