Dynasty Warriors: Origins Review

Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the latest entry in the Dynasty Warriors franchise, which, after a pair of fighting games, evolved into the hack-and-slash subgenre of “musou” games starting with Dynasty Warriors 3. Having carved out a comfortable niche for itself during the golden age of the series on the PlayStation 2, developer Omega Force has also created a sister franchise set in feudal Japan (Samurai Warriors), numerous spinoffs (including the Orochi games), and even forayed into other IPs like Dragon Quest, Fire Emblem and The Legend of Zelda. So, does this new entry into the Dynasty Warriors franchise manage to capture the enemy camp, or is it doomed to fall in a sneaky ambush?

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

The Dynasty Warriors franchise is based on the 14th-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a heavily mythicized account of a century of turbulence stretching from the death throes of the Han dynasty to the eventual reunification of China under the Jin dynasty. While there is some history at the core of this story, it has been embellished to the point where generals became demigods and strategists turned into omniscient sorcerers.

With hundreds of colorful (semi-)historical to draw from, including dozens of the most prominent characters who were reimagined from previous games, it’s a bit of an odd choice that Dynasty Warriors: Origins decides to focus on an original character, Ziluan. Ziluan is a silent, amnesiac with mysterious powers, which wouldn’t be such a terrible idea - it’s hardly the first time a musou game has seen a create-a-warrior mode - save for a major problem: Ziluan has none of their charisma.

View Full-size

Believe it or not, this is one of Ziluan’s more emotive scenes in the game.

Ziluan emotes once in the entire game, otherwise content to wear the same blank expression, occasionally broken up by a curt nod. After sitting through more than our fair share of it, it’s safe to say that a distressing amount of conversation in this game is filler.

1 vs 1000 Battles

Fortunately, Dynasty Warriors has never been known for its great story-telling - all that plot stuff just serves to get you from battle to battle, which is where the musou genre shines. Normally you’d have your pick from a roster of dozens of characters from various factions, but in Dynasty Warriors: Origins you just have Ziluan. All the beloved characters from past games are either absent entirely or relegated to the role of sidekicks. To combat this somewhat, Ziluan has access to more combat options than any Dynasty Warrior character before him, including nine weapons with their own movesets, Special Arts that can be used by expending Bravery, Tactics powered by your own loyal squad of bodyguards and of course the eponymous Musou attack - a super move that can clear out entire mobs of enemies.

Using all of these at the right time is fundamental to success, and they often play off each other - you charge Bravery and Musou by landing attacks (and in the case of Musou, by taking damage), while Tactics run on a cooldown. Between these flashier moves you’ll need to make do with genre staples: heavy attacks, light attacks, blocks, parries and dodges. In Dynasty Warriors: Origins, enemy officers also have Fortitude, represented by shields over their health bar, and once their Fortitude is depleted they’ll become vulnerable to an Assault, which deals heavy damage. Time a block well enough and you’ll parry the attack, depleting your foes’ fortitude, avoiding damage and leaving them vulnerable to counterattack.

View Full-size

1

2

(1 of 2) Parrying attacks is essential in Dynasty Warriors: Origins,

View Full-size

View Full-size

Parrying attacks is essential in Dynasty Warriors: Origins, (left), as battles are a series of timed combat challenges that required you to prioritize targets and deal with objectives to keep your allies alive. (right)

This makes parrying a virtual necessity, along with a solid grasp of the other, aforementioned gameplay elements; not because your enemies are all that difficult most of the time, but because most battles are actually timed combat challenges.

Taking place on sizable maps populated with dozens of officers and hundreds of lesser troops, your goal is usually to defeat specific enemy officers while keeping your own important officers alive. Your allies and enemies will advance towards different objectives, reinforcements will appear, ambushes will be sprung, and all this can change the flow of the battle - success improves the morale of your own focus and setbacks lower it, and the higher your morale the better your computer-controlled companions will fare. If your kill speed is too slow, or you prioritize wrong targets, you may end up suffering defeat regardless of the state of your health bar. Parrying attacks reliably will vastly improve your kill rate, letting you burn through objectives faster, secure the safety of one officer before you invariably have to rush off to another.

Killing fast is all well and good, but you also need to be mindful of what your allies and enemies are doing during battle and be prepared to respond appropriately. Unfortunately, while characters will generally announce what they’re doing (complete with map indicators to let you know exactly what’s going on), the importance of every action to the outcome of the fight isn’t always clear; An allied officer is going to take a base - is that essential to trigger some morale-shifting strategy that makes victory possible, or is it a red herring? You’ll find out when you get a game over. Fortunately defeat doesn’t force you to start over, as the game makes various checkpoints during battle that you can resume play from if things go south, but it still feels bad when you lose fights for reasons that are entirely out of your control.

View Full-size

Large forces are the best new addition to the musou formula, allowing you to wreak havoc on entire armies!

One of the best new elements in Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the addition of “Large Forces”, which is the closest the franchise has come to simulating two armies clashing instead of smallish squads fighting where the draw distance allowed them to. You’ll need to headhunt officers in a sea of soldiers to lower the strength of the Large Force and ultimately disband it, dealing with enemy and allied side objectives to raise morale in the meantime. While hectic and engaging, it can be too much of a good thing - the gameplay was clearly not designed to scale up like this and it can become nigh impossible to target specific enemies or parry attacks when so much is going on around you, but generally the good outweighs the bad.

Powering Up and Exploring in Ancient China

Sometimes it’s not the game - sometimes it’s you. There are plenty of roleplaying elements in Dynasty Warriors: Origins that you can fall back on if Ziluan’s performance isn’t up to snuff. You can equip different weapons to earn proficiency with them, which increases your rank - functionally Ziluan’s level. Ranking up gets you more bravery, stat boosts and unlocks new skill trees. Various NPCs will also give you tasks to complete, you can buy or find better weapons, equip different accessories, and hone your skills in numerous side missions.

It’s between battles when you’ll be able to explore the world map, which looks suspiciously like it was pulled from a strategy game. Still, it’s aesthetically pleasing, gives you a basic grasp of the geography and more importantly, serves its purpose: you can wander between cities, stopping to buy weapons or consumable items for use in combat, or visit the inn to check your mail and create gems which boost various stats. The world map is also populated with characters you can form bonds with, Elders who will teach you new Special Arts, side missions you can complete for rewards and Old Coins you can find and turn in for prizes.

View Full-size

1

2

(1 of 2) There are numerous RPG elements in Dynasty Warriors: Origins which can give you the edge if you’re willing to grind.

View Full-size

View Full-size

There are numerous RPG elements in Dynasty Warriors: Origins which can give you the edge if you’re willing to grind. (left), Between battles you can roam the world map in search of resources, optional battles, cities and allies to chat with. (right)

Scope and Performance

The battles may be bigger than ever, but in many ways the scope of Dynasty Warriors: Origins has been significantly reduced. Not only do you only play as Ziluan (save for fleeting moments where you can temporarily control an allied officer in battle) and all the myriad movesets from the old games have been discarded for less than a dozen in this game, but the sheer amount of Romance of the Three Kingdoms coverage has been greatly reduced. The campaign this time is more chronologically focused - the Shu route ended after the Battle of Chi Bi, which is roughly the midpoint of earlier Dynasty Warriors games.

The campaign is split into five chapters, which are linear until Chapter 3. You’ll then play out a faction storyline over the second half of Chapter 3 and the rest of Chapters 4-5, which clocks in at around 30 battles in total, each taking 10-30 minutes to complete. There’s a good bit of game here, if you don’t mind doing the same thing over and over again - this is kind of the point of musou games, but without multiple characters to play as, it will get stale a lot faster than normal. After beating the game you’ll unlock a new weapon type, more proficiency levels, and you’ll be able to go back and replay old battles and replay from Chapter 3 on, should you, say, want to play alongside a new faction.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins, as its specs should indicate, is not a gorgeous game. In fact, it’s probably safe to say the visuals look outright dated, but over dozens of hours with it, the game never crashed once, nor did we suffer frame drops or any other sort of performance issue (RTX 4080 Super, Ryzen 9 7900X, 32GB RAM) - in the choice between pretty and performance, Omega Force wisely went for the latter. The music is also the usual blend of rock during battles and compositions using classical Chinese instruments while on the world map which more than gets the job done. The voice acting, however, fluctuates between passable and terrible. It’s not a deal-breaker, nor is it unexpected for a Dynasty Warriors, but it’s hard to praise the odd, stilted delivery here.

With a forgettable protagonist who adds nothing of value to the story, a lack of playable characters and an abbreviated retelling of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dynasty Warriors: Origins falls well short of the franchise’s numbered predecessors, but there are some good ideas sprinkled into the venerable formula that might appeal to musou fans in desperate need of a fix.