We have been here before. Dynasty Warriors Origins is the tenth mainline entry in a franchise that has spun out into samurai, giant robots, JRPG heroes, and even the odd Hyrulean legend along the way. But Dynasty Warriors is where it all started, where the Musou hack and slash genre began, and with Dynasty Warriors Origins the team at Omega Force are starting once more, reimagining their headline series for the modern day. Our hands on was a commanding four hours long, and crucially, when time was called, we didn’t want to stop!
In the moment-to-moment gameplay, this is classic Dynasty Warriors. While it might be a reset for the series, your approach to battle is the same here as it has been across all of the Musou games. Red indicators on the map show you where enemy strongholds and officers are, and you make your way to them to support the allied forces, and to progress the battle further, gaining ground as you go. As any fan of the series knows, it starts out easily enough, but soon you’re trying to fight on multiple fronts and juggling thousands of enemies. It’s a simple gameplay loop, but one which continues to engage and enthral, even after all this time.
Omega Force has given you plenty of tools to despatch those thousands of enemy troops, and combo after combo, swinging blade after swinging blade, you’ll chop those numbers back down to zero. It’s fair to say that Dynasty Warriors will immediately test the quality of your Square button, but the further you progress, the more variety you can find in this lethal game of last one standing.
Parrying and evading play a substantially bigger role than they have done previously, though it’s not suddenly turned Dynasty Warriors into a Soulslike. You’ll need to utilise them both to defeat the stronger enemies you come across though, and getting it right rewards you with some very cool animations, and a hefty chunk off the enemy’s guard gauge.
At its best, Dynasty Warriors Origins makes you feel like a super-powered warrior, capable of dispatching entire battalions of enemy soldiers by stringing together dynamic and visually rewarding combos. Even hours into our hands on, I was having a hell of a lot of fun, helped along by your steadily increasing skills, improved weaponry and new tactics.
One of the key differences is the addition of more meaningful RPG elements. As you progress you gain experience, and in turn rank up the main protagonist, with the skill tree broken into different military ranks. Each rank has its own skill panel, and a selection of stat boosts and new moves to unlock using your accumulated experience, though it’s entirely up to you how you choose to spec your character, and what you unlock, though in some cases you have to have unlocked a previous skill to access the next.
There’s nine weapon types, and your proficiency with each of these can also be levelled up, boosting damage and unlocking new combos as you do. While there’s the standard blades and lances, there’s the more unique weapons like the Rings which add in some ranged abilities alongside the melee ones. You can buy new weapons from merchants across the map, or they’ll sometimes be dropped by enemy commanders, potentially giving you an immediate boost on the battlefield
It doesn’t end there either, and once you’ve found the element known as Pyroxene on the world map, you can exchange each one for a random gem that you then equip for different boons and bonuses. I primarily focused on the Wellspring gem, which rewards you by recharging your health for every 100 enemies you’ve slain, and as you find more Pyroxene and level up each gem, the boosts become more favourable. I found messing with all of the different systems and swapping out weaponry for ones with special characteristics really rewarding, and made for a good balance between combat and downtime.
You can also build bonds with other officers. Talking and training with these characters and making the right choices will strengthen the bond, and later on in the game you’ll be able to focus on their relationships via the Shui Jing Retreat. It’s a nice addition, and though it’s one that we’ve seen before in other RPG franchises like Fire Emblem and the recent Metaphor: ReFantazio, it makes sense here as you forge bonds on and off the battlefield.
The new world map represents the Three Kingdoms period in China. You can explore this on foot, discovering secrets and side missions, but it’s not an open world, having more in common with an RPG map than something from Ubisoft. As you quell the trouble in each region you raise the level of Peace there, which in turn will give you some undisclosed advantages.
When in town, you’ll stay at the inn, and from here you can read your letters – some of which will advance the story – change your equipment, or plan your battle tactics. Alongside that, other utilities will be available, including weaponry shops to expand your arsenal.
The map only really serves as an interactive menu, but it helps to make your skirmishes and battles feel like part of a greater war, and that you are liberating areas from oppression. It’s a shame that there isn’t more of a visual reward for doing so, as you’re bringing life and prosperity back to a region, but it’s a minor thing.
It’s Year 6 of the Guanghe era. Drought and famine have pushed the people to the limit, but the government have done nothing to ease their suffering. You step in as an unknown warrior, joining series stalwart Guan Yu in protecting the villagers. You’re told of Zhang Ziao and his steadily growing cult of worshippers The Way of the Great Peace, and this is the beginning of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which, for anyone that’s played a Dynasty Warriors game before, is where the journey always begins.
You join up with Liu Bei’s army, alongside Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, and the first order of business is to tackle Zhang Ziao’s horde. However, there’s more here than we’ve seen in the past, with your amnesiac protagonist wrapped up in a further mystical storyline. You encounter Zhuhe, a warrior committed to eliminating those who would sow chaos. It seems as though you might have previously been a Guardian as well, and while you might have played all of the previous games, this is a welcome new narrative thread to pull on. That’s not to say that it doesn’t still feel like a Dynasty Warriors game, as during our hands on we encountered more and more of the central cast, with favourites like Cao Cao and Xiahou Yuan all present and correct.
It’s been almost a whole console generation since Dynasty Warriors 9, and with the jump to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S as the baseline, the visuals have taken a clear step forward, managing to be crisp, clear, and expansive while there isn’t a hint of slowdown even when there’s a huge number of enemies on the screen. The cutscenes are also of a much higher quality than we’ve seen before, and though I’m not normally a fan of the English localisation, it’s perfectly effective here. You’ll still want to play it in Mandarin to get the full effect.
While I mean no disrespect, I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed Dynasty Warriors Origins. We’ve come to know what to expect from this series and its spin-offs, and while Origins doesn’t throw away the Musou rulebook, it makes smart changes to the formula that just make it more compelling. I can see myself pouring hours into this, and so might you.
And the best thing is that you can start right now, with a demo now available across PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.