Dynasty Warriors: Origins Review – Tactical Reset

Dynasty Warriors: Origins Review

It’s hard to believe, but Dynasty Warriors 2 appeared a quarter of a century ago, truly ancient history as far as video games are concerned. Since then, the Dynasty Warriors franchise has spawned 8 mainline games and numerous spinoffs. Although one one of the most popular and recognizable hack-and-slash/Musou series, by 2014’s Dynasty Warriors 8 a bit of staleness had crept into the formula. Dynasty Warriors: Origins hopes to breathe new life into the franchise, attract new players, and reward long-time fans with a fresh experience.

Romance Novel

Like all the prior games, Dynasty Warriors: Origins takes the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a starting point. However, Origins doesn’t assume prior knowledge of either the previous games or Chinese history. Rather than tell a sprawling story, Origins’ narrative focuses on the first parts of the novel, from the corruption of the Han Dynasty through the epic Battle of Chibi.

Like the previous games, Dynasty Warriors: Origins balances intense and layered combat with a rich and compelling narrative. The story begins 150 years after the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty. You play as an unnamed character who begins the game as an amnesiac, perhaps not the world’s most original premise. In any case, you are thrust into a world where the populace is starving and the corrupt and callous officials are unwilling to help them. This sets up the narrative, the slowly building momentum of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, and the opposition to the Han rulers and fighters.

Along the way, you will meet a large cast of characters, many of whom will become selectable allies in combat. Others are, of course, enemies. Uniformly, the characters are clearly drawn and memorable. While the dialogue can be stilted on occasion, the game’s English voice acting is overall very good. My biggest criticism of the narrative is that it takes a very long time to develop. With such a heavy story focus, Dynasty Warriors: Origins has some occasional pacing problems where the narrative drains the momentum.

Into the Fray

Like other games in the Musou genre, Dynasty Warriors: Origins pits the player character against immense numbers of low-level enemies and a smaller number of more challenging, powerful officers. Origins changes up several tactical and RPG-type mechanics. Still, fans can expect the 1v1000 battles they love. With the current generation of consoles and high-end PCs, the number of bodies on the battlefield has become truly impressive.

Origins’ action takes place on both the battlefield and a tactical world map. The world map has several functions. It guides the player to the next battle, town or character of the campaign. Sprinkled throughout the map are resources for upgrades and special items. While Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a relatively linear game, players often return to previously visited areas and there are multiple side-quests along the way. As the campaign progresses, areas become more peaceful and this generates rewards for the character. Origins does a good job of balancing the campaign with optional side content. The map is never overwhelming but there’s plenty to do outside the main story.

Battles are divided into three tiers. Small-scale skirmishes earn money and are over in a few minutes. Medium-scale missions are a bit more demanding and earn new guards and valuable items. Finally, there are large-scale battles that progress the story. These types of battles will be familiar to series veterans. They take place over extended battlefields with an increasingly difficult progression of officers. They also require more sophisticated tactical approaches to win.

Macro to Micro

At the character level, Dynasty Warriors: Origins starts with familiar RPG-style combat mechanics and expands out, or at least adds a number of new elements. Fundamentally, your character uses basic/normal attacks, guard-breaking strong attacks and Battle Arts tied to specific weapons. Normal and strong attacks build up Bravery, needed to unleash Battle Arts. Additionally, players have several defensive moves like Perfect Evades, blocks, and parries.

So far, so very familiar, which certainly helps transition new players. Enemies have Fortitude, which can be deleted with a type of Battle Art called Special Arts. As the story progresses, your character develops increasingly powerful levels of Rage and ever-more-deadly Musou Attacks by controlling a companion officer. Even the basic Musou Attack grants some degree of invincibility. By the end of the game, you’re truly an army of one.

Like most action RPGs, Origins has a character upgrade system based on seven tiers of rank, and weapon proficiencies that increase the more you use a specific weapon. Add to these mechanics gems (action buffs), accessories (stat increases), and consumables like healing items, and the whole feels both full-featured and accessible. At the game’s easiest difficulty, it’s possible to button mash and stumble through battles pretty effectively. At more demanding levels, mastering the systems is critical.

Cast of Thousands

Since Dynasty Warriors: Origins’ focus is on impressive, large-scale battles, the tech running all the action needs to be up to the task. On a very high-end PC, I had few issues running the game in 4K with everything pushed to ultra settings. There was the occasional frame stutter in some of the most densely populated battles but overall performance was good.

By a mile, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the best-looking game in the series so far. Character designs and animations aren’t bleeding edge but when you’re slaughtering hundreds of soldiers, there isn’t much opportunity to worry about detail. The same goes for some of the sprawling battlefields and outposts. They work great as stages but not necessarily as graphical showcases. Overall, though, the game’s colorful art and nods to historical design are visually engaging, backed by an exciting and varied musical score. In other words, the presentation is excellent.

New Direction

By not numbering this latest game, the developers are signaling a rebirth of the series. In many ways that’s true. The action-RPG mechanics and narrative-heavy design bring the franchise in line with other ARPGs. At the same time, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is still a Musou game at heart. The immense battles fans of the genre love are still there. There’s less of a repetitive feeling this time around, and the game should be successful in courting new players coming from other ARPGs.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***