What were they thinking?
First off let me say i'm glad i didn't buy this game and only borrowed it from a friend. The main problems that i have with this DW is that they changed the combo system, redid the appearance/weapon of nearly all the officers, and failed to reimplement some older game features.
The combo system is now a bar that you charge up with your hit chains. However all that this affects is how long your x button combo goes, and your y button only does 2 different attacks based on how long you hold it down. This has pretty much turned the game into mashing the x button for the entire battle, unlike earlier games where y was useful.
The officers have almost all been redone in the worst way. Most characters have received new weapons that don't even resemble their originals. For example, Xiahou Dun now has a two handed mace instead of his scimitar, making him significantly slower. Another example would be Sun Shang Xiang, who they decided to give a bow making her near useless unless in coop. Lu Bu now looks like a sad emo joke because of his new armor.
They tried to redo the duel system from DW4 where your would load a seperate ring to fight an officer 1v1. Now, the infantry from both teams and all friendly officers make a circle and watch as the player tries to fight all enemy officers and their lieutenants. They also went back to the older system of finding weapons without being able to upgrade them.