A great game but requires you to choose to delve into the deeper parts rather than thrusting you into them.
This game can be tough and very unforgiving but for me that was a breath of fresh air. Even on normal there are times where you can be 1 hit if you go against someone that horribly outmatches you. The officer mode for me was interesting. You can befriend other officers, get married and swear an oath of brotherhood. The fact that I joined an ruler, befriended his officers, and then rebelled against him and with his former officers just rocked to me. You can defect against your ruler in the middle of battle and then just kill your former team which is kinda cool in and of itself.
As for ruler mode it is vastly different from 5 empires. You still invade places but it works alot differently. You have resources that increase with territories(think mana in magic the gathering) and each officer in your repertoire has a card. The cards cost a certain amount of resources to use and have various effects from burning down enemy camps to making Lu Bu even more ridiculously powerful(although in his case he betrays every battle so probably not the greatest idea). There is a lot of fun stuff to be had and the combat is vastly improved as well. You can let out endless streams of basic attacks and you can still also use the charge attacks which vary based on the sequence and the duration time the button is pressed. There are also 3 special abilities you can put on your weapon which are extremely useful if you become familiar with how they work. You can ride horses and buy new ones with special powers like the power to leap into the air like 50 feet and then land and send shockwaves out.
In my opinion most of these subtleties could be completely ignored and they are the things that really make the game enjoyable.
Story:
There is almost no story from my experience with the game. Granted you can read up on the back history and stuff but nothing really displays the story in the main game at least from my experience.
Graphics:
Honestly I like the graphics. People are tough on them but they really are pretty good graphics. The models themselves are cool and I enjoyed the graphics very much. The scenery and the fights on bridges and stuff like that seemed awesome to me. Granted I do have an imagination which may make it seem cooler than it is but to me it rocks. As for the infamous pop ins that people mention, I've only seen it when new enemies actually spawned in the area, not as a graphical limitation.
Customization:
I flat out love the edit mode in this game. The amount of variety you have is astounding at least when compared to previous edit modes in Dynasty warriors. You can pick a voice and change the pitch of it to make it as deep or as high as you like. You can change the body type of the person as well as the width and height of them. You can put accessories on them. Choose a face structure and change the eyes, nose and mouth of that face to whatever. There are also a lot of hair styles and outfits to work with. Also you can specialize your character for offense, defense, speed which is kinda cool. You can assign one special ability to your character such as double which was my favorite. It creates a shadow of yourself behind you that does everything you do about a quarter of a second after you do.
Co-Op
Sadly this is not as fleshed out as it could be as only 1 gamer profile my be on at one time which means no achievements for the second player. However if you don't care about that then playing a hard battle with a friend as you both try to keep a handle on things is immensely fun. Taking a force that tremendously outnumbers you with a friend is extremely fun and difficult.
Overall:
I really do like this game, and I think if you approach it with an open mind and explore what available options there are then you could enjoy it to.