History YMMV / DynastyWarriors

** The [[https://www.quora.com/To-those-who-are-Chinese-how-do-you-feel-about-Dynasty-Warriors series is very popular in China]], due it being based on one of their most famous works and that the country is very obsessed with the Three Kingdoms era. It says a lot when this series can still stick out among other local ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' works due its live-action adaptation movie debut [[https://www.siliconera.com/dynasty-warriors-live-action-movie-will-land-in-china-this-april/ being released in China and Hong Kong first]].

Individual pages are listed here:
[[hardline]]
* YMMV/DynastyWarriorsWeiKingdom
* YMMV/DynastyWarriorsWuKingdom
* YMMV/DynastyWarriorsShuKingdom
* YMMV/DynastyWarriorsJinKingdom
* YMMV/DynastyWarriorsOtherCharacters

!!In General

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: ''Warriors'' games, in general, sell much better in Europe than in North America: case in point, SpinOff ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'' sold more copies in Europe than any other region.

* MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales: The [[https://www.quora.com/To-those-who-are-Chinese-how-do-you-feel-about-Dynasty-Warriors series is very popular in China]], due it being based on one of their most famous works and that the country is very obsessed with the Three Kingdoms era. It says a lot when this series can still stick out among other local ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' works due its live-action adaptation movie debut [[https://www.siliconera.com/dynasty-warriors-live-action-movie-will-land-in-china-this-april/ being released in China and Hong Kong first]].

* GoddamnedBats

* GoodBadBugs

* MemeticMutation

* {{Narm}}

** Of the "characters who should be included on the roster for the next game", Cheng Pu of the Wu Kingdom was a top contender, even if his claims were "being around Wu for a very long time since Sun Jian's reign", but without any historical noteworthiness [[note]]Historically, he was appraised by Chen Shou as a "Tiger Official of Jiangbiao", an appraisal given to 11 other generals of Wu, including his peers Han Dang and Huang Gai.[[/note]]. It took him ''nine'' main installments to become playable. Following his announcement, Liao Hua of Shu, an individual who was part of a faction since its birth to its collapse, took up Cheng Pu's old seat of "most wanted character"; other major candidates would be Sun Shao of the Wu Kingdom[[note]]Sun Ce and Daqiao's adopted son[[/note]] and Yang Hu of the Jin Kingdom[[note]]Cai Wenji and Xin Xianying's nephew who served Wei and Jin; his sister Yang Huiyu was also Sima Shi's third wife[[/note]].

** ''Dynasty Warriors NEXT'' is chalk full of these, even when players disregard the terrible control schemes:

** Of the "characters who should be included on the roster for the next game", Cheng Pu of the Wu Kingdom was a top contender, even if his claims were "being around Wu for a very long time since Sun Jian's reign", but without any historical noteworthiness [[note]]Historically, he was appraised by Chen Shou as a "Tiger Official of Jiangbiao", an appraisial given to 11 other generals of Wu, including his peers Han Dang and Huang Gai.[[/note]]. It took him ''nine'' main installments to become playable. Following his announcement, Liao Hua of Shu, an individual who was part of a faction since its birth to its collapse, took up Cheng Pu's old seat of "most wanted character"; other major candidates would be Sun Shao of the Wu Kingdom[[note]]Sun Ce and Daqiao's adopted son[[/note]] and Yang Hu of the Jin Kingdom[[note]]Cai Wenji and Xin Xianying's nephew who served Wei and Jin; his sister Yang Huiyu was also Sima Shi's third wife[[/note]].
** Considering women in the novel are always overlooked, those not yet playable will also be part of the wishlist, ranging from Lady Wu/Wu Guotai[[note]]Sun Jian's wife and the Wu matriarch; historically seen as a CoolOldLady[=/=]ReasonableAuthorityFigure and a ShipperOnDeck of Liu Bei and her daughter.[[/note]], Lady Bian/Bian Shi[[note]]Cao Cao's wife who shares some traits with Lianshi, especially RagsToRiches and TeamMom; above all, she's also a TokenGoodTeammate, according to the material source[[/note]], Lady Guo/Guo Nuwang[[note]]Cao Pi's favorite concubine at the cost of Zhenji, rumored to be responsible for getting Pi to order Zhen's suicide (though considering Zhen is already an {{Alpha|Bitch}} RichBitch, how can Nuwang "out-bitch" her, especially when it's implied Zhenji is a CompositeCharacter of the historical Lady Zhen and Lady Guo?)[[/note]], Sunshi[[note]]Sun Ce's daughter and Lu Xun's wife (though no evidence ties her birth mother to Daqiao)[[/note]], Sun Luban[[note]]Sun Quan and Lianshi's daughter, rumored to be a ManipulativeBitch in the late-Wu era[[/note]], Yang Huiyu[[note]]Cai Wenji's niece and Yang Hu's sister, who becomes Sima Shi's wife[[/note]], etc. It should come to no surprise ''Dynasty Warriors Blast'' features plenty of women with varying designs, with most of these ladies (except Sunshi) getting featured; hell, there was even [[https://twitter.com/musou_blast/status/517156153877213185 a popularity poll]] for all characters. The winner? [[DarkHorseVictory Fan Yufeng]][[note]]Sister of minor lord Zhao Fan, a sworn brother of Zhao Yun, who offered Yufeng to Yun as his bride, but [[ChasteHero he refused as to not ruin their friendship or her chastity]]. Certain works in UsefulNotes/PekingOpera decided to iron Yun/Yufeng's relationship such that they do get married on their own accords. That Yufeng's name contains the Chinese character for "phoenix" makes this a good reference to the dragon-phoenix motif in Myth/ChineseMythology with Zhao Yun (his style/courtesy name "Zilong" contains the Chinese character for "dragon"). It's the closest Koei Tecmo has to an OfficialCouple for Yun, unless the publisher goes with the alternate pairing of Zhao Yun in ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms Extreme'' with Ma Chao's sister Ma Yunlu (who's an OriginalGeneration in that work)[[/note]].

* EsotericHappyEnding: A common complaint about some of the character endings in ''9'' is they only show them at the height of a character's respective career rather than their historical death. These endings are optimistic, but if players use another character in the same faction, the former will likely end up dead (e.g. Sun Jian's story ends in Chapter 2 where he finds the Imperial Seal, but he dies in Chapter 3), thus cheapens the optimism.

** Years after its release, ''Dynasty Warriors 6'': many players will state their absolute disgust for the "[[ScrappyMechanic Renbu System]]" and {{Moveset Clone}}s, though they tend not to mention what else the game brought to the table (or they ''did'', but the Renbu System was so bad it overshadowed what ''Dynasty Warriors 6'' did right). In its defense, some players fondly remember "Siege Battles", a new "Duel System", parrying, dodge-rolling, running charged attacks, the best use of AI in UsefulNotes/TheSeventhGenerationOfConsoleVideoGames-era of the series, and all the extra visual work that was done for mood and tone of the stages. Much of this has not been seen in the games post-''6''.

** Due to the drastic changes made to game-play and presentation, ''Dynasty Warriors 9'' has earned itself the same level of controversy and ire ''6'' had received as to whether the franchise is stepping towards the right direction. On one hand, fans invested in the original material praise the game for including a Chinese dub, making its story more faithful to the original novel, improving the characterization for most of the playable characters across the board, and find the new WideOpenSandbox design adds to the immersion. However, those more attuned to the franchise view the radical changes made to its formula and the plethora of {{Moveset Clone}}s to be a regression, while finding the game's open-world monotonous and unenjoyable.

%% * EnjoyTheStorySkipTheGame: Regardless of the critiques of ''9'', the story and characterization is held up as one of the best of the series.

** Of the "characters who should be included on the roster for the next game", Cheng Pu of the Wu Kingdom was a top contender, even if his claims were "being around Wu for a very long time since Sun Jian's reign", but without any historical noteworthiness. It took him ''nine'' main installments to become playable. Following his announcement, Liao Hua of Shu, an individual who was part of a faction since its birth to its collapse, took up Cheng Pu's old seat of "most wanted character"; other major candidates would be Sun Shao of the Wu Kingdom[[note]]Sun Ce and Daqiao's adopted son[[/note]] and Yang Hu of the Jin Kingdom[[note]]Cai Wenji and Xin Xianying's nephew who served Wei and Jin; his sister Yang Huiyu was also Sima Shi's third wife[[/note]].

* EnjoyTheStorySkipTheGame: Regardless of the critiques of ''9'', the story and characterization is held up as one of the best of the series.

*** Not helping the fact is that all versions of the game suffer from severe frame-rate issues due to poor optimization, with publisher [[Creator/{{Koei}} Koei Tecmo]] further fanning the flames by barring access to the Chinese subtitles and dubs for the PC version. After players discovered a way to access said option, Koei Tecmo then responded by releasing a patch to specifically "fix" this workaround by removing the language files completely (which unfathomably also removed the previously available Japanese subtitles). Unsurprisingly, this resulted in a torrent of negative reviews on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} from Chinese and Japanese users.

* CriticalBacklash: During its release, ''Dynasty Warriors 9'' earned a negative reception from critics and veteran fans for several problems such as the frame-rate, the MovesetClone and the empty open world. Fortunately, Koei released patches to improve the game by adding several modes such as the Arena mode and fixing the frame rate. Months later, they added a co-op which many players consider it very appropriate to the open world design. Eventually those who bought and played the game later on find that it's not really a bad game and considered it more as a MMO game rather than a typical Hack and Slash game. Even those who lambasted the game during its launch went back to play it after several patches and found that at least, Koei put a lot of effort to improve it.

** ''Dynasty Warriors 4'' introduced the ability to duel against certain officers in stages. While the idea itself is unique and fun, it's also unfair on some levels. First off, if you lose a duel, it's an automatic game over and you'll have to redo the stage you were on. Sometimes duels can occur near the end of a stage, meaning you wasted 15-20 minutes only to lose at a duel and forced to redo a stage again. Secondly, duels against certain officers like Lu Bu and Gan Ning are impossible to win against, even if your weapon is at the highest level. They don't take anywhere near as much damage than other officers and dueling either of them will likely result in losing and redoing the stage you were on. This could be why the ability to duel against officers was removed in the later games.

** Elephant Lieutenants in ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriorsOnline'': sure, almost every lieutenant can be annoying in one form or another (more than they can be useful, anyways), but these units' attacks will constantly spread out enemies players have been trying to herd into a small group to kill quicker, making it practically impossible to string {{Combo}}s with them since all of their attacks [[FoeTossingCharge launch enemies into the air]]. Yes, players can send these elephants to charge instead, but that's offset with [[MostAnnoyingSound a gong constantly ringing]]. The worst part is players have to use them almost a hundred times to meet the requirements to mount them (which, depending on if someone is selling them for gold, may or may not mean spending real money to do it).

** The "Battle of Yiling" (Shu side) in ''Dynasty Warriors 3'': Wu officers like Lu Meng and Lu Xun are bizarrely overpowered on that level (though not to Hulao Gate-Lu Bu extremes), with loads of {{Hit Point}}s and high defense, thus whittling them down takes forever; additionally, [[AnnoyingArrows enemy archers litter the battlefield]]. Playing this stage on hard difficulty in Free Mode makes it easier because, for some reason, Wu officers aren't such a nightmare to fight against on this difficulty setting (especially due to the usual trope applying if played as a late stage in any character's Musou Mode). Other things that make this level hell is that the game is scripted to have Wu launch a fire attack on the Shu camp, making morale drop exponentially, while increasing Wu's troop morale. Furthermore, many Shu officers will likely die if players don't find and kill Wu placeholder officer Zhu Ran; unlike later games, the map [[GuideDangIt doesn't reveal the location of sub-officers]], meaning players won't find Zhu Ran unless Lu Xun is defeated first. Even ''if'' the fire attack is prevented, players are still required to defeat Lu Meng and Gan Ning, two of the hardest Wu officers to defeat in the game, then against against Sun Quan at the end of stage, with him being surrounded by many crossbow units. Of note is the Battle of Yiling for Shu characters must play at least two other stages finishing their respective Musou Mode. Fortunately, the subsequent stage after Yiling (mainly the Nanman Campaign) is considered a BreatherLevel.

** ''3'': Being far harder than the previous game by having many of the enemy officers (usually the playable ones) and their guards take [[DamageSpongeBoss far less damage than the regular mooks]] and dealing far more damage than any regular mook, no matter what difficulty you're playing it on, borderline requiring players to grind through "Free Mode" to have the slightest chance of clearing an officer's "Musou Mode" or hoping that you're very lucky. Plus you can't ride on any horse like in the other games. You need to be at certain ranks or else the horse will knock you off, unless you have the items that allows you to ride every horse. Related to that, speed x2 don't show up until the next game, so you're stuck with slow horses until you level characters up.

** ''5'': Altering characterization of many cast members, starting the series' long slide into {{Flanderization}} and adding Zuo Ci to the roster.

* CriticalBacklash: During its release, ''Dynasty Warriors 9'' earned a negative reception from critics and veteran fans for several problems such as the frame-rate, the MovesetClone and the empty open world. Fortunately, Koei released patches to improve the game by adding several modes such as the Arena mode and fixing the framerate. Months later, they added a co-op which many players consider it very appropriate to the open world design. Eventually those who bought and played the game later on find that it's not really a bad game and considered it more as a MMO game rather than a typical Hack and Slash game. Even those who lambasted the game during its launch went back to play it after several patches and found that at least, Koei put a lot of effort to improve it.

** [[LightningBruiser Juggernauts]] from ''Dynasty Warriors 4'' and beyond have thick armor (meaning more {{Hit Point}}s), breath devasting flames (thus inflict a burn effect, where persistent damage is dealt so long as its target stays airborne) and can swivel itself incredibly fast for something of its size to keep its aim at players; dealing with more than a couple at a time isn't recommended. [[FromBadToWorse Things got worse]] in ''Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires'' where they are '''invulnerable''' when appearing in weapon bases, forcing players to constantly dodge while frantically trying to reduce the base strength.
** Crossbow soldiers in Extreme Mode for ''5'' can receive elemental upgrades in certain scenarios, boosting their status from GoddamnedBats into this. In these scenarios, their arrows are either imbued with the fire element (thus continuous burn damage while airborne) or the ice element, which is the same as the aforementioned sorceror's ice spells, only they're faster, hit harder, and more accurate. These soldiers can pose more of a threat to players' lieutenant officers, who have difficulty hitting them due to their tendency to run off when approached, leading an officer to chase after one, only for the other four to casually freeze/torch the ally to death with ease.
** Halberd-wielding generic officers in ''6'' are the bane to any player, veteran or novice. While they attack slow, their [[MightyGlacier high attack priorty and damage]] more than makes up for this flaw, and they are smart enough to work with their allies to initiate an infinite {{Combo}} when they get the chance. Player should consider themselves lucky if the one they encounter is named, as unnamed lieuntant halberd officers always attack in groups.

** Koei Tecmo is mostly aware of the less-than-stellar launch of ''9'', thus has dedicated their post-release time to include patches that smooth out the experience outside of the [[UsefulNotes/Playstation4 PlayStation 4 Pro]], starting with graphical fixes, AI tweaking, adding extra optional features like removing the "officer encounter" cutscene that tends to disrupt {{Combo}}s, switching characters in-game [[note]]which only happen in the Story Mode and if the characters are in the same faction[[/note]], adding soundtracks from the past games and including several modes such as the Arena mode and the Photo mode, and eventually the old, classic weapons (even if it's DLC). Though some [[NeverLiveItDown won't let the publisher live this down]] due to first impressions of ''9'', others are more accepting of the improvements to the game once they get past those disillusioned and a lot of famous video game journalists (that has garnered a lot of fanbase) that had similar disillusionment and disgust on DLC practices (for example, [[WebVideo/{{Jimquisition}} Jim Sterling]]).

** Xu Province seems to attract these kinds of hypothetical objectives. Partway through the Shu version of the stage, three sets of enemy officers led by Yue Jin spawn and start heading to the castle. Shortly afterwards, Guo Jia orders them to retreat in order to [[spoiler:set up an ambush separating Liu Bei and Zhang Fei from Guan Yu]]. The hypothetical objective is to defeat all six retreating officers before they leave the map, but the game only tallies this if they are defeated ''after'' Guo Jia gives the order AND arrives on the map. Defeating even a single one of these six officer before, it doesn't count and the objective automatically fails; more likely than not, players won't even realize this until ''after'' they've beaten the level!

** ''8'': No English narrator and other dub-related corner-cutting; outside of that, this major installment got a lot of praise.

** ''9'': Received flak for changing characters' unique weapons for {{Moveset Clone}}s, redoing the combat system again that serves to make it shallow and uninteresting, pushing an "open-world" narrative/style by [[FollowTheLeader chasing popular trends]] without evolving the game and replacing the original English dub cast with less-experienced and often-less-fitting, but cheaper stand-ins.

* PanderingToTheBase: Similar to what had happened to ''Samurai Warriors 4'' when it comes to costumes, the female characters are the only ones who get DLC costumes in the second Season Pass while the male characters who have DLC hypothetical scenarios also get their alternate costumes. In the female characters' case, their costumes are the modern ones particularly high-school theme ones which many suspect that Koei Tecmo is milking on those [[SexSells who are into fanservice]]. It doesn't help that the producer admits that they're following the ''VideoGame/DeadOrAlive 5'''s business model of releasing [=DLC=]s via season passes. With the third season passes, several male characters also get their DLC costumes asides from the female; however, it's very obvious that the men selected are the popular PrettyBoy ones.

** All the way back in ''Dynasty Warriors 2'', there was an odd system where if an enemy officer was knocked down, then when they got back up, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard they would automatically get a power up effect]]. This could range from a speed boost, to an attack boost, all the way to a straight up full heal. Considering that the majority of the player’s limited charge attacks and their Musou would knock down an opponent, this meant that the C4, a stun move, was the only viable option to fight officers with, and even then, if they started a new attack string too soon, it would knock the opponent down anyway. And that’s without mentioning that allied soldiers [[ArtificialStupidity completely ignore this]], [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper and will probably knock the enemy officer down anyway]]. It’s no wonder that Koei dropped this in all later games.

** "Xing Daorong will DESTROY THEM ALL![[labelnote:Explanation]]Via the Campaign for Jing stage in ''Dynasty Warriors 4'', where the generic officer known as Xing Daorong spouts that one famous line in the English script "I WILL DESTROY THEM ALL!", preceded by a hammy EvilLaugh. Xing Daorong hasn't made any other appearances even as a generic in future DW games, but this made him memetically memorable.[[/labelnote]]

** Koei Tecmo is mostly aware of the less-than-stellar launch of ''9'', thus has dedicated their post-release time to include patches that smooth out the experience outside of the [[UsefulNotes/Playstation4 PlayStation 4 Pro]], starting with graphical fixes, AI tweaking, adding extra optional features like removing the "officer encounter" cutscene that tends to disrupt {{Combo}}s, switching characters in-game [[note]]which only happen in the Story Mode and if the characters are in the same faction[[/note]], adding soundtracks from the past games and including several modes such as the Arena mode and the Photo mode, and eventually the old, classic weapons (even if it's DLC). Though some [[NeverLiveItDown won't let the publisher live this down]] due to first impressions of ''9'' or never accepting locking the beloved classic weapons with DLC, others are more accepting of the improvements to the game.

** "Xing Daorong will DESTROY THEM ALL![[labelnote:Explanation]]Via the Campaign for Jing stage in ''Dynasty Warriors 4'', where the generic officer known as Xing Daorong spouts that one famous line in the English script "I WILL DESTROY THEM ALL!"[[/labelnote]]