Earlier this week we announced the arrival of both Online and Offline Co-Op multiplayer for Dynasty Warriors 9, and we finally got to spend some time with it over the weekend. For those who are sceptical on giving this game a go again in multiplayer or even thinking about picking up the game now due to the offering of multiplayer – you can hopefully get a consensus if it’s worth your time or not. Note our experience is with both of us using a base PS4.

First of all we tried out the Yellow Turban campaign with Xiahou Dun’s story. After a long loading, it was easy to set up a game and for your desired online partner to get into the game. Though for the host the game runs rather well, just a little bit of hiccups here and there in comparing to the single player experience, however the player that joins suffers a lot of frame issues, resolution dips and control input delays. This may vary from player to player depending on internet, however our internet is of high tier from UK / German providers.

If you can overlook these performance problems, you pretty much can experience an entire character story from start to finish without interruption. After a chapter is completed no-one gets kicked out of the game, only issue is the loading screens are slightly longer. Neither character is tied to each other, so one character can fast travel to one mission while the other fast travels to a different objective on the other side of China. However depending on how much action is going on with one player, it effects the performance of the other. There are also other issues such as less soldiers appearing on screen (some even just disappearing in front of you), objective completion delays, enemies not registering hits and even invisible walls that make it feel like you are running around getting caught up on rocks all the time.

At the very least it is simple to set up a sustained online game with a friend, or even a stranger with the Recruit option. Just it is held far back with performance and other issues. Its like the game’s launch all over again. We can’t honestly recommend you purchasing the game now due to the addition of multiplayer, wait until more patches and fixes arrive specifically for the Multiplayer components. Offline suffers similarly, but it is still nice that you aren’t tied to each other, and can explore and roam China at your own pace together or separately.

All in all, this addition really needed to stay in the oven for a long while more, even though the main game is starting to come around now with the many patches and fixes it has received, that doesn’t mean it is stable enough to handle Multiplayer.

What are your thoughts on the Online Multiplayer or Offline Multiplayer function of Dynasty Warriors 9? Has your experience fared differently? Let us know in those comments!

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