Today's issue of Weekly Famitsu had a large spread on Dynasty Warriors 9 (Shin Sangokumusou 8) by Koei Tecmo.

The player can move freely across the map, plan surprise attacks, find higher advantage points  and infiltrate enemy camps and castles. Interestingly, night and bad weather attacks are also available (the day cycle is of course dynamic), lowering visibility and allowing the use of stealth. Bows can also be used by all characters to attack from a distance.

On the map there are main missions that the player needs to perform in order to progress with the story (which follows the "three kingdoms" storyline, as it did before), but there are also correlated tasks that can be complete to lower the difficulty of the main ones. There are also plenty side activities, like hunting.

The new combat system also makes use of the environment, letting players attack by making use of the surrounding terrain, climb mountains and walls, and even use found objects against enemies.

There is no loading screen between world exploration and battle, and various battles will occur in specific places depending on the time.  Speaking of time, your starting period will depend on the warlord you select, as they were active in different periods.

Developers are considering switching between warlord, but since they were active in different time frames, they need to find a way to implement this change.

Rivers like the Yangtze are so large that it takes five minutes to swim across, but there are docks that allows to fast travel to the other side instantly.

Horses are the main mean of travel, but there will be fast travel implemented, so players will be able to instantly teleport to locations they have already visited.

While cities are smaller than their historical counterparts, they're still about one km across, so players can still expect considerable scale. There are more than ten cities of this side, plus a number of villages and smaller settlements. Commerce and trade will be available in cities.

The game is currently 40% complete, and release date for PS4 is still undecided.

You can check out all the screenshots below, but do keep in mind that the quality isn't perfect, as they come from magazine scans.