Dynasty Warriors: Origins PC review — A leap in the right direction

I’d written off the Musou series for good years ago. I used to put dozens of hours into game after game as I mowed through hordes of enemies. But somewhere along the way I saw through the veil and just stopped enjoying them. The rigid mindless action, coupled with the throngs of “enemies” standing and doing nothing out in the field made me feel very little after a while. Dynasty Warriors: Origins, astoundingly corrects all of this. It’s the first time I’ve played a Musou game that actually lives up to the series potential. It’s not only the best game in the series from a gameplay standpoint, but it sets up an incredibly promising future moving forward.

Instead of giving players a huge roster of characters, Dynasty Warriors: Origins has a single protagonist. Known as Ziluan, you’ll take them through multiple chapters of Three Kingdoms-era China, fighting alongside and against the usual assortment of historical figures. Later in the game, you choose a faction which alters later chapters, leading to multiple different endings alongside a true ending. You can technically switch to control famous series characters on occasion, but this is mostly rare. Naturally, this is a point of contention for some.

There aren’t a great deal of cutscenes, but there are a lot of sections where character models stand around and talk. The story is told with a lot of granularity and has appropriate amounts of build-up. The way it’s presented isn’t all that exciting, however, as it’s mostly just a bunch of static character models standing around and talking. Visually, this is easily the best-looking game the series has ever seen, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s up to modern standards. There are still plenty of low-quality textures and the like that make the game look like it’s from the previous generation of consoles, but at least it has HDR.

Since you play as a single character, the series usual loop of unlocking new officers and levelling them up isn’t here. That isn’t to say that Dynasty Warriors: Origins doesn’t have the equivalent of this, of course. As you progress through the game’s first three of its five chapters, you’ll gradually unlock new weapons (with the tenth and final one become available upon beating the game.) Each weapon has proficiency levels that you’ll reach by using them. These new levels grant more moves or abilities for your weapons, but this also levels your character up, increasing their stats. It’s a pretty unique, clever system.

Once you reach certain level thresholds, you’ll unlock new skill trees that let you purchase upgrades with skill points. You get skill points just from playing the game, but most of them come by way of training challenges that task you with fulfilling certain objectives. These come from interacting with characters out in the game’s classic Final Fantasy-esque map. Between missions, you’ll spend your time riding your horse through this overworld map, allowing you to also find items and take on side missions as well. It leads to the experience feeling more cohesive without the bloat of an open world.

The real meat of the game, of course, is in the battles you take part in. You start out with a sword and, at first, it feels like things haven’t changed that much. The sword functions just like most weapons in past games – your moves are dictated by using the strong attack button after one-to-five basic attacks with this weapon, so it was incredibly familiar. Other weapons, for the most part, are entirely different. Following in the footsteps of some of the more unique weapons in Samurai Warriors 5, they can have their own gimmicks, such as the staff and twin pikes that allow you to attack indefinitely in a manner similar to DW 6 and 9.

The gauntlets are all about having you enter a stance that lets you choose between two moves. Other weapons want you to charge them up regularly or time your button presses in a specific way. Dynasty Warriors: Origins feels much more involved in terms of weapons compared to other instalments and it’s a change I’m very happy for. That wouldn’t mean much if the enemies hadn’t evolved with them, which becomes clear once you fight your first officer. Your character can block and dodges return as well. Perfect dodges slow down time for a split second and grant you extra bravery, used on your equippable abilities.

Perfect blocks, on the other hand, parry enemy attacks. When this happens, you counterattack immediately and can get some hits in. Both abilities and parries damage an enemy’s fortitude, represented by icons on their health bar. Break all of the icons and the enemy becomes staggered and open to an assault. If they’ve got a fair amount of health, assaults see you wailing on them until their fortitude gauge is repaired. If they’re close to death, though, the assault will take them out entirely. From parries to assaults, there’s a lot of impact to your strikes, which I found very satisfying.

Naturally, one of your main focuses is going to be on taking down these officers, as well as the bases they occupy. While the rank-and-file peons of most previous games would just stand around, here their level of activity depends on their proximity to officers. The more powerful the officer or army, the more they attack. If you actually try and solo an army’s main force, the peons will actually be hard to get through. Plus, stronger officers can order peons under their command to attack you in unison, making them legitimately dangerous at times. You can be in the thick of it fighting an officer, only to find your attacks repeatedly interrupted as their soldiers hack away at you.

As such, the more hectic fights in Dynasty Warriors: Origins actually demand some level of skill. You need to dodge, parry, and use your abilities wisely. You can also heal using meat buns and items purchased from stores. You’ll likely need to too, as these enemies really don’t screw around. On the default difficulty, the parry and dodge windows are extremely generous, but, on Hero difficulty for instance, both windows become much smaller. The parry window on Hero is actually very tight, so you can’t just spam a quick block like you can on the default difficulty. All of this makes the game a real action game, with far more agency and precision afforded to the player than ever before.

You’ll find that your army functions notably better depending on its morale, a returning feature indicated by a blue and red bar in the bottom-left-hand corner of the screen. Defeating officers, capturing bases, and fulfilling grand tactics (little objectives given while fighting an enemy’s main force) can increase your army’s morale, which means that the enemy won’t be able to do as it pleases much of the time. This is especially helpful considering how often battles will be lost if the army’s leader is taken down. Everything on the battlefield really just feels like it matters more now. Plus, you gain your own little group of soldiers that you can order around with their own abilities too, although I would have liked more precise control.

While you do technically only really play as Ziluan, you can go into battles with companions. After a time, they have a gauge that will fill up that lets you briefly switch to them, although this isn’t all that common. It functions similarly to the player’s own rage mode, requiring you to fill up all of your Musou (special attack) bars. Rage mode increases your attack power considerably in addition to making you unflinchable. Once the meter runs out, you’ll use that weapon’s true Musou attack, with the purpose of sending enemies flying in a wide radius around you. The same is true for when you control companions.

Speaking of companions, Dynasty Warriors: Origins has a few routes you can take starting in chapter three that lets you choose to proceed with the Wu, Wei, or Shu factions. This changes up many aspects of the missions from beyond that point. Once you beat the game, you can do a new game plus that starts you from around this point to see the other two routes. Finishing all three and fulfilling another objective unlocks the true ending. Therefore, there’s a good amount of content here. There’s obviously no free mode like previous games had, which is a bit of a shame, but you can freely select battles to replay once you get your first ending.

There are some questionable issues that pop up here and there, of course. In some missions (and especially on higher difficulties,) it can feel overly difficult to keep your allies alive. One mission has you leading Cao Cao out of the emperor’s palace with Lu Bu on your tail. Much like older titles, Lu Bu is incredibly powerful in this game and he made me think of Nioh bosses, as he’s highly dangerous. In this mission, Cao Cao will often attempt to fight Lu Bu instead of following you. It won’t be surprising to learn that he dies in one or two hits if this happens. Fighting Lu Bu can also just be a little ridiculous, as he has so much health and does so much damage that fighting him can be a chore. Just like older titles, it’s usually better to just run away, but when he’s mandatory it, can be aggravating.

All-in-all, Dynasty Warriors: Origins has massively exceeded my expectations. Omega Force has finally given us a Musou game that does what I’ve always wanted – letting me fight battles that actually feel large and challenging against armies, composed of enemies that put up a fight. Many fans will likely be disappointed with only really having the one character, but the gameplay and general design has massively benefitted from this. Hopefully this game will mark the beginning of a new era. I know I’d really love to see a game like this in the Samurai Warriors subseries next.

Check out our previous review:

Eternal Strands PC review – Talk amongst yourselves |