Games worth discovering
Dynasty Warriors just doesn’t have the same great taste in bite-size form
3K View2023-11-29
SHOULD I PLAY DYNASTY WARRIORS M?
If you’re a hardcore Dynasty Warriors fan hankering to get your fix on the go, Dynasty Warriors M does a passable job. That said, it’s not a replacement for a real musou game. Any sense of strategy normally seen in musou games has been utterly banished, and combat is over too quickly to bring much satisfaction.
TIME PLAYED
I’m somewhere between five and ten hours into Dynasty Warriors M. At this point, I’ve cleared the first chapter of the story mode and around half of the second chapter, have taken over two of the thirteen regions in conquest mode, and have spent some time grinding through daily challenges in musou mode. I’ve managed to pull thirty-one of the fifty-one playable officers currently available in the gacha without spending any money—including, thankfully, pulling my main man, Cao Cao.
WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT DYNASTY WARRIORS M?
• Slashing down hundreds of fools in historical China. If you’ve ever played and enjoyed a Dynasty Warriors game in the past, you know the main draw here. These titles excel at making the player feel like an absolute badass, taking out dozens of opposing troops with a single slash of their sword, spear, or magical staff. Whatever issues it might have, when Dynasty Warriors M unleashed me onto a small map full of bad guys and let me take them all out, I still felt that same exhilaration that has made me enjoy this series for decades now.
• Light map exploration. While story mode is always fun in Dynasty Warriors games, the real draw of Dynasty Warriors M is conquest. In this mode, I had to explore specific regions, slowly conquering them city by city. Beyond just fighting, though, careful exploration netted me bonus resources and sometimes even little sidequest challenges that I could complete. It reminded me a little of a Heroes of Might & Magic game, a comparison that is a high form of praise as far as I’m concerned.
WHAT SUCKS ABOUT DYNASTY WARRIORS M?
• Extremely tiny levels. It makes sense that Dynasty Warriors M would opt for shorter challenges for a mobile game, to help encourage play on the go. However, I think maybe they went too short. I don’t think I encountered a single level so far that lasted more than two to three minutes. Most stages go through a similar set of objectives—kill a certain number of troops, then a gatekeeper, then a named officer, etc.—with only some story levels really changing things up. I was in and out of levels so fast that I never got a chance to build up a good flow or feel like I was getting in the zone the way I do with a classic musou game.
• No strategy, all numbers. Listen, musou games rarely involve a huge amount of brainpower; they’re basically beat-em-ups, and that’s fine. But there’s always the lightest layer of strategy on top of things, forcing players to react to changing tides on the battlefield, or make sure that their home base is safe even as they make their way along conquering enemy bases. That side of the series is entirely missing in Dynasty Warriors M.
In its place is the same boring and endless power grind from every other gacha game out there. Each general in Dynasty Warriors M can be leveled up, combined with copies to increase their rarity rank, and equipped with gear and “tactics” which can also be individually leveled up. There’s countless sinks for all the resources you collect, and it’s all clearly intended to keep you playing indefinitely. But in hard gameplay terms, that means that every time I entered a level, I was either so outrageously powerful that I crushed my opponents in a matter of seconds, or so underpowered that I never stood a chance, because winning or losing relies entirely on the behind-the-scenes numbers, not on skill or strategy of any sort.
• Every scummy free-to-play monetization trick in the book. It’s not just the gacha stuff, which is annoying but generally seems fine compared to some of the competition. Dynasty Warriors M is stuffed to overflowing with ways to spend money. There’s a seasonal battle pass. There are separate mission and progression passes, each with two paid tiers of rewards. There’s a cash shop filled with daily, weekly, and monthly packs, two monthly subscription options, and special limited time deals that popped up when I hit certain milestones in-game. The game is practically begging you to spend money, and that desperation definitely took a toll on my enthusiasm the more I played.
PLATFORM TESTED
Android via Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G phone.
Mentioned games
Comments
View desktop siteTapTap looks better
on the app 
couldn’t have said it better!
2023-12-01
Author likedIf you think this game begs people for money, then I'm just going to conclude that you have not played many RPGs to begin with. Let me make this brief in terms of F2P/P2W , aside from all the initial issues you mentioned which I agree with you, this game is so far hefty generous. It's been a very long time Nexon finally showing their care for free user base. The last games they were generous in was Dynasty Warriors Unleashed (original version of this game) and Overhit, both of which were huge successes at the time. This game, however, although has many cons, they did not disappoint in terms of generosity. So how is this game generous, you ask? Freebies, tons of them. The gacha drop rate is 3% and it's actually solid. The pity system is only 30 for normal and 40 for banner (guaranteed banner hero) which is one of the most generous gacha you will see among current RPGs. You get tons of gold currencies from many missions, including rankings menu, where for every time someone in ladder goes up, you get free gold, giving you a decent amount of gold in total everyday. Other games have this system, but they're only limited to one time, but this game gives you rewards from there indefinitely. For every story mode area you clear, you get a total of 2000 gold which is enough for a 10× pull. No other RPG gave you this amount of gacha currency from just story missions. The battle pass in this game is by far the most generous I have seen in any online game. Have you seen any battle pass system in any RPG where you got free SSR and more of it's pieces for ascension? No? Well, this game does that. The hero level up costs are not too high like in other RPGs with similar level up mechanics. So if you're going to blindly label this game as some cash hungry tool, I suggest you do more research and then make your claim. Because there are numerous RPGs out there which has the same shop offer stuffs you mentioned and it's a common thing nowadays ~
2023-12-04