The Dismal Degradation Of Dynasty Warriors (The Jimquisition) 

Well... there's a reason why Koei is jokingly refer by us Chinese as 'Dark Shame' (Koei's Kanji can be translated into 'Light Glory' in Chinese).

I really want the "REALISM" sting to become a regular part of the show.

True Dynasty Warriors Anecdote: My and my bro have been playing Dynasty Warriors since 2. We played all of them, including any and all of the variants, like Dynasty Tactics, Empires and so on. We always viewed Warriors as a mindless (but addictive) hack & slash - and there was a certain amount of fun once you payed attention to the battle map; of clearing pathways to allow your army to progress and it culminating in a huge end fight. Then we randomly had the opportunity to go to China - anywhere we wanted. Knowing absolutely nothing about China other than Tiananmen Square Tank guy; our only other thought was "How about seeing some of the Three Kingdoms Stuff?". So we went and saw things like Zhuge Liangs tomb; A stone carving purportedly chiseled by Cao Cao himself; The Peach Tree Garden where the 3 Brothers swore their oath; There's even a recently opened Three Kingdoms themepark. As the tour guides were taking us around - we'd see familiar characters from the Dynasty Warriors franchise ; the characters are based on their statues ; "Oh look - It's Guan Yu - that spear is Blue Dragon - his horse was called Red Hare - And there's his sworn Brother Zhang Fei - He was famous for holding the Bridge at Chang Ban while Liu Bei fled with his peasant army away from Cao Cao's superior forces" ; The tour guide looked shocked and said "That's ... all correct! How do you two westerners know so much about Chinese History?!" ; I was too embarrassed to say "Oh, some shitty japanese hack & slash computer game" - so I just said "We have an interest in the Three Kingdoms era". It's surprising how much history you can learn accidentally by osmosis.

Dynasty Warriors and realism don’t mix. I mean, the games have a single person take down entire armies; that doesn’t seem very realistic to me.

I really do hate it when a developer pulls the realism card, you could at least have the decency to give us a better excuse for being lazy instead of just confirming how lazy you are by using a lazy excuse.

Jim's feelings towards them taking away Zhang He's claws is exactly how I feel about the way they keep equipping Gan Ning with increasingly shittier weapons. I miss his Scimitar from 2-5.

I'll never forget Zhang He asking if the enemy camp was pretty. That shit made me laugh so hard. What an awesome character he was.

These environments look about on par with unmodded Oblivion ... a 12 year old game. AMBITIOUS!

Life of black tiger music over Dynasty warriors footage. What a legend.

If they really wanted Dynasty Warriors to be open world, they would need something like this: Rather than playing as a historical character, you make your own. The "open world" shouldn't be just a mission area but bigger, all of China should be open for you to explore. You start the game during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, as a nobody. You can fight bandits, assassinate people, help local lords suppress rebellions, or help rebels overthrow their oppressors. As you become more and more famous, the various factions, like Wei, Shu, and Wu, will try to recruit you to serve in their army. Along the way, you can even choose to switch sides if you want (with consequences of course), and along the way, you will meet all the various Dynasty Warriors characters. Also, defeating a particular main character grants you access to their weapons, armors, and powers.

I counted the Wikipedia list of games : they released 54 games over 21 years, counting Dinasty Wariors and all the spin of seires including One Piece, Berserk etc... That's a shitload of games

“I have to play Warframe with claw weapons and butterfly wings to pretend...” Oh man, ouch. 😂

We should set up a petition to get Jim a Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares ripoff for video game publishers.

I’m in a hospital bed and recovering from surgery and Jim’s video really helps with the pain. Thanks bud!

I love ya Jim but I feel like you missed a great opportunity to title this video "The End of a Dynasty"

Dynasty Warriors 3! Still own today! “I..I..it’s Lu Bu!”

haha, Marvin the Martian head was a good touch, it really did sound like him.

I like the idea, that while we fight in the grim dark future of Warframe for loot and fashion, somewhere out there, in the origin system, there is a Jim Sterling fighting grineer with claws and purple butterfly wings. Marvelous~

Not gonna lie, I loved the Gundam spinoff, and the Empires games. However, JimfuckingSterlingson is right. For too long they've taken our good will for granted. This has been a long time coming.

I'd just like to point out if no one remembers or noticed, Taishi Ci being my favorite character, in DW6 they took away his battle rods and gave him a halberd but then DW6: Empires came out and guess what was back? His battle rods. So, notice in DW9 they kept his battle rods in the game but Sun Ce lost his Tonfas.....It feels like they can literally take away and add in weapons as they please, $5 says Sun Ce's Tonfa's will either be in DW9: Extreme Legends or Empires.

That intro.... I clapped. Alone in my bedroom. I clapped.

What tecmo koei did was unforgivable. Well okay, I'll forgive them, but only if they put my Dynasty Warriors OC in 10. His name is Jim He

Taking away Zhang He's claws is the greatest tragedy of our lifetime.

And I'm still here, ready to celebrate this video's anniversary. God I love this episode

Successfully defeated Techmo Koei, a powerful ennemy!

*MONDAY HAS ARRIVED*

Considering how Tecmo-Koei sells so many tiny packs of DLC that they might as well be microtransactions, I was incredibly surprised to learn something about Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends: Definitive Edition on the Switch. Unlike the so-called "Complete Edition" on Steam, the Switch version's "Definitive Edition" title *isn't* bullshit! The game costs $40 and comes with practically all of the content that's been carved out for DLC in every other version, with no available DLC itself on the Switch's eShop. Seriously, I had to research that many times over because I just couldn't believe it, given Tecmo-Koei's recent history. But ever since I confirmed it and decided to buy the game, I've been pretty damn happy with it. It's a shame that this'll probably be the last time that this longtime DW fan gets to be this happy with Dynasty Warriors, if the dumpster fire that is DW9 is any indication.

That Life of Black Tiger music gets me every single time.

That life of black tiger music tho

Jim, you forgot to mention the anime adaptation of Dynasty Warriors: Skeleton Warriors Edit: i spoke too soon

DW 3, 4, and 5 were magical games. I spent months and months couch co-op with my brother unlocking everything. I feel so so bad for children who will never get to experience playing a 'complete' game, with no dlc or microtransactions.

Jim; you are a treasure. never stop making up words

Autoerotic Assetflipsiation

Who else has been waiting for this Jimquisition?

What's worse is the "Realism" excuse was a blatant lie from the get go, as Suzuki eventually confessed it was due to running out of time as to why certain weapons were dropped from the previous game to this one. You know, that thing that the fans were pretty much proclaiming from the moment the "realism" excuse ever came to light? I'm more angry that they thought they could feed people a bullshit excuse like that and not just be honest that they spent too much time and effort on the Open World Mechanic, which is your run-of-the-mill variety and brings nothing interesting to the concept like Horizon Zero Dawn did. Of course, why launch a completed game when you can weasel more money out of the player base by selling new weapons later on down the road? So, even the whole "we ran out of time" excuse is bullshit, because we know it's to get more money with minimal effort.

Taking away Zhang He's claws wasn't the only thing they DID to him! All of the officers' voice actors, not just Zhang He's, got replaced with VA's that hardly anybody has ever heard of. I think.

Your favourite Dynasty Warriors character's personality reminds me of a certain wrestler...

Why the hell does everything need to be open-world these days? Why can't more developers go for the incredibly superior "open-level", a la Deus Ex and Thief? It's got the best of both worlds; handcrafted design on every inch of it, while still being large enough and content-filled enough to scratch that itch for exploration.

As a diehard Dynasty Warriors fan, who has read the original book, watched every adaptation & played / owns every game; this depresses me to my core. I want to outright cry. Hell, I would even cosplay as one of Yellow Turban brothers, go front of TecmoKoei & scream "You flaming idiots!" In the Dynasty Warriors 3 voices. You pretty much expressed my thoughts on the path the franchise & the 9th game. Not to mention we finally got Chinese voice acting in the 9th game, but it had to be in the 9th game! Jim Sterling, as Dynasty Warriors fans we have to unite & show that even our tolerance has its limits. Thanks for making this video & expressing everything we have been dreading & thinking.

DW resonated enough with me that I bothered to try and read Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a middle schooler. My buddies all loved the game, we grinded all our favorite character's ultimate weapons and all the special items whenever we hung out. I ordered the starter decks from the Magic set based off the Three Kingdoms, and just loved this franchise to death. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play Xiahou Dun and be excited to swing that ridiculous Kirin Fang around again.

This stings me very hard personally, cause I have friends working at Koei Tecmo, friends I have known since college, and that was a while ago. A lot of the consensus they provided was that the higher ups have a strong "resting on their laurels" mentality, and there is an unofficial divide within company culture, between the Japanese speakers and non-Japanese speakers. Changing a culture will not be easy, but I pray hard that Koei Tecmo and Omega Force can turn things around, cause I like their games and the company itself, even if I am not always supportive of some of their policies.

I think Jim really likes Zhang He...call it a hunch.

Laughed more than I'd like to admit at "Baton Gone! Gone! Gone!"

9 was so bad that I had to wash the bad taste out my mouth by getting dynasty’s warriors 8 extreme legend lol

Hey Jim, Flight Sim added malware to their game and called it "DRM", which was collecitng password. RPS has a piece on it.

I wonder if people remember Dynasty Warriors had an online game once

There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom.

Everyone who had a favourite character is upset with the turnout of this game.

Three videos on Dynasty Warriors 9 and no mention of NO MULTIPLAYER. I've bought these since 3 because I play them with a friend.

where's the ambition? Nobunaga still has it.

There are so many people like me, even here in this comment section, who never picked up a Warriors game, but played Hyrule Warriors and really liked it. They had a brand new audience for their games. Think about that. What other genre gets a huge influx of new players this many years in to their game series? They could have made D.W. 9 amazing, actually put time money and effort in to it, and had people like me buy it simply because of good word of mouth because we enjoyed Hyrule Warriors. They squandered all of it.

I dunno. Orochi 3 and Dynasty 7 and 8 were the peak of greatness.

i can see it now already. DW9 DLC zhang he's claws , sun ce's tonfa's ,chen gong's scroll and such .

Dynasty Warriors 9 trying to be more "realistic" with it's weapons is the E3-Giant Crab controversey all over again. If your gonna go realistic with your game, go all the way. Or at least try to somewhat do your best at the whole realism part.

"So, was the enemy camp pretty?" LOL

Dynasty warriors 8 is still fun. Just recently got the switch version. Perfect place for the game. Edit: The switch version contains all paid content.

Man, my best friend and I played the heck out of DW3 back in highschool. It was great fun as a co-op game. It's sad that the series hasn't evolved at all since then.

Directed by Tommy Wiseau

Kill 1000 enemies in the old Dynasty Warriors games: "You are a true warrior of the Three Kingdoms!" Kill 9999+1 enemies in Dynasty Warriors 9: " ah sure whatever who cares ... why are we still here? Just to suffer?"

Seriously, the whole Xtreme Legends/Empires thing is what turned me off of the Warriors games to begin with. It makes no sense to me why the don't just make the Empires stuff just additional content in each of the base games. An extra mode to play, rather than a separate game every year that reuses the same assets.

Dead or Alive 5 Last Round "which was supposed to be a complete edition with all DLCs and extra content", has over 1000 DLCs on the ps4. :)

As far as the voice acting goes its all koei fault they didnt let them rehearse and rushed them to record the lines..xun yus voice actor stated this

I have played Dynasty Warriors throughout the years, yet still find Dynasty Warrior 5 to be the one I enjoy the most, followed by Dynasty Warriors 4. All the rest, while I played them, soon became just another shelf game, collecting dust. I think I will pass on this 9th iteration. I enjoyed your review, and agree that the series has lost its way over the years.

Thank god for Jim Sterling.

The idea that as a FAN of something you should not be critical of it has always baffled me. Honest critiques and evaluations of something you like is healthy. Complacency and blind allegiance to a brand doesn't help the brand. If a company just has to slap the right logo on something to get people to open their wallets then where is their incentive to grow and improve?

I THOUGHT I was a Koei/DW fan boy until 9 came out. Then I realized what separated me from them. I was able to say "I love the franchise and many other Koei games, but this needed to be scrapped at the drawing board. Or at least picked apart for the pieces that work."

Would love it if you made a video discussing what new additions and improvements you’d want in an ideal Dynasty Warriors sequel, Jim. Would be interesting to hear what direction you’d want the series to go in after this debacle. Personally, I’d just want them to deepen the existing move-sets of DW8, plus maybe add a unique mechanic to each character that compliments their fighting style (Pirate Warriors already has something akin to this, and Sengoku Basara has something similar that is even more fleshed out). It’d also be cool if, like with Sengoku Basara, there was an end game item for each character you could unlock, which powers up that unique character trait and makes your character even more fun and versatile to play. There was nothing wrong with the gameplay in DW8, they really only needed to keep making every character feel more unique and rewarding to play, not do a total revamp. I’d also like a return to stage based level design, but maybe have the stages be more varied in their progression and design.

Hearing all the sounds and seeing the footage from DW3 makes me so happy. And your love of Zhang He? I can see you are true man of class.

Damm So much Good content from Jim lately

SKELETON WARRIORS - new and shiny spin off of Dynasty games

3 was great. 4 was pretty good. 5 was great. 6 was garbage if I'm being nice about it. Didn't play 7. 8 is incredible.

To date, I have played every single Dynasty Warriors, expansion and spinoff since DW2. Dynasty Warriors 9 is the only game in the entire franchise in which I can't find something to enjoy. Tecmo-Koei did a fantastic job of fucking up one of the simplest game series on the market. It would be impressive if it didn't fucking suck so much.

Been very hype for this one since the Jimpressions... I'm not a big fan of Dynasty Warriors, but I am a big fan of Jim Sterling ripping into terrible games. edit jesus christ, "autoerotic assetflipsiation" just how proud were you when you came up with that one

Oh, so monday really IS comming ^^ Don't worry Hyrule Warrior switch is comming to cheer you up Jim!

This game is unmitigated disaster on PC, did you not know that apparently koei didnt want the PC users to have access to the Chinese dub, they only want the PS4 players to get access to the Chinese dub voices so they sent out a patch instead of fixing the numerous bugs and issues. The patch only took out the Mandarin voice overs so now Chinese dub on PC isn't even a selectable option anymore. That was the thing that Koei thought should have been the first thing to get fixed. This game is optimized so poorly that it is rated as the worst running game on every console even when it's put in the action mode and on PC it's not even playable for most people. But koei thought that the Chinese dub on PC was the first thing that needs to get addressed....

Tecmo Koei announced the PC version will have the Japanese/Traditional & Simplified Chinese localization very soon, which internet communities call out that localization files originally in the game files...... WHY CUT THE CORNER AND UNDO THIS WHEN LOCALIZATION WAS ALREADY DONE?

Did someone officially from KT seriously try to sell the genericization of all the movesets as "realism"? It's 100% money/laziness. It's, at best (and not a really good "best") a lack of time to fit them/make them in the "new action system". It's honestly just for selling later, though :(

I just love it how Jim ironically autoerotically autoassetflipsiates here by reusing content from his previous video. Just... I'm touched. Your narration can be so sublime.

Deer god... The voice acting in the intro...holy shit

The "Realism" cuts made me laugh so much! Great video! New to the channel, but I plan to stay around! Keep up the good work!

You think the DLC is bad in Dynasty Warriors? Try Dead or Alive 5. It has 9 (yes, NINE!!) Season Passes, and the total amount of DLC is around 300!! The total cost is in the 1000s of dollars. I’ve literally never seen a game with anywhere near as much DLC. The worst thing is is that the actual gameplay is solid. They just went fucking insane with the DLC greed....

Ambitious is not a defense. As are graphics at the expense of gameplay. The open world symptom is something most gamers developed an awareness of quite some time ago as that trend is nearly as big a warning as 'Procedural generated content'. You know, kinda made many wait until the reviews came in with those selling points

Never forget what they DID to zhang he

They had such a good foundation with DW 7 and DW 8, they could have really taken the concepts and ideas from those games and used them to shape an amazing future for the series, in my opinion. I love dynasty warriors so much and have been playing since DW 5.

#autoeroticassetflipsiation

I hear that same "realism" argument from people defending how easily you die in GTA V. Oh, so they made it so that you can't tank grenades like in GTA San Andreas because "realism" but then made every vehicle handle like an RC car...

Jim you bloody aced the victory outro bit with the realism. Brilliant!

even fire emblem warriors, which has a lot of the great design from hyrule warriors, also has a bunch of fucking clones, including the dlc characters you have to pay for!

I know Dynasty Warriors has ever been the most successful franchise, but going open world is a terrible idea. It does not work with the Dynasty Warriors formula. Linear levels are a must. It makes the game chaotic and action-packed. Making it open world ruins the fun. Nobody wants to run around for 10 mins to fight one general.

DW3 was the only one i played and it was real fun back then...You did not want to mess with Lu Bu at Hu Lao gate on the hardest difficulty!

Dear god I love this game back when I played 3 and wanted so much more it was a great time and like you said Jim it was magic also give us the claws back...those beautiful...beautiful claws. BTW I just found your channel today and love it so far can't wait to watch more.

I like how he opens up with DW3 clips. My favorite one.

I remember sweating during duels with Lu Bu in Hu Lao Gate Dynasty Warriors 4

I want the add that the complete editions don't even include the DLC from the base editions. Also I like to imagine you reusing the clips and voice over from last weeks Jimpression was partly a joke since Koei recycle a lot

My only real experience with the warriors series is Hyrule. Its crazy to see the change in quality in just a few titles.

Every time I watch this video, I wish it was longer. I could listen to you rant about dynasty warriors forever

Dynasty warriors 3,5, and 8 are the best

This is a really well-edited jimquisition. I can really tell how much you like(d?) the series, and how dissapointed you are in tech-mo-money.

2:40 Sun Quan must be rolling in his grave at he sight of a tiger helplessly getting shot over and over again...

Thanks for this video. I loved this series but the amount of stuff they were and were trying to get away with has been insane. Good stuff Jim.