Dynasty Warriors: Origins really breathed some serious life back into the franchise, so getting a DLC expansion was very promising. Visions of Four Heroes adds a fair amount of extra content to the game, with hours of new scenarios, fresh weapons, additional challenges, and some other new stuff here and there. The base game already had a fair amount of content and is very feature-rich, though, so the question stands: Is Visions of Four Heroes worth it, or is it something that only diehards should concern themselves with?
The biggest additions in Visions of Four Heroes are four campaigns, each focusing on one of the titular heroes. At first, you need to complete Zhang Jiao’s campaign, at which point you can choose to then do Dong Zhuo, Yuan Shao, or Lu Bu’s campaigns. However, you’ll need to have completed certain parts of the base game’s story to unlock each. Zhang Jiao needs Chapter One of the game to be completed, Dong Zhuo needs Chapter Two, Yuan Shao needs Chapter Three, and Lu Bu needs Chapter Four. Granted, it’s been over a year since the base game released, so most fans will already have completed the whole game by this point (and likely multiple times at that.)
The campaigns are fun hypothetical scenarios showing what would happen if the main character, Ziluan, ended up siding with each of the four doomed warlords and led them to victory. He’s joined with his female companion Zhuhe, who can now be taken into battle as an actual companion whenever you wish. They’re decently written campaigns that give the focus characters a decent amount of screentime, even if each campaign isn’t all that long. They all really only have a few missions that re-use maps from the base game, but said missions are tied together with the brand new strategic battles.
These are fun little extras that are akin to multiple mandatory side missions. Both your army and the enemy’s will be on cordoned-off sections of the world map. You’ll have multiple turns to attempt to reduce the enemy army’s soldier count, and you’ll need to go through skirmishes to achieve this. Meanwhile, nearby regiments on your side who are within range will automatically engage the enemy army, so there’s a bit of strategy involved. Overall, it doesn’t seem to matter much, though. But completing skirmishes will grant you tactics you can use on the map (such as sending your troops to charge or fire volleys of arrows to reduce a regiment’s health a little.)
Beyond these campaigns, there are three sets of trials to undertake, including regular challenges, challenges where you’ll use a specific weapon type, and trials that don’t unlock until you get your level up high enough. These grant you currency or skill points for Visions of Four Heroes‘ skill board, which only applies to the missions in the expansion. But the other biggest addition here is two new weapons. The first of these, the bow and arrow, shows up right away in Zhang Jiao’s campaign. But you’ll need to make it to Lu Bu’s if you want the other new weapon, the rope dart. These weapons are quite fun and the bow and arrow, for instance, feels far more like an actual ranged weapon than it did in previous games.
These weapons can be used in the base game, too, plus all weapons have seen their level caps increased with new moves for all of them. This is such a substantial addition that it alone can make the base game feel a bit incomplete without it. But another welcome extra is that there are now more new costumes, including ones that are coloured to align with each DLC campaign. There was an absolute dearth of outfits included in the base game, so it’s really nice to be able to put Ziluan in some new duds. It’s pretty easy to get 15 hours or so out of all this, but seeing as it can also change up your runs in the base game, it’s hard to not see the value here.
Of course, Visions of Four Heroes is half the price of the base game, which is honestly too much considering what you get, even if this is a rather good expansion. Considering all it adds, I do think it’s very much worth getting, but it’d be better at a discount than at full price, since it definitely doesn’t represent anywhere near 50% of the base game’s value in any capacity. But the new campaigns are solid, the new weapons are fun, and having more costumes is always welcome.
