I don't understand the hate, but the game is actually pretty good. I invested 300+ hours on this game without using Fast Travel and I find the open world very relaxing. I do agree a little bit on the Open World setting to be empty, but I don't find it bad. If you want to give this game a shot, I recommend you to play your favorite Officer from the start to the end. Here's my full review below:

Combat
- Obviously, DW9 combat is WAY better than the awful Rembu System in DW6. I've experimented a lot with various items, but I find the Fine Bag of Wind, Gold Crown, Mirror of Transformation and Pike of Judgement to be the best. The combat is fast paced, intense and fun. However, I find Hard difficulty easy, so I crank it to Ultimate after leveling my characters 10 levels above the enemy, and equipped with EX Weapons.
- The Flow and Reactive attack system is so engaging, it compensates the cloned move sets. I never expected how much fun playing as Sun Ce and Wen Yang with the bad weapon choices Koei Tecmo gave them.

Open World Traversal
- In my perspective, the main goal of the Open World system is to relax, relieve the stress of the fighting, and travel as you see fit. The game is NOT forcing you to manually travel every time you need to reach the next objective. All you need to do is to travel and discover the location, I don't get the hate. It's not that bad.
- Most of my play time was travelling by manually or auto-run with a horse, it was relaxing.
- Too bad there are not enough Towns and Peasants in this game to explore or discover, and that's my only complain about the Open World map.
- The Open World causes the Battle of Chibi to be slightly broken. Ready your Exploding Arrows and prepare on defeating Cao Cao in the water lmao

Content
- In Story Mode, you play as the Officer beginning with their service to the Kingdom up until to the end when they died or retire. That means for example, you play as Liu Bei from Battle of Yellow Turbans to the Battle of Yi Ling, that's long.
- Side Missions' battle for some reason, are fixated in 2-3 different locations outside the City, I find it annoying but it kinda works.
- Officers level up so fast on higher difficulties, it becomes easier when you get the hang of it.
- Hunting is fun, but the Bow camera sensitivity is a bit broken.
- Music Playlist is a bit broken, when I tried to reset the playlist to default, it plays the playlist again.
- Needs more Side Missions, but its alright I guess.
- It lacks Legacy costumes, too bad.

Graphics
- I don't care much about the graphics, I find the game beautiful.

Verdict:
To be honest, this is now my 2nd favorite Dynasty Warriors game, 1st place was DW8 and 3rd was DW5. As a hardcore Dynasty Warriors fan, I recommend everyone to play this game and invest your time with your favorite character, ignore the bad reviews saying the game is boring.

I give this game a 8.5/10. I gave DW6 a 7/10, and that means this game is way more fun.

game is okay

Apparently need a controller to play? Can't seem to get past the loadscreen.