Video Game / Dynasty Warriors

"Unleash your inner warrior!"

Dynasty Warriors (真・三國無双 Shin Sangoku Musou ^note Literally "True — Three Kingdoms Unmatched"; the first game was titled simply Sangoku Musou in Japanese, often called simply Musou^note "Unmatched") is a series of Hack and Slash action games produced and published by Koei, developed by their own Omega Force studio. The games' storylines are loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most turbulent eras of ancient Chinese history (and the basis for Koei's popular series of hard strategy games of the same name).

The games epitomize the Hack and Slash genre, although many of them have special levels and "modes" of gameplay, which allow single and multi-player duels between characters, as well as special "Challenge Modes", which allow the player to select a character and have them perform feats of strength and skill (although most of these are just an extra excuse to mash buttons). The gameplay follows a simple format: allow the player to choose a character, then plop them onto a large battlefield facing waves of enemies. The player then uses button combos and special techniques to decimate armies of Mooks in the most stylish ways possible as they complete mission objectives to turn the tide of the battle in their favor. There's also the occasional titular Musou attacks, which the player can perform after having killed enough enemies or collected enough restorative items. The Musou attack is an automated and cinematic attack sequence, that effectively function as screen-nukers. All of the games have some form or variant of the Musou attack present, though different games may call it a different term.

The games feature a colorful cast of characters, most of whom are part of the storyline's three main warring factions, the Kingdoms of Wei, Wu, and Shu. There are also a few other characters thrown in, including the unsavory usurper Dong Zhuo and his Evil Minion Lü Bu, the greatest badass in all of Ancient China.

Mainline Games

• Dynasty Warriors (PlayStation)
• Dynasty Warriors 2 (PlayStation 2)
• Dynasty Warriors 3 (PlayStation 2, Xbox)
  • Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends (PlayStation 2)
• Dynasty Warriors 4 (PlayStation 2, Xbox, PC)
  • Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends (PlayStation 2)
  • Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires (PlayStation 2)
  • Dynasty Warriors (PlayStation Portable)
  • Dynasty Warriors: Advance (Game Boy Advance)
• Dynasty Warriors 5 (PlayStation 2, Xbox)
  • Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends (PlayStation 2)
  • Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires (PlayStation 2, Xbox 360)
  • Dynasty Warriors Vol. 2 (PlayStation Portable)
  • Dynasty Warriors DS: Fighter's Battle (Nintendo DS)
  • Jan Sangoku Musou (PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS)
• Dynasty Warriors 6 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC)
  • Dynasty Warriors 6: Special (PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable)
  • Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable)
  • Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce (PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)
  • Shin Sangoku Musou Multi Raid 2 (PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3)
• Dynasty Warriors 7 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC)
  • Shin Sangoku Musou 6 Special (PlayStation Portable)
  • Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends (PlayStation 3, PC)
  • Dynasty Warriors Next (Play Station Vita)
  • Shin Sangoku Musou VS (Nintendo 3DS)
  • Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires (PlayStation 3)
  • Shin Sangoku Musou SLASH (Mobile phones)
  • Dynasty Warriors: Blazing Battles (Mobile phones)
• Dynasty Warriors 8 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)
  • Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends (PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC)
  • Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires (PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation Vita, PC, Nintendo Switch)
  • Shin Sangoku Musou Blast (Mobile phones)
  • Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers (PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita)
  • Dynasty Warriors: Unleashed (Mobile phones)
• Dynasty Warriors 9 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Mobile)
  • Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

The Dynasty Warriors formula has also expanded into other settings, as well as spawned a plethora of spin-off games that apply Warriors-style gameplay to adaptations of and crossovers with other popular franchises:

Other Games

Spin-Offs

• Bladestorm The Hundred Years War transposes the action to The Hundred Years War and takes players to the battlefields of medieval France, as well as giving the player a whole squad to perform incredible feats with.
  
• Dynasty Warriors Online is an MMO in the familiar Three Kingdoms setting.
• Samurai Warriors (Sengoku Musou) initially started off as a spinoff, applying the Warriors gameplay to Japan's Sengoku Period. Its success eventually lead to it becoming a series of its own, with its own offshoots and expansions.
  
• Warriors: Legends of Troy is based on the Trojan War.

Crossovers

• Arslan: The Warriors of Legend (Arslan Senki x Musou), based on the 2015 anime adaptation of The Heroic Legend of Arslan (Arslan Senki).
  
• Attack on Titan (Shingeki No Kyoujin) is a Warriors-style game based on the manga/anime of the same name. It has one sequel.
• Berserk and the Band of the Hawk (Berserk Musou), based on Berserk. One of its selling points was it being the bloodiest/most violent entry in the series thus far.
• Fate/Samurai Remnant, based on the Fate Series of the Nasuverse, with an original story set in the Edo period of Japan.
• Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage (Hokuto Musou), based on Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken). It has one sequel.
• Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (Gundam Musou), the first Warriors adaptation series, based on the Gundam franchise. It has three sequels.
• Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and The Blight Below as well as its sequel combines Warriors-style gameplay with Dragon Quest.
• Fire Emblem Warriors (Fire Emblem Musou), based on the Fire Emblem series.
  • Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, based on Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
• Hyrule Warriors (Zelda Musou), based on The Legend of Zelda, combining gameplay mechanics from both franchises.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Zelda Musou: Yakusai no Mokushiroku), which presents an Alternate Timeline story set 100 years before the events of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
• One Piece: Pirate Warriors (One Piece: Kaizoku Musou), based on One Piece. It has four sequels.
  
• Persona 5 Strikers, an Actionized Sequel to Persona 5 employing the Warriors combat engine in place of turn-based JRPG combat.
• Touken Ranbu Warriors, based on Touken Ranbu.
  
• Warriors All-Stars (Musou Stars), a Massive Multiplayer Crossover that incorporates other Koei Tecmo franchises in addition to Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors.
• Warriors Orochi (Musou Orochi), a spin-off crossover of Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors and a few other Koei Tecmo characters, centered around a conflict involving characters from the Japanese, Chinese, Greek, and Norse mythologies. It has three sequels.

New releases in this franchise are... frequent, and charges of Capcom Sequel Stagnation are often levied by reviewers.

A film adaptation of the games was released in mainland China on April 30, 2021. It was streamed internationally on July 1, 2021 via Netflix. The trailer can be seen here.

Given the games' large cast, here is a character sheet to learn more about them.

Has nothing to do with the 1980's TV show Dynasty (1981) or its 2017 remake.

Compare and contrast Dynasty Wars, which this franchise is more or less a remake of. Compare also with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, by the same creator, but with more tendencies for the player to die on top of demons as enemies.

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This game series provides examples of:

Tropes A to D

• 24-Hour Armor: Until 9, all of the playable characters, particularly the ones with armor, still wear the same clothes even during downtime cutscenes except in the death scenes where some of the characters who are ill and dying in their beds wear white robes. In 9, the playable characters get to wear casual outfits, which have different styles and variations of the Han clothing. This also brought some surprising reveals on what some of the characters looked like without their headgear.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: Played straight in DW 8:XL, where the highest level attainable is 150! There are 82 characters!
• Acoustic License: A staple of the game, dialogue from characters when they appear in the ticker is heard as if they're standing right in front of the player. Even when an enemy is discussing their secret ploy.
• Actor Allusion
  • Upon celebrating Chinese New Year for 2013 (the year of the snake), developer Omega Force promoted a picture of the new Guan and Zhang family members (Guan Xing, Guan Yinping, Zhang Bao) with their fathers, along with Yinping drawing a snake while smiling and mischieviously sticking her tongue out to the side◊; this was previously done in YuruYuri with Akari Akaza◊. Akari and Yinping are voiced by Shiori Mikami.
  • One of Wang Yuanji's alternate costumes via her school uniform has her dressed almost like Sena Kashiwazaki. Both characters are voiced by Kanae Itō.
  • This is not the first time Kazuya Nakai voiced another historical figure who wears an eyepatch. Hilarity Ensues when this character hails from a rival franchise.
• Adaptational Badass: Many of the playable characters are rulers, strategists, advisors, politicians, old men, wives, daughters and other non-combatants. In order to function in the game's fast-paced action setting, they're upgraded from Non-Action Guy status to Badass Bookworms, Royals Who Actually Do Something and Action Girls.
• Adaptational Heroism: Of course there's a lot in the Shu team, as well as majority of playable characters.
• Air-Dashing: 9 includes this maneuver, referred to in-game as somersault, presumably because of the spinning a character performs when doing it. The somersault allows for the player's officer to move into or away from combat quickly, and is useful for moving across structures in the game's open world. The somersault can also become a Wall Jump if used close enough to a wall. There is also an accessory that can be equipped that allows for multiple somersaults to be performed in succession.
• All for Nothing: Since DW7, all of the efforts of Wei, Wu, and Shu have become this with the addition of Jin, who wins it all in the end.
• Alternate History:
  • Unlike the earlier games, the Musou mode in 4 is kingdom based, not officer based, so the players can play through it with any of the default characters and unlocked throughout it. This means that officers like Sun Jian, who died before Hu Lao gate historically, and other characters will be alive at the end of their Musou mode when they should be dead.
  • 8 introduced Hypothetical missions, unlocked by meeting certain criteria within another mission. Characters who suffer plotline deaths are often spared in these missions, and eventually the story deviates in such a way that your side ends up conquering all of China (either by yourself, or under an alliance with Wu/Shu.)
  • The 9 DLC Season Passes have hypothetical scenarios for some characters where they can outlive their historical deaths or fates and continue to do their own thing which changes the course of history.
• Amazon Brigade: Averted in the newer games since 7, unless you count "Handmaiden" character that appear in certain stages and act like a mini-officer armed with Combat Hand Fan. But in earlier games such as 4 and 5, female officers are usually accompanied by a small unit of female soldiers. Zhurong also had Nanman version of female soldiers which are actually called Amazon.
• Anachronism Stew: From types of clothing and weapons that would not be seen in China at that point of history to sentient tanks with flamethrowers, things can be pretty anchronistic.
• Anachronistic Soundtrack: The franchise is known for using rock music as its soundtrack with a combination of traditional Chinese music.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Before 7, one of the benefits you get for leveling up is the ability to select alternate outfits for your character. These are often taken from previous iterations of the game. From 7 onward alternate outfits are available from the start.
• Annoying Arrows: Zig Zagged depending on the game you're playing and in some cases what cutscene you're watching. In some games archers are deadly player-killers, in others they're just as much of cannon-fodder as any other mooks. The same goes for cutscenes: sometimes you'll see a character become a Human Pincushion and laugh it off as Just a Flesh Wound, and other times they get Killed Off for Real with a single shot.
  • In 2~5, archers are very powerful and essentially must be taken out on harder scenarios if you're expected to fight a nearby officer.
  • In 8, a pair of archers a mile away off-screen can practically stun-lock you, even if you're surrounded by other soldiers.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In 7 and 8, if an allied officer calls for help and you rendezvous with them, they'll automatically recover a portion of their health. This gives you a chance to actually rescue and leave behind critical NPCs to their own doing, as opposed to being forced to babysit them through the rest of the stage.
  • Story Mode in 7 and 8 gives characters stat boosts to ensure they're ready to survive later stages with higher difficulties without any Level Grinding.
  • in 8 Empires every character, when played, has access to Unity, a strategem that heals all allies in an area, even though they often have to equip it manually. In addition to guaranteed player healing during a battle it also lets the player easily heal off injured officers so they don't have to worry about them, as the above mentioned heal upon rescue only works once a battle and the more freestyle nature of the battles may see the same officer(s) getting near death repeatedly and there are penalties for losses.
  • 9 got an update that gives you free horses that have amazing stats. Given how one of the major complaints was the open world being empty and fairly large for a hack and slash this works for removing some of the tedium, as you're fast enough to outrun any threats with a lot of stamina to make traversing the map so much easier.
• Anyone Can Die: Being based on a history of warfare, it's inevitable that some characters bite the dust throughout the timeline, which spans roughly 79 years. In fact, in the aftermath of the final chronological battle of the series (Zhong Hui's Rebellion), only Ding Feng, Jia Chong, Liu Shan, Sima Zhao, Wang Yuanji, Wen Yang, Xin Xianying, Xingcai survive (Deng Ai and Jiang Wei survive in the games' depictions, although historically they bit the dust too), and out of all of them, only Jia Chong and Wen Yang live to see China united after the Jin conquest of Wu (which has yet to be portrayed so far).
  • Several characters' deaths have never been depicted in cutscenes or even mentioned, and they simply stop appearing in later battles, though this is occasionally because they managed to reach old age and die naturally, or their death is less important to the story.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Your kingdom in the Empires spin-offs is generally limited with how many officers you can hire with the only logic being avoiding making the game laughably easy. AI-controlled kingdoms, however, have much more hiring power and can usually squeeze as many officers in a handful of provinces as you can fit in your entire kingdom.
• Art Evolution:
  • While the changes from 1 to 2 are significant, besides the Three Kingdoms setting they were two unrelated games in Japan, so it doesn't count. From 2 to 5, most characters had gradual changes with each game, while a few had more near complete redesigns, most of them in 4 and 5 as a part of hardware generation change. 6, being a soft-reboot of sorts, had the characters' visuals overhauled, from the exaggerated versions of their old outfits to completely new looks, all of which looked outlandish. The backlash from 6 led to 7 returning to the older style of 2-5, and the designs from 6 that were kept were redesigned to match the old style. Also, with the more prominent presense of the "second-generation" characters in 7 and 8, most of the younger(-looking) "first-gen" were made to look slightly older.
  • Dynasty Warriors 9 did this on two fronts. First, all of the games assets and character models were rebuilt from the ground up specifically for the Playstation 4. Secondly, the overall character designs were tweaked to tone down the "flashiness" and focus on more era appropriate designs and costumes.
• Artifact Title: The Japanese title ("Shin Sangoku Musou") can be seen as one, particularly the further the series gets from its Early-Installment Weirdness Fighting Game origins as every new game makes the "you-vs.-everyone" model of the Shin Sangoku Musou games (and really any game bearing the "Musou" name, to the point it's basically the name of the genre) the "true"^note The "Shin" in "Shin Sangoku Musou'" face of the series.
• Artificial Brilliance: Varies wildly between individual games, with some notable examples being in Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends where the AI was arguably at its highest height of intelligence. In some games, even the lowliest of cannon fodder will use teamwork and do fairly clever things...
  • In 2~5, AI officers even had their killcounts displayed. In 8, bodyguards are shown to be quite adept at fighting, at least when near the player.
• Artificial Stupidity: ...while in others the AI may appear to be programmed to being bipolar between Attack! Attack! Attack! and Dirty Coward tendencies. As a rule of thumb, higher difficulty settings affect the AI only by making it more aggressive, but not really any smarter. One common trait tends to be certain characters' attack strings/inputs causing the AI to unblock right away, allowing them to get hit.
  • In 8, enemy officers are very prone to guarding while you attack, which can work against them if they have a weapon advantage and are thus immune to being stunned by weapons, letting you wail on them from behind. They may sometimes even run in a direction away from you and guard, leaving their back completely open.
• Artistic Age: Just about every non-patriarchal character looks to be in the late-teens/early-twenties range, with only a handful of characters looking any older. Also, as the alternative would just be impractical, there is also no visible age change; from their first battle to their deathbed, every character with a career spanning the entire war maintains all the jet-black Anime Hair you would expect from them at 20 through to their 40's, 60's, and even 80's in some cases. The only old people are apparently the ones that start old.
  • You probably wouldn't know right away, but Jia Xu is older than Huang Zhong.
• Ascended Extra: Over time many of the "generic" officers (those without unique character models and weapons) have become playable characters.
• Ascended Meme: Dynasty Warriors 3 gave rise to the meme "DON'T PURSUE LU BU!", good advice considering Lu Bu was a beast who would wreck you if you did. Come Dynasty Warriors 7, the achievement/trophy you get for defeating Lu Bu for the first time is "Okay, you can pursue Lu Bu." Cao Cao would also say the famous line that Yuan Shao initially spoke.
• Asset Actor:
  • Depending on the game, there are several character models used to represent various important generals or warlords that aren't notable enough to have unique ones. In Dynasty Warriors 5, for example, one particular cutscene drew attention to the warlord Yuan Shu, but it turns out he merely used the generic "officer" model. The only truly unique NPC model was that of the Emperor, but that came to an end from Dynasty Warriors 7 when Cao Mao also uses the Emperor model (due to also being an emperor).
  • This can lead to hilarity when a character has a unique voice for story reasons, but then uses a generic voice in gameplay. As an example, in Dynasty Warriors 5 the sorcerer Yu Ji uses the generic "strategist" model and taunts Sun Ce with a unique, light-hearted and mocking voice. Upon his defeat, he then uses the generic model's much deeper and rougher voice.
  • From 7 on this is at least a Downplayed Trope as generic officers of importance are given unique looks in the variation of "using a character customizer to generate the unique look". You'll still see plenty of the same armor, faces, and colors but each character tends to be unique enough you could pick Cao Shuan out of a line up from Cao Rui and Cao Mao despite all being wei officers.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Oh so frequently. You'd think that it wouldn't fit at first, but given how over the top the series is, it does anyway.
• Automatic Crossbows:
  • The ballistae from 7 and 8, which are basically machine gun turrets with arrows for ammunition.
  • The "orbiting crossbow" weapon in 8 is basically a portable ballista.
• Babies Ever After: A feature promoted for 8: Empires is that you can have babies with the character you marry. And about a year after the birth event the child will be ready for battle, and be a custom character automatically created with characteristics of both parents.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Happens in the DW3 opener, as well as whenever a Double Musou is performed, and occasionally in cutscenes too.
• Badass Normal: The unplayable characters in 2, ranging from the very minor Officers to even the lowly Sergeants and Bowmen, can surprisingly hold their own against the odds when you mod the game with cheat codes to enable them to be selectable.
  "The almighty Gate Captain!!" ~Random YouTube Comment
• Barbarian Tribe: The Nanman Forces; the name 'Nanman' literally translates into 'southern barbarians'.
• BFS: Most blades are pretty huge, but the Greatswords really take the cake.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The whole point, really.
• Big Dam Plot: The battles at Xiapi and Fan Castle. Both use a scheme of flooding castles during heavy rains by opening flood gates.
• Bittersweet Ending: As the epilogue text of 7 reveals to you, a few years after the Fall of Shu, Wei experiences a coup d'état that sees the last emperor of Wei being deposed by the Sima family, who change the kingdom's name into Jin. They proceed to conquer Wu less than two decades later, after which China is finally united under one ruler. However, by this time, nearly all playable characters and an endless amount of generic mooks are dead, including all the famous officers you know. Also, it isn't long after Jin's founding that conflict would arise, giving way to backstabbing, civil wars, and eventually fragmentation to come along...^note In a twist, Jin Dynasty itself ended when its last emperor is forced to abdicate the throne to Liu Yu, a distant descendant of a Han Dynasty prince, Liu Jiao.
• Bloodless Carnage: For all the action packed combat, and the ridiculously high body counts, blood is a massive rarity in this series. The most significant sight of it is in a cutscene in 3, where Sima Yi gets nicked by an arrow, causing him to bleed from the cheek.
• Body-Count Competition:
  • A few mission objectives invoke this, but it tends to inevitably happen when two players start playing co-op.
  • The "Defeat" mode in DW Online is also a bodycount race.
• Bookends:
  • In 4, the first mandatory stage is the Yellow Turban Rebellion on the Han side. The last stage of the entire game? The Yellow Turban Rebellion on the Yellow Turban side. ^note The Yellow Turban story is unlocked by completing all the other stories: Shu, Wei, Wu, Lu Bu, Yuan Shao, Dong Zhuo and Nanman, the last of which is unlocked by beating Meng Huo and/or Zhu Rong in a duel in the Nanman Campaign stage for Shu or Wu, unlike those of Lu, Yuan and Dong, which can be unlocked by completing other stories (any kingdom story for Lu Bu, Wei's story for Yuan Shao and Lu Bu's story for Dong Zhuo).
  • In 7, the first campaign you're likely to play is Wei, since it's the first selected. The last one is Jin, which is essentially Wei under a different name and ruler. Not only that, but the last battle for Jin has "The Last Battle" as its theme, which contains a section of Crush 'Em All, the theme from the first battle in Wei.
  • Wei's story in both 7 and 8 occurs this way with Xiahou Dun. Cao Cao even lampshades it in 8.
  • Most of the final hypothetical stages in 8 attempt to invoke this with the roster of playable characters generally mirroring those from the first stages.
  • The first mission in Lu Bu's story campaign in 8 plays his theme song throughout the mission, and during the final hypothetical mission it kicks in during the final push towards the palace.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: There are certain stages with side-missions that you can fulfill to give you advantages against the boss or bosses of that level (raising army morale, weakening the enemy, etc.).
• Bow and Sword in Accord:
  • In 2~5, all characters can switch between their normal weapon and a bow at will.
  • Huang Zhong wielded a Curved Dao and Bow until 6, and Xiahou Yuan uses the Bow and Rod outside of 6~7, which is essentially a Bow and Club in Accord.
  • In 7~8, Sun Shangxiang follows this trope to a lesser extent.
• Button Mashing:
  • Practically a defining quality of the series, giving a simplistic yet carthatic experience. Later games in the whole franchise put the emphasis on other buttons to be mashed in order to make up for it (such as mashing the charge attack button during some moves only).
  • Literally mashing the main attack buttons during a Storm Rush in 8 puts a lot more swings into it.
• Call-Back:
  • 7 has this with music in Story Mode, with each faction having two to three songs that are combined to their final stage's theme(or they're all based on it). Both 7 and 8 use musical callbacks in non-battle themes.
  • Some Musou and Rage attacks in the 8 series are fanservice-y call backs to movesets from the older entries in the series.
• Call to Agriculture: A common feature of many of Wei's endings, due to the presence of Working-Class Hero Xu Zhu, though many of the characters involved are still wearing their heavy armor as they work.
• Canon Foreigner: Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers added two original characters who never existed in the historical records, novels and even Chinese mythology:
  • Lei Bin is Zhao Yun's childhood friend and a history buff who wields a bowgun which has similar elements to Lianshi's crossbow and even shares the same moveset. Word of God confirms that he mainly exists to provide another perspective and prevent a romance between Zhao Yun and Lixia.
  • Lixia is a mystic who requests Zhao Yun and Lei Bin to find the five mystic gems. She has a dark side who wants to destroy the world.
• Changing Gameplay Priorities: In the early game, you care about your character's defense and health a lot. Later on, especially on higher difficulties, it's much more effective to just kill everything before it can become a threat to you. As better weapons and higher levels start rolling in, you'd want to maximize your attack efficiency and/or musou power in order to kill enemies faster while just avoiding attacks. This is both for the Guide Dang It! treasure acquisition missions and for the fact that enemies can combo-kill/musou you on any defense level in harder modes anyway.
• Character Customization: Starting with DW4 some games, particularly Xtreme Legends and Empires, would allow you to create your own characters to use.
• Characterisation Marches On: Some (perhaps most) characters have undergone significant personality adjustments as the series has gone on. Some notable examples include:
  • Zhou Yu, who began the series as rather hot-blooded and a little hammy. 4 reimagined him as the stoic, no-nonsense Straight Man to his sworn brother (and foil) Sun Ce. Subsequent games have put him somewhere in-between, keeping the stoicism and dependability but giving him more fire and emotion.
  • Xiahou Yuan, who was simply another gruff, brutish enforcer until 5 rounded him out as the laid back, affable general he's remained in every game since.
  • Yuan Shao, who's arguably been on the unkind end of this trope. He started off as just another warlord, and while his noble birth was still played up, he remained a powerful and menacing general until his downfall at Guan Du. 5 onwards turned him into a bit of a pompous twit whose ego far exceeds his competence; he holds so much less presence than Cao Cao that even newcomers can tell there's only one way his story is going to end.
  • Sima Yi, who started off as Wei's cunning but relatively inoffensive counterpart to Zhuge Liang; he became far more arrogant and villainous in 5 and 6. 7 dialled him back a bit, humanising him through his interactions with his family and fleshing out his motivations.
  • Ma Chao was originally characterized as a patriot motived by revenge, impassioned but possessing a dry wit. 4 introduced his affinity for justice and every entry since has made it his defining character trait.
• Chastity Couple:
  • Romance is an undeniable part of the story (loose or not, it was based on history), but whether it's because of artistic choice or censorship (which is hardly believable, given that the whole point of the series is for you to lay waste on a battlefield with hundreds of mooks), physical affection is kept to a minimum. This leads to cases like Sima Zhao and Wang Yuanji acting like close friends, whereas their real-life counterparts were a Happily Married couple. Somewhat justifiable in that the source material is basically a militaristic semi-documentary of China's Three Kingdoms period. There's barely even any women mentioned.
  • Wu's ending on DW 7 is for the longest time the closest anyone has shown physical affection, with Sun Quan bridal carrying Lianshi. Keep in mind that the ending is a feast, one that follows the euphoria of a major battle of independence. You would think they show more than that.
  • The ninth game nearly averted this trope where the endings of some female love interests show some affection between them and their partners. Nearly in a sense that the only affectionate gestures shown are caressing the check, embracing, gushing and lying on one's lap.
• Color-Coded Armies: Blue/Purple for Wei, Red for Wu, Green for Shu, and Teal/Light Blue for Jin as well as Yellow for the Yellow Turbans, Purple for Dong Zhuo, Black and White for Lu Bu, and Gold for Yuan Shao. In Story Mode, Unique Officers are even colored as such when they are in their original faction or when they changed faction much like what occured in actual medieval China.
• Combat Hand Fan: Comes in a few varieties, including folding fans, feathered fans, and a polefan (a fan at the end of a stick).
• Combination Attack: If two players are close enough to each other and detonate their Musou attack at the same time, they can achieve this. Some games allow this to be done with bodyguards and friendly NPCs, especially in the Empires spin-offs.
• Composite Character:
  • Some canon characters are combined into one for the game's characters, occasionally to reduce the appearance of characters that were essentially one-dimensional in the source material.
  • The child feature in 8: Empires does this, basically combining the features of both parents, not just looks but personality and weapon choice are also factors they take after their parents.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • There's a way for the AI to cheat in every single game, whether it be having unlimited musou, treating death like a slap on the wrist, teleporting, or even being immune to knockdowns and launches from throws.
    • Somewhat averted in the Empires spinoffs for 7 and 8, where at least you can now return to the fight if KO'd under most circumstances.
  • In 2, officers and gate captains can recover some of their health, all of their health, or receive a temporary attack or defense boost every single time you knock them down.
    • They can also heal themselves to a lesser extent in 3 and 4 with a charging animation.
  • In 4, AI officers can use musou without charging, which also means that they can use two or more successive musou attacks without refilling. Even worse that in the duel (though only in the vanilla), you start with empty musou gauge while your opponent can use musou as soon as the duel starts.
  • In 8, AI officers will use switch attacks to get their weapon to the affinity that has an advantage over you. This means that enemy officers essentially have three weapons, when you have can only have two.
  • As for Dynasty Warriors Advance:
    • The AI Officers and higher have random moments where they can resist your attacks and then combo you, taking away one OR MORE abilities from you. And if this bastard is the Victory Trigger you have to defeat, don't expect to recover enough ability to score 1000 points.
    • You die, it's Game Over. Same applies for AI in most cases... But, in some circumstances, the AI won't die until you Triumph over them. If your level is too low and you don't have a powerful weapon, your best bet is to Reset and New Game.
    • The archers. Oh boy the archers... Every other enemy needs to successfully land the third or sixth or ninth hit of their combo in order to take one ability from you, but the archers are purely based on RNG. And somehow their shot from behind ALWAYS takes one Ability away.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Another staple of the series. Granted, harder difficulties downplay this somewhat, but it's still there.
• Cool Horse: Red Hare, canonically the fastest horse in the three-kingdoms era. As the oft-repeated quote goes: "Among men, Lu Bu. Among horses, Red Hare." There are also other notable steeds from the era such as Shadow Runner, Cao Cao's horse, and Hex Mark, a horse dubbed unlucky for the rider.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The tragedy of Fan Castle could have easily been avoided if not for Guan Yu's Honor Before Reason. A Hypothetical stage in 8:XL drives this home by showing that, had Guan Yu swallowed his pride and honored the deal with Wu, Shu would have been able to concentrate fully on Wei, leading to a decisive victory at Wuzhang Plains.
• Counter-Attack: In almost every game. 8 has a Switch Counter function, which, when the player is against an Officer their affinity is a disadvantage against (Man against Heaven against Earth against Man etc.), they can activate a Switch Counter when they're attacking at the right moment. It comes with temporarily increasing their defence and attack.
• Cowardly Mooks: The games and its numerous spin-offs often employ this through a Morale Mechanic. Defeating area leaders causes their surrounding troops to instantly lose all their morale and start fleeing from battle.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Happens in many character death scenes. Despite the fact that you slaughter them by the hundreds during gameplay, surrounded by 20 or so mooks in a cutscene and it's a life-or-death situation.
• Dance Party Ending:
  • Dynasty Warriors 2's credits
  • Most of the endings in the third and fourth games of the series; Zhang He's ending in the fifth involves him leading such a dance party.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • 7 and 8 are noticeably darker than previous entries, due to them sticking closer and closer to the actual historical events of the Three Kingdoms era, especially 8's Historical routes.
  • Related to the above, Jin's story modes are generally the darkest out of the all the factions. Nearly all the non-Jin characters are already long dead by the time the Jin story begins with the exception of Shu's second generation and a handful of Wu officers, there is a lot more political intrigue such as assassinations, violent revolts and their equally violent suppression, and there is a seemingly nonstop string of betrayals.
• Darkest Hour: Each kingdom's Historical path in 8 starts out with one, where key characters dying leaves every faction much weaker and snowballs into further tragedy.
• David Versus Goliath: Strikeforce introduces giant monsters. Anytime you're forced to fight Lu Bu often becomes this too.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Generally how you take on most of the harder enemies. It may also happen to a severely annoying extreme in DW4's Xtreme Mode, thanks to having to buy your After-Combat Recovery at progressively higher costs, and the enemies' tendency to Gang Up on the Human and throw Mook Chivalry out the window.
• Decadent Court: The whole reason the Three Kingdoms era started in the first place is because, after the Yellow Turban Rebellion, there was a power struggle within the court of the dying Han dynasty which led to the rise of Dong Zhuo into power. The Jin storyline also shows how deadly the court of the Wei kingdom is particularly with the power struggle between Sima Yi and Cao Shuang.
• Decapitated Army: For the overwhelming majority of battles, defeating the commanding officer results in victory. The few stages that avert this tend to have your commander reaching an escape point or wiping out every single enemy officer as the victory condition. On the other hand, if you encounter an enemy Officer that seems too tough to take on, you can use the inversive tactic of eliminating their subordinate troops to demoralize them.
• Decisive Battle: Chibi, which has the fledgling kingdoms that dominated the era having a showdown with Cao Cao's massive navy being burnt to cinders by a smaller force of underdogs later forming Shu and Wu.
• Defeat Means Playable: Almost exclusively how you recruit new officers in 8's Ambition Mode.
• Demoted to Extra: Several characters went from playable to nonexistent in 6, though they were readded in 7~8.
• Didn't See That Coming: While you have to do a lot of work to set it up, the battle the branches off into the Hypothetical Path in 8 usually involves a case of this. For instance, Shu's battle of Fan Castle: Extra strategists being alive? Minor annoyance. The flood attack failing? They have contingencies. Extra troops arriving early thanks to improved leadership in other battles? Wei still has backup from Wu. The Yellow Turbans, loyal to Liu Bei after being shown mercy all the way back at the first stage, showing up to completely blunt Wu's surprise attack? Not even Xu Shu saw that coming, and it was his rescue attempt.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Unlocking certain "Ways of Life" for Create-A-Warriors in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires requires you to do this. Ways of Life are unlocked by doing certain things to obtain Titles in Empire Mode, then beating the game. The problem is, you're automatically assigned the highest tier Way of Life you qualify for and you can't go backward, which makes it difficult to get some of the low-to-middle tier titles. Do you want your character to be known as an Undefeated Veteran? Fight defensive battles and do escort quests, but you better make sure those quests are all for the same person, because if you manage to get too many people to like you the game will automatically upgrade you to Trustworthy Hero!
• Disneyfication: Many of the events depicted in the series tries as much as it can to make all the political intrigue, alliances and marital relationships present in the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel, and some historical excerpts, to be as a lighter and mystified as possible. The most horrid actions are altered to be less harmful events, people with much blood in their hands through morally ambiguous actions are pushed as very ideal heroic figures, marital relationships are often very romantic and set out of real love, instead of mere arranged marriages with some level of tolerance towards each other at best, or outright hatred at worst.
• Downer Ending: For all the high-flying action, giant explosions, and unrealistic weapons it contains, Dynasty Warriors is still technically Historical Fiction. In real life not everyone gets a dramatic or heroic death, and not everyone gets to live out their dreams. That's reflected here, and can lead to a lot of less-than-desirable endings.

Tropes E to L

• Early-Installment Weirdness: The very first entry in the series was a PS1 fighting game. Justified in that the Japanese version of said fighting game is not considered to be part of the series. The original game was titled "Sangokumusou," and localized in North America as "Dynasty Warriors." A spinoff of that game was released in Japan as "Shin Sangokumusou," but was localized as "Dynasty Warriors 2" due to the characters being essentially the same ones as in the fighting game. The sequel to "Shin Sangokumusou" was "Shin Sangokumusou 2," which was localized as "Dynasty Warriors 3," leading to an ongoing discrepancy in numbers between the Japanese and overseas releases.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The Hypothetical Endings in 8 require pretty specific actions in several battles and even with 99% of the requirements fulfilled can be averted with a single choice.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Ending Musou Mode on Novice or Easy difficulty in 5 will give you this closing narration:
  "These tales, long forgotten in the flows of time, are about the legends of which no one can recall..."
• Elaborate Equals Effective: More powerful weapons will look progressively more ornate.
• Elite Mooks:
  • In 2 through 5, the Guard Captains who served as bodyguards to famous officers are this, with equivalents in the Unit Commanders of 8. The Empires spin-offs for 7 and 8 have elites summoned via tactic cards.
  • Named officers who haven't yet been given unique designs and weapons can count as well, as they all pull from the same pool of generic portraits, voice clips and weapons (in 8, for example, generic officers are usually wielding either a great sword, a spear, or throwing knives, and they all lack Musou Attacks.)
• End of an Age: Jin's campaign is all about this. 90% of the characters on all three sides are dead (the campaign even kicks off with the death of Zhuge Liang, the last of Shu's old guard,) and the Sima family are set to finally bring an end to the Three Kingdoms period.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: In 9: Empires, there is an early game cutscene of your character saving a puppy from being run over by a carriage. If your character’s evil level is higher than their benevolent level, the cutscene will end with the puppy running away from the character, and their evil level will slightly increase.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After Shu's victory against Wei at Mt Ding Jun in 7, Huang Zhong mentioned to Zhuge Liang about Cao Cao's statement of being a decoy, leading the latter to realize that their real target is Guan Yu at Fan Castle.
• Faction-Specific Endings: 4, 7 and 8 have these endings for each playable faction, 8 has two endings for each faction. DW Online and the Empires spin-offs have era-specific endings.
• Fanservice: Virtually every female character is attractive and youthful and some of them have rather revealing outfits. Several of the male characters get in on it too.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: KOEI seems to love doing this to character outfits, especially to accessories like shoulder-guards or gloves.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Enough officers use one (or wind in place of lightning) in many of their strong attacks and musou's that each kingdom very well applies; Chibi exemplifies this, with northern, snowy Wei coming down (by water no less) to be met with Wu supplied fire attacks propelled by Shu wind rituals. This is also one possible reason the colors were changed from the source material, as Shu's original blue colors are not often associated with wind or lightning, nor Wei's black and purple with ice.
• Flanderization: It has occurred to increasing degrees as the character roster increases, if only so that archetypically-similar characters can be told apart.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Use a character with the Special Ability True Speed in 6, activate it, rush and keep mashing the Swift Attack. It's hilarious!
• Forced Level-Grinding: Zig-zagged. While you don't have to play through any of the stages in free mode, doing so increases your officers' stats and you can find weapons and items like in musou mode, making it a bit easier than if you jumped into musou mode without doing any stages on free mode as the later stages become much more difficult as some feel like they're secretly saying do stages on free mode to make these stages easier. Having an officer at a higher rank than the default rank will make those later stages far easier.
• Friendly Fireproof:
  • You can rain a hail of death on a crowd of soldiers, or race into said crowd with flaming swords flailing, but miraculously your allies will emerge unscathed.
  • Zigzagged in DW7, where your Musou attacks can hit your allies but don't damage them.
  • Some Evil strategems in 7: Empires will damage allies, such as Poison Mist and Ultimate Might. Also the wise strategy Inferno.
• Fun with Acronyms: The non-Empires expansions are titled Xtreme Legends, which can be shortened to XL, which traditionally stands for "Xtra Large", a fitting term for the intent of an expansion pack.
• Fur and Loathing: In 9, bandits/brigands around Northern/Northwestern China such as Liang Province wear fur clothing as they're usually depicted in other Three Kingdoms works (such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms).
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Averted. While most allied NPCs have finite health and can be killed by enemies, in 7 the "Guide" NPCs in Story Mode (e.g. Lian Shi in Yi Ling and Liu Qi in Chi Bi Shu) are made invincible with no health bar shown, saving players the frustration of having to protect them along the way.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the 7: Empires and following Empires games, you can have characters swear an oath or have them get married if they have high enough bonds, but you may also edit special scenes with characters. This allows you to have sworn enemies such as Liu Bei and Cao Cao having an oath of brotherhood. It is also even possible to marry characters of the same gender, or even a character with their own clone.
• Going Through the Motions: Dynasty Warriors 9 ditches the character portraits and the still pictures of the characters' emotions and replaces them with the limited animated character portraits that are similar to Starcraft. The conversation cutscenes also have the characters standing still while talking with stock hand gestures.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Xiahou Dun catching an arrow in the eye is done pretty well, given that they don't explicitly show the arrow in the eye (or Dun pulling it out) given the T rating.
    • Except in the first game's ending for him, that is.
  • In 7, during the Jin Campaign, the execution of Cao Shuang is handled this way.
  • The death of Zhang Liao in 7 involves a very gruesome sound effect, but the wound is obviously not shown for rating purposes, but instead zooming in on Zhang Liao's surprised face.
  • Lu Bu's Historical ending in 8 shows Cao Cao execute him with a quick sword slash, though Lu Bu's expression and posture don't react to it at all.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The series has fluctuated on it's stance with profanity. Older entries in the series generally allow lighter profanities, with 2 even managing to slip in Zhang Fei calling Lu Xun a bastard should the Yiling fire attack go through. In 7 and 8, profanity was completely removed, though Dong Zhuo would occasionally try to sneak some in. 9 saw the return of profanity, including Zhang Fei saying bastard again, this time to Lu Bu during the latter's initial conquest of Xiapi.
• Grapple Move: Throws were introduced in 4, limited almost exclusively to C1 attacks and removed in 5. Many more were subsequently added in 7 and they appear to be here to stay as of 8.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: In the series, no faction is truly evil or good. Earlier games, to follow the novel's biased depiction, lean more on painting Shu as the good guys, Wei as the Chaotic Evil, and Wu as the Lesser of Two Evils, yes, but it's not exaggerated enough to the point that it generalizes them all, as each side has their own plus and cons. Later games begin to follow history more closely, going for this trope even further. What everyone can agree, however, is that Dong Zhuo is Obviously Evil, either here, the novel, or in real life.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Yeah, good luck getting any kind of ultimate weapon, special item, mount, or elemental orb on your own. In which game? Pick one. To specify, it's the exact requirements to trigger the item appearance which is what makes them hard to obtain. You are at least informed of where it spawns via the combat log afterwards though.
  • Mostly averted in 8, which gives brief explanations on how to unlock ultimate weapons and fulfill hypotheticals after clearing all Story Mode stages, though occasionally the description being unclear or vague due to the language does set things back very slightly.
  • In The Battle of Yiling, Shu side in 3, killing the sub officer Zhu Ran of Lu Xun stops the fire attack making it much easier than if it happens. Except in 3 unlike later games, it doesn't show the location of sub officers, which means that the fire attack will likely happen since you won't know where he is/be able to find where he comes from unless you researched it beforehand.
  • Fishing in 9 has shades of this. There are different places to capture different items with different bait, such as using ultimate bait in the Louyang moat being one of the most profitable things you can do in the game, but there are some specific areas that can range in size that give you items other than fish, such as coins, that will be hard to find.
• Hack and Slash: of the "One vs One Thousand" kind, which it is the Trope Codifier of.
• Hammer Hilt: A variety of pre-6 movesets involve non-blade strikes — Cao Cao's dashing attack is a pommel strike, and almost all spear and polearm users have at least one move involving a stroke with the butt-cap of their weapon, such as Lu Meng's Spin Attack.
• Happily Married: All the couples in the game, even when history or the Romance of Three Kingdoms novels might say otherwise.
• Hard-Coded Hostility: Most of the time, this trope affects the "Other" faction, especially since 7 (which removes individual Musou Mode in favor of factional ones), due to the sheer fact that they're not affiliated with any faction.
  • The Yellow Turbans is the worst about this, since their only representative is Zhang Jiao and they're usually only faced in the very first stage of the games, the Yellow Turban Rebellion. To give you an idea on how hard to make them playable, three fictional pre-Rebellion battles had to be created specifically for Zhang Jiao's 4-stage Musou Mode in 5. In 8, however, there's a potential of recruiting the Yellow Turbans as allies if you're headed for the hypothetical route.
  • The Nanman Forces, too, as while there are two representatives (Meng Huo and Zhurong), all the battles they appear in are variants of Nanzhong. This is since their only appearance is technically a Wacky Wayside Tribe; the Han Chinese's excursion to Nanzhong is merely to "pacify" them and expand their territory.
  • Dong Zhuo's and Yuan Shao's forces are a bit better at this, since their involvement aren't restricted to one event only. Yuan Shao, for example, has leading the Hulao Gate campaign under his belt, in addition to Guandu. Still, the games generally won't give you control of Dong Zhuo, though they're more generous about Lu Bu and Diaochan (the two, and other affiliated characters, are finally expanded in the Musou Mode of 8: XL).
  • Zuo Ci is an example, but it can be forgiven since, like the Nanman, he is a Wacky Wayside Person for Cao Cao. There are also many evidences that point to him being more than human (indeed, the Warriors Orochi series makes Zuo Ci a mystic).
  • Bandits in 9 fall into this. They're an orange faction that can fight with red faction warriors as easily as you, and are basically there to be both random raiders and pillagers during wartime and factions that aren't friendly to you but don't have a claim in the three kingdoms story, the Ma family being a good example of the kind of faction that would fall under that.
• Harder Than Hard: The Chaos and Nightmare(or Ultimate) difficulty settings. Chaos increases enemy stats and aggression to the point that officer constantly spam Musou attacks which leave them invincible very frequently and hitting the player with said invincible attacks tends to result in one-hit kills. The Nightmare difficulty is even tougher than that, with enemies possessing stats so high even with the player at maximum stats you're likely to lose a tenth of your health if you're hit by so much as a gentle breeze, and enemies kill you just by thinking about it.
• Hard Mode Perks:
  • Playing on harder difficulties will get you better weapon-drops, better stat-increase drops, or just faster experience-gain in most of the games, except for 7. In most cases, the best weapons can only be aquired while playing on Hard Mode or higher.
  • The Xtreme Legends version of 7 changed it back, and added the exclusive Nightmare mode to boot.
  • Although considering that the game already had Chaos mode, what would Nightmare be? Harder Than Harder Than Hard?
  • Nightmare is pretty much what Chaos was in Warriors Orochi — it's the same as Chaos, but now enemy attacks completely ignore your defense, meaning a mook can kill you in half a dozen hits. On the flip side, your allies also get powered up.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-Universe. Lianshi's statement in XL that no one would ever betray Wu becomes this if you've played Jin's Story.
• Heart Container: Dim Sum baskets, at least in 3-5 and 7.
• Heel–Face Turn: Either this or Face–Heel Turn, some characters end up switching sides at some point in the story. Zhang Liao is loyal to Lu Bu up to the latter's death, when he's recruited by Cao Cao as part of his fledgling kingdom. Zhang He and Zhenji start as Yuan Shao's lackeys (the former as general, the latter as his daughter-in-law), but both defect to Cao Cao's side during Guandu. An interesting example is Xu Shu in 8. He's classified as part of the Shu faction, but that's because he is persuaded to defect from Wei in the historical path. Going for Wei's hypothetical path will ensure that he won't defect. Same with Xiahou Ba; going for Jin's hypothetical path will ensure that he won't defect to Shu (although unlike Xu Shu, he's classified as a Jin officer).
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Edit Modes, figuring prominently in 4 onward, allow you to make your own characters.
• High School AU: Koei actually did an entire line of college/high school AU outfit DLC for each kingdom in 7.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: Most of the cast. Granted, some of those ancient warriors were actually pretty badass on their own....
• Historical Beauty Update: A number of the characters, particularly Yueying; one of the few things we know about the real Yueying is that she was widely considered to be notably unattractive.
• Historical Relationship Overhaul:
  • A common plot in the series starting from the 5th game is depicting Ling Tong coming to forgive Gan Ning for killing his father, Ling Cao, and the two becoming Fire-Forged Friends. In real life, this was not the case, with Ling Tong taking his hatred to the grave.
  • Beginning from the 7th game, Xiahou Dun is portrayed as having a rivalry with Guan Yu (partially because Xiahou is The Dragon to Cao Cao, while Guan is played up as Liu Bei's greatest warrior). Historically, Guan Yu was too unimportant for Xiahou Dun to bother with personally, as he was often either on the front lines acting as Cao Cao's Mouth of Sauron or running the state (the historical Xiahou Dun was a physically powerful warrior, but only a competent Frontline General. His true skill was in logistics), while Guan at his peak was "merely" a governor of roughly half of Liu Bei's territory.
  • In a controversial move, 9 introduced Xiahouji, and has her in a Rescue Romance with Zhang Fei, when in real life, she was actually kidnapped by Zhang Fei when she was a young teenager, and forced to become his wife.
• History Repeats: The final battle of Jin's hypothetical route in 8 takes place at Chibi, and involves a coalition of Wu and Shu forces trying to foil Wei's advance with a fire attack. This is pointed out in several of the camp conversations.
• Hollywood History: Played straight in the early main games and the Empires games. Averted with 7 and 8, which follow the actual history of the Three Kingdoms Era much more closely.
• Hollywood Old: Sun Jian. Despite his white hair, he doesn't actually look much older than 35 at the very most. Possibly justified, given he dies at about 36.
• Hotter and Sexier: Since the release of the sixth games, most of the characters have gotten more progressively attractive particularly with the female characters who started wearing skimpy outfits (e.g. Sun Shangxiang and Yueying). Some of the male characters, such as Liu Bei and Sun Quan, ended up beardless and became Bishōnen.
• Hourglass Hottie: Basically every female character.
• Hufflepuff House: The series tends to frame Wei/Jin and Shu up as the main players of the era due to their bitter rivalry for each other, whether one is evil, one is not, or the reverse. Meanwhile, Wu sits around in the corner comfortably while espousing family virtues, being called into action only when others want them in, though they mostly side with Shu. At least until Fan Castle, when they start to figure more now that Shu is weakening. Ironically (or not), Wu is also the last of the three kingdoms to fall, so their destruction also marks the end of the Three Kingdoms era.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Buns and meat will heal your character while wine fills your Musou bar.
• Hypocrite: It's easy to overlook, but even in Shu's hypothetical finale in 8, Zhuge Liang's so-called "Three Kingdoms strategy" ultimately doesn't work. In the end, they pretty much wiped out Wei and only two kingdoms Wu and Shu remain and it's implied that Zhuge Liang is okay with this. What makes this pretty jarring is that in Wu's hypothetical finale, his "Three Kingdoms strategy" actually works. And while one can consider Wei pretty ruthless in their hypothetical finale by wiping out Shu, this is actually quite deserved for few reasons: 1) Wei is a legitimate vassal kingdom under Han Emperor's blessing, 2) There isn't even really a "Shu Kingdom", as "Shu" in this scenario is just a less-disorganized coalition of rebels led by Liu Bei who remain Defiant to the End to Cao Cao who, mind you, a legitimate regent acting under Han Emperor's blessing and approval, 3) As for Wu, you can optionally spare them by forcing them to surrender. But even if you didn't, it doesn't affect much to the story. So in hindsight, Shu turns out to be not so benevolent, after all, while Wei can be merciful as Wu is somewhere in the middle.
• Idealist vs. Pragmatist: In some of the games in the series, Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong act as the Pragmatists to Liu Bei's Idealist. They believe in Liu Bei's dream of restoring the Han but are willing to go to great lengths to achieve it. Liu Bei, however, has a strong belief in "honour" and has lines he's not willing to cross (most notably not wanting to wage war on his kinsman Liu Zhang in order to seize his territory). In at least one game it's implied Pang Tong pulls a Suicide by Cop in order to force Liu Bei into action against Liu Zhang.
  • In earlier parts of the story when they're still working together, Cao Cao is the Pragmatist to Liu Bei's Idealist. Cao Cao believes that the reason the Han failed is that it was weak, therefore a strong central power is necessary to properly restore peace to the land... and Cao Cao is willing to do whatever it takes to bring back peace. Liu Bei, on the other hand, insists that a proper restoration of the Han will be enough to bring back peace and so advocates for minimal force where possible. Cao sometimes agrees with him... if only because it's the logical and pragmatic thing to do.
• Impending Clash Shot: At the end of the openings of Dynasty Warriors 7 & 8. they have Zhao Yun about to clash with Xiahou Dun, flying towards each other, weapons brandished.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • You've got anachronistic weapons like a powered drill or the rocket powered Siege Lance, plus plenty of simply unlikely weapons like Razor Wire, two Musical Assassins (one consists of smacking enemies with a flute), one gentleman who uses an "arm blade" (it's a boat), a pool cue user, one guy uses a brush... there's quite a few bizarre weapons.
  • The DLC weapons runs the full gamut of improbable weaponry which goes from genuine weapons like the Emei Piercers and the Deer Horn Knives to blatantly anachronistic weapons like the arrow gatling gun that is the "Revolving Crossbow" to... a simple bench.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Soldiers in 8 often make one if you talk to them in camp.
• In Name Only: The Jin faction does not show you the story of the real-life Jin dynasty because their storyline starts after the Battle of Wuzhang Plains ^note though several Jin characters started to appear when Wei is still led by Cao Cao. Jin and Wei are basically two different ruling families presiding over the same state, with the last emperor of Wei, Cao Huan, being dethroned by the first emperor of Jin, Sima Yan. However, said dethronement takes place a few years after the events of the game have unfolded, so all the way to Zhong Hui's Rebellion (the final chronological battle in the series), what you call "Jin" is really late-era Wei. All of its officers are thus also Wei officers in all but name (Sima Yi was part of Wei before 7). Furthermore, not every "Jin" officers live to see the events of the Rebellion, let alone the establishment of the Jin dynasty. The only people who can be called genuine Jin officers are Jia Chong, Wang Yuanji, Wen Yang, and Xin Xianying, because they are alive to see the creation of Jin in 266.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • In DW8, despite changing the outcomes of several important battles, you still have to persuade Jiang Wei to defect from Wei with the sole differences being that you play as someone else and you are in a different level.
  • Also in 8, saving the lives of Sun Jian, Sun Ce, Zhou Yu and Lu Su in the Wu campaign will still lead to them passing their duties to their successors and the plot continuing as normal until the battle of Hefei.
• Insufferable Genius: Many of the officers of Jin are the brightest strategists and shrewdest politicians of their generation, and they are firmly convinced it's their right to rule China because the other realms are headed by unimaginative and unworthy fools. What stops this from being misplaced arrogance is that by the time of their campaign, many of Shu's and Wu's big names died years ago either from old age or being slain in battle, and their successors are clearly not of the same level of brilliance. That, and canonically Jin won the War of the Three Kingdoms and unified China (through military conquest of Wu, and by politically outmaneuvering Shu).
• Interface Screw: Some stratagems can do this. For example, "Archer Ambush" confuses the enemy that falls into it. For the player this removes the map and the health and musou power gauges.
• Interface Spoiler: In 4, the Battle of Wu Zhang Plains is set up like in 3, with Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi as the commanders, instead of Liu Bei and Cao Cao as in 2. However, when one attacks the enemy troops guarding the gates, their life meters say their leader is either Liu Bei or Cao Cao, based on which side you're playing, spoiling the twist that the enemy ruler shows up as the true commander for their side.
• It's Up to You:
  • While allied units can take out enemy bases and officers, the player still has to deal with most of them. In particular, the player must deal the final blow to the enemy commander in an overwhelming majority of instances.
  • Downplayed in the Empires spin-offs, where battles with your side possessing a great advantage can be won without so much as the player attacking a single time.
  • 8 downplays this in Story Mode and Free Mode with assignments given by the de facto leader in a stage. Generally completing your assignments flawlessly results in your side having such a morale advantage that allows allied officers kick as much ass as the player, albeit mostly offscreen.
  • 8 fiercely defies this in it's much happier hypothetical routes, where generally your preferred faction lives Happily Ever After.
• Killed Offscreen: Numerous instances of this. In historical paths characters die off-screen to coincide with the deaths of their real life counterparts. By the Jin campaign in 7 and 8, any characters who didn't actually die in battle have died offscreen.
• Kill It with Fire: Wu owes two of its most famous victories to this tactic; unsurprisingly, most of its character roster is aspected to the fire element.
• Last Stand:
  • Depending on which faction or character you play as, the games until 7 usually have variations of this where the final battle is one of the rival kingdoms putting up a last resistance. In the cases of Shu and Wei this usually happens at Wu Zhang Plains. Played straight in the hypothetical routes for 8 as well.
  • The Battle of Chengdu of Jin's Musou Mode from 7 onward is a triumphant example given that Shu really does have to put up an ultimately futile last effort to preserve their kingdom from being assimilated (and yes, this is historically accurate, in fact the only one in the series). Since you're playing as Jin, it doesn't end well for them.
• Legacy Boss Battle: Orochi, Da Ji, and Kiyomori can optionally be fought in Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce after clearing certain objectives.
• Leitmotif: Lu Bu has always had his own theme (which also served as the game's theme up until 7), 7 and 8 give multiple themes to each faction.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: In Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires and subsequent Empires games and Conquest Modes you can marry another character. "Resting" with them will raise your level. Taking blood oaths with a member of the same gender (since there's no Gay Option) will also result in that character randomly giving you gifts and bonuses.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • Lots of unpleasant bits from the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms are omitted or reworked to be more family friendly, ranging from a subplot with a princess committing suicide to an infant being thrown to the ground and more.
  • While 8 follows more or less the same story as 7, it is still mildly less dark than its predecessor. The new Hypothetical routes allow you to prevent and negate the darker moments that were present in 7, and several characters who were morally grey and/or black in 7 have had their personalities reworked. (Xiahou Ba is less of an arrogant Troll and more of a conflicted, melancholy Apologetic Attacker, Sima Zhao's more ruthless traits have been transferred to new character Jia Chong, Lu Bu becomes a Well-Intentioned Extremist, etc)
  • Majority of the character endings in 9 show them at the height of their career rather than their historical deaths with the exception of Cao Cao, Dian Wei, Guan Yu, Lu Meng, Wei Yan, Zhuge Liang etc.
• Limit Break: Musou attacks. There's also the stronger True Musou attacks. Unless a specific skill/attribute is in use, they can only be done while the player's health bar is red (as opposed to yellow or blue/green). Additionally, the musou gauge automatically charges when the player's health is this low.
• Living MacGuffin: The Emperor of the Han is usually treated as such, because he has almost no agency of his own; whoever is in control of him controls the country.
• Long-Lived:
  • Lianshi, due to combining the aspects of Sun Quan's royal consort and all the late Wu characters (the real-life Lianshi died in 238). Case in point: the first battle she participates in in Wu's 7 Story Mode is Ou Xing's rebellion (c. 184). Her last appearance is in Jin's version of the Battle of Hefei Castle (the one that involves Zhuge Ke), which historically happened in 253. 253 - 184 = 69 years. Granted, it's nothing impressive when you consider that her hubby Sun Quan, who dies in 252, also gets his lifespan extended in 7 by first appearing in the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184...(in other games, Sun Quan appears much later, usually, during Sun Ce's Jiangdong campaign in the 190s).
  • Ding Feng is shown participating in the Battle of Nanjun in 208. The game doesn't show this as Ding Feng disappears after Zhong Hui's failed rebellion in 264, but the historical Ding Feng actually lived all the way to 271, outliving everyone else in the roster except for Jia Chong and Wen Yang. Even disregarding the anachronisms about characters' appearances (his birth year isn't known, so his being an infant in 208 can't be ruled out), he would still be considered one of the two early era character who lives to the very end (the other one is mentioned below).
  • Although he's been around as an NPC since 2, 7 introduced Jia Xu as a playable real-life example of this. He was born in 147, before every other character in the game (whose birth dates are known) ^note He was born during the early reign of Emperor Huan, Ling's predecessor., well before the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184, and lived for another 4 years after Cao Cao passed away and Cao Pi formally established the kingdom of Wei. He died in 224, aged 77 (by East Asian reckoning), in a setting where most characters rarely lived past 60. He also remarkably outlives nearly every other Wei playable character, with few exceptions (Xu Zhu, Xu Huang, Zhang He, Cao Pi, Cao Xiu, and Man Chong are the only ones confirmed to survive past him. And of those, Man Chong is the only one by any notable margin, dying in 242).
  • 9 introduced Xin Xianying, who is yet another verified real-life example of this. She was born in 191 (during the Allied campaign against Dong Zhuo) and died in 269, outliving nearly all playable characters with the exception of Ding Feng, Liu Shan, Jia Chong, and Wen Yang, all of whom, with the possible exception of Ding Feng, are a generation younger. 78 years might not sound much these days, but we're talking about warfare-laden ancient China here.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Several quests in the online game have some luck in it. Usually, you can get a pretty high rank, even if you're completely screwed, but there are some quests where rank is determined almost completely by luck (we're looking at you, Rescue the Apprentice). Can also get like this in the single-player titles, since your allies have the tendency to get themselves killed at the most inconvenient time.
  • The "Infiltrate the Official Residence" quest in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires. There are five total places where Wood Oxen can randomly spawn, and you need to find and break three of them to win. Two of them, however, are in an area where, due to poor AI pathing, you can not avoid the guards - you will be seen, which means several super-powered officers spawn in and the mission becomes unwinnable on all but the lowest difficulty settings. Better hope all three Wood Oxen decide to spawn in the space you can actually reach!
• Luck Stat: Determines quality of found items and frequency of drops or something like that. You can usually equip an item/ability or apply a skill to boost this.

Tropes M to P

• Minidress of Power: Worn by several female characters such as Xingcai, Guan Yinping, and Lu Lingqi. In earlier games that feature female bodyguards that accompany female officer, the female bodyguards also wear these for no reason other than fanservice. Except for Nanman variant of female soldiers, who wear Chainmail Bikini instead.
• Money Is Experience Points: In many of the main games and spinoffs, you can level up characters by spending money at a dojo in addition to fighting in battles. Some games would even let you raise their stats individually. However, you could not level your characters higher than the highest level party member. This would save a lot of time from having to play stages over and over to level-grind each character. Money can serve various other purposes such as buying items and temporary buffs, but leveling up characters was typically the game's biggest Money Sink.
• Mook Lieutenant:
  • 4: Empires introduced "Lt. Generals". They use generic officer designs, but they are significantly weaker than any named officer. They don't always drop items if you defeat them, and your character won't even say their "officer defeated" quote.
  • In 5:Xtreme Legends's Destiny Mode, there are "Lieutenants" who, while weaker than named officers, are still considered officers game-wise and trigger declare player character "officer defeated" quotes.
  • 8 also introduces "Unit Commanders" who will usually drop weapons and gold if you defeat them. Unlike named officers, Unit Commanders can't use Storm Rush and you can't trigger your own Storm Rush by attacking them, either.
• Mooks: The troops. Only on the higher difficulty settings and in large numbers will they even manage to inconvenience you. The main difficulty of achieving 1000 (or 3000 in 7) K.O.s is finding enough of them to beat up.
• Morale Mechanic: The series eats and breathes morale. Morale determines who wins the battles when you're not in the area, and can make enemies harder to fight if they have a lot of it. You can reduce overall enemy morale and raise your own by killing troops, defeating enemies, and activating (or preventing) certain events.
• Mukokuseki: Designs for some characters look decidedly non-Chinese, ranging from a barbarian Battle Couple that could pass as African to a blonde tsundere to a young man the western fans think looks suspiciously like Justin Bieber. By DW6 or SW, they pretty much said "screw it" and embraced anime hair.
• Multishot: Attacks with bows of any sort fired by an officer more often than not do this.
• My Greatest Failure: Each Kingdom has one battle that ended in a very decisive failure that they never fully recover from: The Battle of Chibi for Wei, The Battle of Hefei for Wu, The Battle of Fan Castle for Shu, The Battle of Xuchang for Jin and The Battle of Dingtao for Lu Bu. In 8, this is where the game officially splits off into the Historical and Hypothetical routes, and getting into the latter requires saving a number of characters who die in the Historical route (usually involving at least one strategist who proceeds to turn the battle around.)
• My Name Is ???: A few enemy officers in the Zhuge Dan's Rebellion stage of 8's Jin campaign are identified only as "???", as they were secretly dispatched by Cao Mao, the Wei Emperor himself.
• Mythical Motifs: Shu is symbolized by dragon, Wei by fenghuang (Chinese phoenix), Wu by tiger, and Jin by qilin (sort of a Chinese unicorn).
• Named Weapons: Very akin to the source material of the original novel, is the names of all the characters' weapons.
• Nerf:
  • Zuo Ci's weapon gets one hell of a downgrade for the online game. It's kinda understandable, though.
  • The ridable elephant in the online version as well. They no longer damage enemies by running into them, their basic attack is stupidly hard to aim at anything not as big as it is, its charge attack hits in a cone area instead of around it, and it's possible to dismount a rider with an attack that knocks someone down aimed at the elephant, along with killing the elephant outright. On the other hand, its musou is changed to a more powerful version of its original charge attack, it has its own life and musou bars, and if the enemy isn't relying on charge attacks, it is much harder to dismount a rider from his/her elephant, since attacks made onto the rider count as hitting the elephant instead.
• Never a Self-Made Woman: Justified, since it's based around feudal China and almost every single female character is either the love interest or relative of a male character. There are exceptions, though; both Cai Wenji and Wang Yi have spouses in real life, but since the people in question do not appear or mentioned in the series, they stay single.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The PC version of 8:XL uses the graphics from the PS3 over the PS4 version, after Koei advertised it using the PS4 graphics.
• Nintendo Hard: The third game in the series is infamous for being the hardest game in the entire series on normal mode of all things! While the first couple of stages in a characters' musou mode aren't that hard, once you've reached their later stages, they are next to impossible to clear due to the fact that the officers AND their personal soldiers will be insanely difficult to defeat because they will have a very high defense making them extremely hard to kill and to add insult to injury, they can kill you in an instant if you're not careful. While it's true that you can switch the difficulty to easy to make things easy for you, it makes the officers go down FAR to easily as their defense is almost nothing and their strength has been lowered drastically making the stages seem too easy and not much of a challenge at all.
• No Ending: Before 7, the series never ever strays past 234, the year that the Battles of Wuzhang Plains (Wei vs Shu) and Hefei Castle (Wei vs Wu) take place. While it is not No Ending in the sense that the game does not provide you with a conclusion (as it does, albeit fictionally), historically, it is nowhere close to the end of the Three Kingdoms, both in ROTK or in real life. There are still a whopping 29 years until the Fall of Shu, then 3 more years until the Fall of Wei and the Rise of Jin, and finally 14 more years until the Fall of Wu. 7 remedies this by pushing the timeline further back into Zhong Hui's Rebellion in 264, which is of course still not enough, albeit much better.^note The reason why they don't go all the way to the end is a matter of convenience: only a handful of playable characters are still alive after Zhong Hui's Rebellion, which would not make for an exciting gameplay. Were Koei decide to introduce more Jin and Late Wu characters (the latter is especially needed; there is literally no Wu character left after 271. At least Jin has Jia Chong and Wen Yang), it's entirely possible that the timeline could be extended and the Fall of Wu shown.
• Noob Cave: The Yellow Turban Rebellion is this in most games, albeit that's pretty similar to the book, where several of the major characters would establish their reputations from fighting against the rebels.
• Now What?: Zhang Jiao's story in 3XL starts with him winning the initial Yellow Turban Rebellion battle. As it turns out, killing a high ranking general doesn't cause the Han dynasty to fall, and as such, the rest of the story focuses on Zhang Jiao trying to protect his followers and get them somewhere they can live peacefully, while constantly under attack and being deceived, as starting a rebellion isn't exactly good for your image in the eyes of the ruling powers.
• Oddball in the Series: Strikeforce replaces the vast armies and epic retelling of ROTK with huge monster bosses, anime powerup forms, and four player online co-op.
• Oh, Crap! - "Lu Bu has entered the battlefield."
• Old Save Bonus: You get a few things when playing an Xtreme Legends or Empires title if you have a save for the corresponding game in the main line. The Xtreme Legends titles also generally carry over all progress from the vanilla game's save.
• One-Hit Kill: In the earlier games of the series Lu Bu can outright 1 shot low level characters on higher difficulties. In the later games, Lu Bu's Musou attacks can 1 shot even high level characters.
• One-Man Army: Most of the time figuratively, but occasionally literally, as well. Lu Bu and Guan Yu are treated as such, with entire stages devoted primarily just to defeating them.
• Photo Mode: Patches 1.04 and 1.06 added a Photo Mode for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One consoles. The succeeding patches added more features such as a set of poses, facial expressions, and frames.
• Pimped-Out Cape: 7XL gives this everybody, after you get the top title in Legend mode.
• Player Data Sharing: 8: Empires has the "Guest Officer" option for Empires Mode, which allows other players' custom officers to show up randomly during their playthrough as either free officers or vagabond units.
• Power-Up Mount: Horses and elephants, as well as bears in 7.
• Product Placement:
  • Dynasty Warriors 8 has 7-Up armor for Zhao Yun. This is because the game is actually the 7th in the series ^note Shin Sangoku Musou 7; Market-Based Title shenanigans are why Europe and North America are "ahead" by one. Only because the original Dynasty warriors is just Sangoku Musou..
  • Then there was the time Lu Bu discovered the modern invention of Pepsi just in time for Dynasty Warriors NEXT....
• Promoted to Playable: Another staple. However, nobody was promoted in 6, in fact, some characters were taken off the roster.
• Public Domain Character: Most characters are historical people. Of those who aren't...
  • Fu Xi and Nuwa are Chinese mythological deities.
  • Zhou Cang and Zhurong are fictional characters created for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. Diaochan and Guan Suo, while recognized long before ROTK was written, are also fictional figures taken from legends of the period.
  • Meanwhile, Bao Sanniang, one of Guan Suo's wives, comes from another Ming Dynasty era work, Hua Guan Suo Zhuan (花關索傳).
• Pyrrhic Victory: Invoked in numerous battles. More especially present in Shu and Wei's endings beginning with 7, and picking the historical route in 8's branch out battle.

Tropes Q to Z

• Recurring Extra:
  • An unnamed peasant that continues to appear in the main camp in Shu's Musou mode in DW7, who joined from as far back as the Yellow Turbans Rebellion and moves up the ranks as Liu Bei (and eventually Zhuge Liang)'s campaigning went on. He's back in 8.
  • In 7XL, we get the "It's Me!" guy. He shows up in literally every camp, which puts him on something like 11 different sides over the years. The closest to an explanation we get is that he's a history buff, and likes being where the action is.
• Redshirt Army: Does the character have a unique model and fighting style? If not he probably has no less than thirty identical twins in the game, provided he's a named officer at all. Does a name appear above his head at all? If not then he's so low on the foodchain that morality doesn't even apply to his life, and he'll die for nothing just like the thousands of his identical twins you yourself just finished killing in the span of about three minutes. Of course, given how often characters in these games get beaten in battle without dying, it's not much of a stretch to assume that a significant number off these casualties produce a Non-Lethal K.O.
• Replay Mode: Most entries in the series have Free Mode which allows replay of story stages and cutscene viewers that allow swapping characters around.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Invoked numerous times within the game. Wang Yi, Ma Chao and Liu Bei are just a few examples of people who invoked the trope.
• RPG Elements: Varies depending on the individual game, but defeating enemy officers is the one consistent trait in the series, either their defeat directly helps to level you up via EXP or they drop items that give permanent stats boosts.
• Rubber-Band A.I.:
  • DW4 is notorious of this. You've maxed out your character stats, acquired the 11th weapon and had the "Slay" Elemental Orb equipped, ready to rock and roll the stages that you've been struggling with most of your playthrough. It's pay-back time, right? WRONG. Because suddenly you find that the mooks are even stronger than they were on your first play-through, with even more devious A.I. and insane damage that renders your maxed-out stats and high attack feat moot, and you'd probably have a better chance of beating it playing as a fresh-start character.
  • Inverted in 8; see Anti-Frustration Features above.
• Rule of Symbolism: It's interesting to note that the original Asian ports of the weapons all have largely different names compared to their localized counterparts, and they are often rife with a rich amount of symbolism towards a ton of Asian-based mythology and legends depending on the character. This even carries over to other Musou Warriors-based titles as well.
• Running Gag:
  • In 7: Xtreme Legends, Liu Shan will intrude on certain battles, commenting that he was just taking a stroll and got lost. Xingcai follows close by to berate him for his "clumsiness."
  • In 8, Han Dang being constantly unremembered in Wu's story is source of many frustrations for him. Also in the same side, there'll be a soldier who'd comment on what Lianshi is doing behind the scenes, even if she's not present in the camp. Mostly about her budding romance with Sun Quan (or the soldier's being jealous at how Lianshi gave the attention to Quan).
  • Sima Yi and Sima Shi calling someone an imbecile.
  • Also in 8, each stage that has a camp will have a Private who tells his own little sidestory depending on which faction you're playing as. The Wei Private tells you historical trivia about Cao Cao, the Wu Private comments on Sun Quan and Lianshi's budding relationship, the Shu Private and later his son talks about how he will follow Shu to the end as repayment for Liu Bei saving his life, and the Jin Private talks about how he eavesdrops on Sima Zhao getting in trouble with his family and officers.
• Scenery Porn:
  • Until 6, inverted. The scenery of the older games are infamous for being as bare-bones as possible, as the hardware limitations of the PS1 and PS2 meant that the developers had to sacrifice graphics in favor of rendering as many soldiers as possible.
  • Played straight by DW6 which, for all its faults, features some of the best-looking stages in the series, which are consisted of amazingly detailed landscape and nice lighting. The old "fog of war" technique used to help generate all the soldiers onscreen without bogging down the action could finally be scaled back almost completely; allowing the designers to actually put some focus on the backdrops in general. The combined effect looks splendid, holding a strong contrast to its rather dull-looking counter-parts in the previous titles.
  • Played much more straight in 8, the developers obviously put a lot of thought into area graphics, with levels like Baidi castle being downright awesome to look at.
  • 9 takes the crown for this ever since it introduces the open world aspect where the player can freely explore the whole of China and appreciate its beautiful scenery. The developer even put a lot of effort on the prominent cities and landmarks such as the Great Wall of China.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Some people will view the words "Do not pursue Lu Bu" as an invitation. They will most likely get their asses handed back to them. This is especially bad in 4, where not only do you not get the usual warning to stay away, but he serves as an introduction to the new optional Officer Duel mechanic, solely to utterly crush a cocky new player that has no idea what they just signed up for.
  • In the online game, any canon officer announcing they have entered the battlefield will be unless you know what is going on.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: 6E and occasionally ultimate weapons require this.
• Sequel Number Snarl: Due to the Genre Shift of the series after the first game, the series is called "Shin Sangoku Musou" in Japan while the fighting game that started it is just "Sangoku Musou". Every sequel after the first Shin Sangoku Musou is numbered with respect to that installment but in English it was named "Dynasty Warriors 2", causing every English release to be off by a number to their Japanese equivalent titles.
• Sequence Breaking: Before 6, a common and effective tactic is to just bum rush the enemy commander since they're usually spawned immediately and defeating them immediately ends the stage. Since 6 though, there are usually hurdles in place to prevent this.
  • Not an example of breaking the script, but in 9 the game is open ended and lets you choose how much prep you want to do for the story missions. The more story side missions you do the lower the difficulty on the main mission will be, such as removing advantages or preventing reinforcements. If you have a high level character you and just rush to the main mission with no side missions done and finish it that way.
    • There's also the small thing about most being similar to the previous games in that you have to defeat the leader character to beat most missions. Between the grappling hook and the horse you can basically just use oblique tactics and rush down the enemy commander while skipping almost everything else.
• Shout-Out:
  • A set of DLC costumes in 7 turn the cast into fairy tale characters, most especially western European ones.
  • Some of the DLC costumes for Shu characters very clearly turn them into a Super Sentai / Power Rangers type of group.
  • There's even a case of a Shout-Out to a Chinese idiom—"Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao will appear". Dynasty Warriors 8 has a running gag in the Wei story mode where people keep commenting on Cao Cao's uncanny ability to appear soon after he's mentioned, and how he must have an incredible information network to accomplish this.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The hypothetical endings in 8 fall onto different spots on this scale.
  • Surprisingly, Wu gets the most idealistic ending: Sun Quan convinces all three kingdoms to rule together, as he believes the burden of leadership is better shared among many than overwhelming just one man. It does take Cao Cao being slain during the final battle, though, before his son Cao Pi is convinced to stop the fighting.
  • Shu's ending sees Cao Cao and many of Wei's more loyal vassals slain in the final battle; afterwards, only Shu and Wu remain, their alliance ironclad.
  • Wei's ending has them ultimately subjugate and absorb Wu, then slay Liu Bei and his loyal officers, preventing Shu from even being established. Cao Cao realizes, however, that a future unified kingdom could easily slip back into chaos with a conqueror at the top, so he voluntarily steps down and disappears from the kingdom he created, leaving his loyal vassals in charge.
  • By default, Jin's ending is the furthest towards cynicism, since it takes place after many of the Three Kingdoms' heroes are long gone, their ambitions unfulfilled. Still, the Sima clan manages to convince a pointlessly-relentless Jiang Wei to finally stand down, allowing them to more peacefully integrate the remainder of Shu into a united Wei - or rather, Jin.
• Single Player Gauntlet: The first game, being a fighting game rather than the now well-known Hack and Slash series, had 1P Battle, which functioned as an arcade mode. The mode lasted 9 stages, and had you face off with various other officers, most stages being random, but stage 4 was always Diaochan as a Mini-Boss, and the 9th stage had Lu Bu as the Final Boss.
• Slow-Motion Fall: Happened frequently in 8.
• The Smurfette Principle: Zhenji was the sole female character Wei had from 3 (her introduction) until Cai Wenji's introduction to the main series in 7. The Wu faction had Sun Shangxiang as the only female until the Qiao sisters were introduced in 3, and Shu didn't have a female character until Yueying was introduced in 4, and then Xingcai in 5. Jin originally had only Wang Yuanji in 7, but then her mother-in-law was swiftly added in the following game.
• Spell My Name With An S: This trope hits the female characters. Originally, their names were romanized in line with the male characters (i.e. surname + given name), despite the fact that many of them have only given names. Yue Ying, for example, makes little sense, as it implies that Yue is her surname. The fact is both are given names, while her actual surname, Huang, is not carried over. Ditto with Xing Cai (surname: Zhang) and Lian Shi (surname: Bu). Beginning with 8, most have their names combined (e.g. Yueying, Xingcai, Lianshi).
• Spin Attack: Quite a lot of Musou attacks (and a few Charge attacks) have an element of this across the franchise's many installments. Played straight in Hyrule Warriors, where Link, the character who popularized the concept in video games, has the spin attack as his charge attack.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: One sequence in Opening Edit for 4 has the selected pole user to deflect incoming arrows by spinning their pole weapons.
• Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: This is a standard depiction of the kingdoms' conquests and territorial expansion during the pre-battle narrations; with the occasional Tetris T-block to represent a particular officer or ruler moving from one province to another. Also Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Green for Shu, Indigo for Wei, Red for Wu, Cyan for Jin.
• Sprint Shoes: Equipment and weapons with the Speed attribute increase running speed. There's also a temporary boost dropped by enemies, which is a pair of boots. Mounts also fit to some extent.
• Stock Wushu Weapons: Being based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has plenty of warriors using both the expected, classical weapons in conjunction with athletic movesets calling martial arts to mind, such as Zhao Yun (whose flexible spear actually became its own weapon type as "Dragon Spear"), Xiahou Dun (dadao user, again his giant sword became a separate weapon type from the standard "sword") Dian Wei (massive Yue), Zhang Liao (goliandao and later dual yue) and many others, though there are subversions (such as Lu Bu using a fangtianji with a more brutal and barbaric fighting style, characters using long-ranged weapons or Zhou Tai using his katana-like dao with a fighting style more akin to battojutsu). From the seventh game onward, you're free to give your playable character the weapons you prefer, especially the 9th entry, which removed some of the less plausible weapons.
• Super Mode:
  • All officers have this in the Strikeforce games.
  • Starting from the 5th one going forward - there is a Rage Mode. Generally in this mode your Musou gauge fills instantly and you get access to a ridiculously long chain of attacks. Other features of the mode vary depending on the title you're playing, but common features that appear across most titles are increased damage output, increased defense, decreased knockback received from enemy attacks, and increased speed while in this mode.
• Super Special Move: Dynasty Warriors and its many derivatives have created new, stronger variants on the series' traditional Musou attacks.
  • The most basic is the True Musou, which is activated by performing a Musou with your health being low. It generally adds extra damage and often sees the weapon temporarily set alight.
  • The next variant is the Double Musou, which is done by performing a Musou next to a significant ally(often a co-op player), which causes both characters to unleash their Musou at the same time, often with extra benefits, such as the attacks both being a True Musou regardless of health.
  • Another version is the Rage Musou, performed by activating a Musou when the character's rage meter is in use. This attack lasts much longer than an average Musou and will cause defeated enemies to drop experience point pick-ups.
  • Samurai Warriors has the Ultimate Musou, which is used when the character has their spirit gauge in use and activates a Musou, similar to the Rage Musou, though the Ultimate Musou is one big attack, rather than a long chain of attacks.
  • Warriors Orochi has the Musou Chain, where when one character is in the middle of a Musou, they can tag out with another character, who immediately activates their Musou, causing an automatic True Musou, with bonus attributes based on the character types in use by the team.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Does your army start with higher morale than the others do? Then be prepared for something really bad to happen within the level.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: Every playable faction gets this in their campaign, and it works.
  • Wei: Fixing a broken realm as big as China is a Herculean task and if you want to succeed, then you need to be daring and pragmatic, willing to do whatever it takes. Ambition is power, for better or worse.
  • Wu: China is disunited because those who ruled it were disunited themselves. Unity and bonds between people are what it takes to unite the land. Family and love are power.
  • Shu: China fractured because the Han Dynasty became corrupt and decadent. China cannot abide a ruler who is not benevolent and thinks nothing of the common people. Virtue is power.
  • Jin: The Sima Clan and those who work for it are the best and brightest of their generation, and has the right to unite and rule China because everyone else are unworthy imbeciles. Intellect and brilliance is power.
  • Lu Bu: China fractured because the last Emperor was a coward and a weakling, and everyone knew it. You cannot end the chaos gripping China and keep the realm together if you are weak and have no stomach. Might is power.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: 8 introduces the three-point system, where every weapon has one of three affinities (Earth, Heaven, or Man). Having an advantage over the opponent's weapon gives enhanced attack and defense and allows a powerful "Storm Rush" attack, having a disadvantage means reduced stats, but allows the player to perform a Switch Counter to switch weapons, stagger the enemy, and enter Hyper Mode for a moment.
• Tamer and Chaster: Zigzagged with Zhen Ji whose previous Stripperiffic outfit was replaced with a very classy, royal qipao, then reversed when she went back to midriff and fishnets in 7. Played straight with Dynasty Warriors 9, the series was grooming more suggestive female designs ever the years, then comes DW9 where the female designs were made to be more modest.
• Tech-Demo Game: Dynasty Warriors: NEXT, the first game in the series to be released on PS Vita, has game elements with touch-screen control schemes shoehorned in as an attempt to show off the console's touch-screen capability. The results range from being mildly fun, tediously dull, to downright frustrating.
• Timed Mission: Omnipresent but mostly superficial as you'll generally need to go out of your way to run out of time. Averted in 7, which has no stage timer.
• Title Drop: Achieving 1000 kills in the Japanese versions have characters or their allies call themselves a "Truly Peerless Warrior of the Three Kingdoms." English localizations use essentially the same wording, though in a few examples we find ourselves being called "True Dynasty Warriors."
• Too Long; Didn't Dub:
  • The combat vocals in 3 have no non-Japanese recording.
  • The English dub for 8 doesn't include audio for the narration between story mode battles or for most camp conversations.
  • Only text is translated in the English versions of 7: Empires and 8: Empires.
• Trauma Conga Line: The canon story progression in 7 and 8, it's just one tragedy after another.
• True Companions: 7: Empires and 8: Empires let your character become "sworn siblings" with up to two other characters. There's a special event based off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms if you arrange for Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei to become sworn siblings.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • The rare Rage coins in 5 improve your character's attack, defense, walking speed, attack speed, and allow use of an even stronger Musou attack for 60 seconds.
  • Rage mode in 8, which does most of the same slightly better but also allows the Rage Musou attack to last as long as you can keep picking up Musou refills. This leaves playable characters at levels of destruction just shy of making them a living Fantastic Nuke.
  • Soul Orbs in Dynasty Warriors Online. For the length of the battle, you are allowed to turn into the officer corresponding to that soul instead of having your weapon's Advanced+ ability for a LONG time.
• Updated Re-release: Split between two sub-releases generally. The first are Xtreme Legends, which are essentially standalone expansions with more content that extends the game significantly if you have a save file from the original or the main disc on-hand. The second are the Empires games, which focus less on new content and more on a strategy campaign of conquering China, with a greater emphasis on creating your own character while refining and upgrading pre-existing features along the way.
• Variable Mix: Starting from 7 on, getting close to Lu Bu causes the song of whatever stage you're on to fade out as his signature theme takes over. Playing as Lu Bu causes his theme to constantly play no matter where you are.
• Victory Pose: DW7, DW7E DW8 have an odd aversion: win poses were removed, but you can still run around until the screen fades out or you push a button.
  • All units, from playable officers to rank-and-file soldiers, have a generic Stab the Sky animation when they're rallying (which typically requires all important enemy units in the immediate vicinity to be defeated.)
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Since only you are capable of downing the enemy commander, one of the possible amusements to get out of this is to strip the enemy commander of all his troops, have half a dozen or so allied officers surround him, then stand back and watch the poor soul getting juggled up and down like a helpless human volleyball.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: All defeated enemy commanders do this during a given character's story, unless it's the last battle in the story, or if it was their time to die historically.
  • 7 has Jiang Wei doing this no less than four times (in four failed invasions of Wei — though he had three more in the novel) in Jin's story before being the final boss of Battle of Chengdu. Even then, if you have read history, you already know that he also survives the battle to fight for another day, hence why his defeat quote is the standard "Jiang Wei has retreated", rather than "Jiang Wei has been slain". He only meets his end a year after Chengdu and the Fall of Shu, while assisting Zhong Hui's rebellion. Strangely, when the battle is shown in 8:XL, the game specifically has him survive even that.
  • One of Zhuge Liang's Legendary Stages in 7 has Meng Huo doing this a whopping six times before finally surrendering after his seventh defeat — again, right out of the novel.
  • In 5, Zhang Liao reappears 4 times in the battle of Hefei.
• Villainous Face Hold: In the 9th Dynasty Warriors, Dong Bai uses two fingers to lift up the chin of a defeated Diaochan, while she (Dong Bai) thinks of ways to kill her.
• Violation of Common Sense
  • In 3, there is an event sequence that needs to be followed in He Fei in order to unlock Sun Quan. The first event that one needs to set off is Taishi Ci's death cutscene.
  • The only way to recruit Wen Yang early in 8 (which is one of the requirements for unlocking Jin's Hypothetical route) requires you to completely scuttle Sima Shi's plan for dealing with Wen Qin. Ironically, the best character to do this with is Sima Shi himself.
• War Elephants: War elephants are generally used as mounts by the Nanman, and sometimes unlockable as a companion animal by the player character.
• War Is Hell: As the series has continued, various cutscenes have started to portray the realities of the periods^note Both "End of the Han Dynasty" period and "Three Kingdoms" period. and the suffering endured by pretty much everyone. This is especially painfully played straight in story mode for 7 and historical route for 8.
• The War Sequence: Dynasty Warriors is the very epitome of the war sequence. Pretty much the whole series is made of them.
• Weapon Specialization: Absolutely everyone. Notably, throughout the series - a number of officers don't wield what they canonically did in the novels or in history; but thanks to the new weapon systems in the more recent entries that allow for sub-weapons, many of them now have an affinity with what would be their "proper" weapon of choice had they been given it in the first place.
• Welcome to Corneria: The soldiers in the camp from 7 onward always say the same things no matter how may times you talk to them.
• Wham Episode: The Battle of Fan Castle. Not only about Guan Yu's death (though his no doubt is a major shock), but because it is shortly followed by Emperor Xian's forced abdication courtesy of Cao Pi, who proclaims himself emperor of Wei, extinguishing any hope of the Han dynasty's restoration. Then he's followed by Liu Bei's and Sun Quan's own proclamations for their kingdoms, officiating the start of the Three Kingdoms era. In every battle after Fan Castle, you no longer play as part of [insert name]'s Forces, but as part of either Wei, Wu, or Shu Forces.
• What If?:
  • The Hypothetical routes in 8, which essentially tell what would happen if everything just happened to work out exceptionally well for each kingdom.
  • The DLC hypothetical scenarios in 9 are also similar but it's the characters of these scenarios who somehow live longer than their historical lifeline or in Xu Shu's case, makes another decision to stay or join another faction.
• Whip of Dominance: Chain Whips (whips made of steel) became available as a weapon in Dynasty Warriors 6, notably for the two Ms. Fanservice Femme Fatale of the series: Diaochan and Zhenji and the whip moveset gives the user a very domineering body language, complete with the fighter keeping a hand on their hip for extra cockiness. It's a fitting weapon for Zhenji given she's often characterized as an Ice Queen and a domineering Dragon Lady. However, it's much less fitting for Diaochan who has a demure personality and is a Reluctant Warrior. Cai Wenji is also able to wield the chain whip in Dynasty Warriors 9, seemingly as part of her new Hotter and Sexier design, but her personality still remains that of a kind and compassionate woman, making the domineering whip moveset look unfitting for her. Zhang Chunhua was also given a Urumi in 9, which does fit her bossy and domineering demeanor and her Tough Love dynamic with her family, especially her husband.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: A variation, as despite battles taking less than an hour, destroying an enemy's provisions when a mission prompts it causes a hit in morale and sometimes even comments about starving soldiers. It can be assumed that the actual battle takes far longer than an hour and the gameplay is just an abstraction of what's really happening.
• World of Badass: Everyone, full stop. Those who weren't necessarily battlefield-type badasses were turned into them for the sake of the setting and gameplay.
• World of Ham: For Rule of Fun, there is little subtlety to be had here.
• Worthy Opponent: See character page for individual examples. For more generic example, there's one in 4: Empires. If you keep defeating an officer several times and they keep retreating, in your third encounter with them, they may challenge you for a duel where they say "It appears we are fated to fight" or something along those lines. If you defeat them in the duel, they will be captured and can be recruited if you win the entire battle.
• Wrestler in All of Us: More prevalent in 7, but many officers use wrestling moves for some throws, such as Giant Swing for Zhang Fei and any wielders of the Gloves moveset, Backdrop Suplex and Muscle Buster for Huang Gai, and Armbar for Deng Ai. 8 gives Huang Gai or any who wields his default weapon the Spinning Lariat (via Huang Gai's Rage Musou or the weapon's Storm Rush). Also Zhuge Dan gains an elbow drop.
• Xenafication: All the female characters (with the exception of Wang Yi, Zhurong and fictional character Bao Sanniang) undergo this, turning from demure, non-action wives/daughters to kickass Action Girls.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: The non-Empires expansion packs are titled "Xtreme Legends".
• You ALL Look Familiar: There are hundreds of generic NPC officers with nothing but names to differentiate them. Thanks to the way animations are handled in game, many of them also move in perfectly synchronized squads.

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