When I was younger, I fell in the bathroom. The left side of my head collided with the base of the sink, and I was told by an incredible amount of people that, had I fallen a little further to the left, I would have collided with the sink and suffered severe brain damage.

This game makes me wish I did. Perhaps, if I had brain damage, I could enjoy it.

Anyone who sincerely believes DW9 to be the worst DW should be locked in a room with nothing but this game and a LeMat Revolver, loaded with a single round. It is horrible. Beyond horrible. This game is more devoid of redeeming traits than most war criminals.

I'd heard so many bad things about the Renbu system. For years, years I'd heard them. None of them prepared me for reality. What the fuck is this combat system? In lieu of a charge attack system (wherein you hit with light attacks and then press charge to do a heavy hitter), this game merely has entirely independent light and heavy strings. There are no transitory moves, not even any imitators of the old system. Simply these, a command grab, and jump attacks.

This is bad on its own, but the actual Renbu system is salting the wound. No, you can't use your entire combo strings immediately, no matter how high a level you are. You have to hit enemies to build up the Renbu Gauge, and upon rising in level you are granted extra combo strings. In practice, this turns the game into what most journalists think musou is; aimless, uninteresting button mashing until the stage ends and you are free from the gameplay for a moment. It's awful. It sucks. If you tweet 'there is no such thing as bad game design' there should be a legal requirement to play this game first.

The game's utterly atrocious camera doesn't help either, with the low FOV and forced perspective changes often obscuring where your target is. For some mind-boggling reason, the camera often tilts to the left or right at an angle, usually leaving the player character uncentered and making you blind to the enemies behind you who're hungry for your supple little bo- er, Renbu.

And no, before you ask, the gameplay isn't the only bad thing. Aesthetically, this game was made in a cauldron that was still crusty from brewing TES IV: Oblivion in it. Everything is... soupy, lathered in poorly distributed high contrast colours and the kind of bloom that made Oblivion a migraine-inducer on consoles. Character designs are a gaudy mix between feudal plate armor and the chinese armor endemic to the PS2 titles, with the idea of 'design coherence' being kicked into a river like Liu Shan. Designs range from 'competent' (Like Zhou Yu or Xiahou Dun) to looking like a horrible Xenoverse 2 OC with mods (I.e, everyone in Shu and Zhang Liao).

The maps suck too. I don't know whether the actual design or the geriatric movement speed is to blame, but they at once feel too large and claustrophobic, making navigating them a pain. If you modded DW8 to have the speed of DW3 I imagine this is what it'd feel like.

So it looks like shit, plays like shit, handles like shit and is designed like shit. Does this game have any redeeming aspects?

No.

It sucks. The End. Goodbye. I'm going back to my DW8 replay.