This is not my favourite musou, but it's probably the best one Omega Force have ever mde, and the difficulty in surpassing it is reason enough for OF to never make a DW10.

Honestly, genuinely, sincerely: It's strange that every musou after this has been so "one step forward two steps back", because this game is proof that OF are capable of making a nearly perfect game.

Levels are long, open and substantial without being exhausting to traverse (as in older musous) or so easily traversed that their size feels extraneous (like modern musous). There's enough freedom to pick a path while still reigning you in enough to stop you breaking the sequence entirely - and sometimes you can do that anyway! There are rewards for it!

The storytelling is the right kind for a story like Dynasty Warriors. Rather than include jarring attempts to play chicken with morality or depth (as in 5, 7 or 9), 8's cutscenes merely focus on convincing you to be hype for the next fight while giving you a token retelling of ROTTK. You could argue that it's spartan, but having seen what results in DW attempting to take itself seriously I'd counter-argue that this is a virtue. Even despite the superfluous story, though, there are some excellent little characters moments here that really shine in the hypotheticals. It helps that this game copies DW4's excellent Kingdom-centric story mod, as opposed to dooming everyone to individuality.

And golly god, do I love those hypotheticals. They get a lot of praise, and rightly so. They're an iteration on DW4's hidden objectives, those little "beeline to a doomed officer and he'll live!" things you could do that were ultimately meaningless but nice flavour. Here, they unlock an entire alternate route. All of which feature gorgeous stages, incredibly use of reused/rearranged classic songs, and great character lineups. Even the 'canon' routes have their own hypotheticals, with my personal favourite being the saving of Pang De during Fan Castle, which leads to an EXCELLENT cutscene. They're just such a good fucking system, no notes.

On the topic of visuals, let's be honest. Technically, yeah, the game looks like shit. It shows its age with incredibly muddy textures and the absolute absence of atmospheric colours that aren't grey/brown/pale blue. But my god is the art direction solid. I still maintain that DW9's designs are better, but 8's are a close second and it's frankly amazing that they managed unique character silhouettes and busy-but-not-overdesigned designs considering the time period. The scale of some castle/palace stages is truly impressive too, even if the verticality is a bit of a ballache.

As for the actual gameplay, it's so airtight that I'm genuinely amazed the musous which follow its base-hunting format are so flaccid and uneven. While I do hate the affinity system, the actual core is just perfect. EX moves help to distinguish characters, and most weapons are just an utter blast. Being able to switch weapons (and utilize switch attacks!) is a joy, and it helps for those few characters whose base movesets just don't vibe with me. Combined with the excellent stage/battle design, and this game is a treasure to play.

And, unlike most musous that're fun to play, DW8XL actually has meaningful content. There are a lot of story and free mode stages with little in the way of repetition. This is not DW5 or 9, wherein experiencing each available story will make you repeat the same battles ad nauseaum. You don't know how fucking happy I am that I can do each kingdom's story without repeating the Yellow Turban and Dong Zhuo stages ad infinitum. That the missions lack a lot of more annoying DW mainstays (like escorts that get bogged down by peons) is a plus.

Ambition Mode, while not for me, is perhaps the gold standard for a mode aimed at people who wish to play the game forever. It fills Empires' niche - letting you engage in randomly generated musou fights forever - without pretending to be a 4x game and without an age of downtime between fights. As far as musou endgames go, it's exceptional and far less soul-crushing than something like History Mode (FE Warriors) or Adventure Mode (Hyrule Warriors).

Still, the game is near-perfect but I do have some very minor gripes. Not enough to impact the five stars, but worth mentioning.

1) The dub is mostly solid, but a lot of characters were translated poorly in terms of personality. Yue Jin is the most obvious example; in Japanese he's a hot-blooded character whose behaviour is contrasted by his polite and formal manner of speaking. In English, he has an extremely wooden voice and odd diction. Zhang Liao and Zhuge Dan have kind of the same issue. This is really obvious in the hypothetical stages, which required extra voice acting. But hey, at least Jamieson Price goes crazy as Lu Bu.

2) There's something wrong with the input buffer. It's extremely tight, and often leads to me using the wrong charge attack while I'm still adjusting to a new moveset. It's most obvious on Cao Cao's weapon, as there's a pretty noticeable gap in the input window for doing C2 and C3.

3) The XL characters are leveraged really weirdly. Yu Jin is EVERYWHERE when Wei on screen, Fa Zheng appears a lot but is functionally a UNPC with how little he says, Zhu Ran might as well not exist. Chen Gong seems to ONLY appear in XL stages, same with Lu Lingqi - AND SHE DISAPPEARS IN LU BU'S HYPOTHETICAL.

4) Hitboxes are a mixed bag, and make Havoc (range-boosting skill) mandatory. Really noticeable on Zhang He and Sun Ce.

These are really minor in the grand scheme of things, though. This game is the quintessential musou, and holding it up as the series' gold standard is one of the few times I'm in full agreement with the fandom.