@Mido
Here are some things to think about for a possible Dynasty Warriors 10.
What do you think?
I'll comment on your points at the end.
The controller layout and buttons
One question I would have for a Dynbasty Warriors 10 is what to do about dodging? It's a thing in DW9 but it's not present in DW8. If you add in all the other moves, there's literally not enough buttons on a controlelr to do everything. It seems to me that in Musou games there is a trinity of moves. Jumping, blockink and dodging. Most Musou games have two out of the 3.
Hyrule warriors for example, decided to not have jumping. Dynasty Warriors 8 chose not to have dodging. DW9, as far as I remember chose not to have blocking.
We need to rethink the button layout so we can get a good mix of everything and not have anything core miss out. I do think all 3 should be in a Musou game. But how as there's only limited number of buttons on any one controller.
The encyclopedia section
In the DW8XL I have, the encyclopedia section was done brilliantly. So much information about every battle, every personality, every area. It was done so well. The music accompanying this was also pleasent to listen to. In DW9 however, it's encyclopedia section was so disappointing. So little information there, it was a joke. I think they really need to just port the DW8XL encyclopedia section and just update it for DW10.
Paid DLC
The DLC for most Dynasty Warriors games is a joke. It's all microtransactions designed to tug at people's nostalgia strings. I think they need to scrap all of that and go the Smash Bros Ultimate style. Only have a few larger sets of DLC. Priced reasonably. Not a DLC pack costing more than the base game does. That way they would get more peple buying the DLC.
My opinions on what you have said above
Fleshing out the story past the fall of Shu
That might not be possible. Or is it? The book, well series of books are all called "The Three Kingdoms". The Romance part was added for Real Time Strategy series That started on the NES if I remember correctly. I have read the first book of the 3. I found a pretty good translation of it. The full version is like 3000 pages total for all 3 books. Those books do end with the fall of Shu and rise of the Jin Dynasty. That's really it because that's the end of the 3 kingdoms wars. For those who don't know and are reading this, The Three Kingdoms is a part historical and part fictional 15th century book about the Three Kingdoms period. The author obviously favoured Liu Bei as his favourite figure of the period. This led to a majority of the Chinese people also taking a liking to him. My personal favourite figure of the period is Cao Cao However I do think a majority of the leaders from all 4 sides (Jim included) were all just as bloodthirsty as each other.
However there could be an answer with another period in Chinese history. The "
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms" period approx 907AD to 960AD would make for a nice side story in the Dynasty Warriors games. This period was also quite bloody and also much political and social uphevial happened during this time.
There is actually another option. To start even earlier. And talk more about the Han Dynasty and how it ultimately fell and also focus on those outside the main 3 factions. People like Yuan Shao, Zhang Jiao, Lu Bu etc etc.
Gameplay
It's been well known that the wepons in Musou games determine the different gameplay styles, not the characters themselves. All the Dynasty Warriors do is give you a bonus if you use that character's perferred weapon. If it was me I'd go a step further and lock a weapon type to each character. You could say the only weapon a character could use would be their preferred one. This would help each character to feel more unique and actually make you get good with each chatacter. Sure I do think the multiple difficulties should exist. So everyone good or bad at the game can enjoy it.
Mistakes with Dynasty Warriors 9, not to be repeated
I hope Koei Tecmo realise Dynasty Warriors is not meant to be open world. The main battles is where it's at. For those who want more out of the game. there's the Ambition mode as well as the Empires game. I've explored the entire map in DW9. Most of that was just running around on horseback and finding each house to buy it as a warp point and moving on. COllecting the items in the wilderness and killing the wild creatures honestly was not at all interesting or rewarding. This works in BotW because that game is an exploration focused game with everything else secondary. It just doesn't work in DW9. Also all of the towns just feel the same.
The battles just have you boxed in certain areas of the map. Those are the fun parts of the game and are done quite well. As are the side missions. They are fun also.
I don't think trying to make DW9 was a bad idea in the sense that you only know that something is bad if you actually try it out. DW9 is not all bad, only most of it. The few good parts of DW9 need ot be kept but scrap the rest.
The other issue with DW9 is it's individual focused, not faction focused. Samurai Warriors 4-2 does this change also. Honestly I don't like it. A big change in DW8 was the ability to chose from more than one person for a battle and who you chose had different mission objectives to do. it meant actually doing the battle with each different person was a different experience. In story mode of cause. Free mode is totally different as you know. This also helped me to understand the flow of the game as they had proper cut scenes between each battle so we understood what was going on. Important as this is really a complex story. It also made the DW8 hypothetical story lines very easy to understand.
I say stick with the game being faction focused, not individual focused for DW10 and keep the multiple character options for each battle a thing too.
