Dynasty Warriors: Origins
Review
A worthy adjustment to a well-worn formula.
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
Romancing The Three Kingdoms Once More
Series fans will know this sentence verbatim: Dynasty Warriors: Origins is an adaptation of 'Romance of The Three Kingdoms', and for the uninitiated, so are a majority of the entries. This time around, they've taken a segmented approach, opting to cover the first half of the story, but with a finer brush. This is clear in the characters you're meeting, interacting with, forming bonds with, as you once again grapple with the Yellow Turban Rebellion, et al. The characters will be familiar; Lu Bu is here, as is Guan Yu. Again, adapting the same story.
Breaking from tradition is your consistent playable character: the amnesiac Nameless (until you give them a name) Wanderer. This addition gives the player the chance to, as mentioned before, develop relationships with these warriors and generals, but also make a couple choices and fill out several skill trees. No one really comes to a Dynasty Warriors title for the story, unless it's their first, but it was impressive that it was worth the investment of my time. Because they're taking this more in-depth approach, even though it is "half' of the entire story, it took me close to 20 hours to get one ending. To increase replayability, and avoid the pitfalls of forcing you to grind for the additional endings, upon completion you can "restart" the story from any point, including the big branching path about halfway through.
Shades of the Familiar
At a glance, Dynasty Warriors: Origins looks like an extremely pretty version of a game we've seen so many times before, and in some ways it is. In other, more important ways, it feels like the true realization of an idea over two decades old. Modern technology allows the ethos of "put a ton of enemies on screen to mow down" to come to life in the most satisfying way. More often than not, you'll have hundreds of enemies between you and your objective, and dispatching them in ways that only Dynasty Warriors can allow is as exciting as it has ever been. The combat system has seen some adjustments, even presenting itself a little more fighting game-like in the 1-on-1 bouts, but the rank-and-file, the fodder, still flies through the air as they always have from your variety of basic and heavy attacks, as well as screen clearing Musou attacks, and anything in between. The joy of turning a thousand enemies into flying physics objects with the flick of a wrist has never been greater. In those duels with named or titled enemies: the requirements on you as a combatant can seriously bump up against those of a Souls game, depending on the difficulty, though it, thankfully, never goes all out. There's plenty of blocking and timed dodging, but also a superb parry that is easy enough to pull off, even amid an attack animation, yet so satisfying. The game throws mix-ups your way in the form of attacks that require either dodging or countering with a particular type of Battle Art (which also feels good to whip out in a panic), and others that force you to retreat entirely. Shades of Radahn, at times.
As you might have guessed, this is not quite a "2D fighter-to-crowd combat" reinvention, but both the places where combat has improved and the lines they didn't cross are commendable. It is mostly represented in those singular clashes with boss enemies, but there's more to consider there, too. It would have been easy to silo these boss battles off from the outside world like a climactic battle in a movie, but the surrounding mobs never transform into background scenery. Soldiers can, and will, hit you at any moment, and while they do minor damage and won't stagger you, empowered enemies bring the threat. They can attack you from all sides, and unlike the standard soldiers, they'll hit you with those unblockable, unparryable attacks, and sometimes relentlessly. While this can get frustrating, constantly getting bounced around by a group of enemies shining orange (the indicator of impending doom) it reinforces the need to keep your head on a swivel. While smashing the attack buttons works a lot of time, and is good fun, the combat here all but requires you to slow things down quite a bit and take a more measured approach. I wish I could have pulled the camera out just a little to better view my surroundings, but keeping things relatively up close and personal keeps the action thrilling.
Charging Into Battle
Whether it is the large-scale story battles, medium-scale missions, or smaller-yet-evolving-scale skirmishes, becoming familiar with the flow of these fights can be critical to success. Story battles see your allied group of fighters going over the battle plan on the map beforehand, but often you'll be fighting by the seat of your pants as you keep one eye on the red forces, paying particular attention to the dots representing "big bads" and another on the blue forces, focusing on whichever allies would cause a mission failure upon defeat. The mini-map is every bit as detailed as it needs to be to absorb necessary information, and you've also got a more extensive pause menu and vision skills to ensure you're only as overwhelmed as you let yourself be. Although it sometimes turns into a frantic dash across the play field as you attempt to divide your deadliness between multiple forces, and occasionally your mission-critical allies will engage in some ill-advised fights, continually strategizing your various advances and defences gives a great sense of command over the battlefield. And that's before you get the ability to make more direct commands a few hours into the adventure. Best of all, should you fall victim to one of the failure conditions, you’re given the opportunity to watch back the entire battle to review every movement, and ultimately restart from certain points, rather than from the beginning, if you choose.
Try not to get caught up in the visual splendor, but these maps look great, and I particularly enjoy the ones absolutely drenched in rain. The action is equally impressive, but a highlight of the freneticism exists in occasional set piece moments where an allied commander sets and waits for an ambush or a bull rush charge. When your character wanders into this zone, the entire group gets pumped up and rushes into battle with abandon. The camera comes in tight, the sense of speed and danger (if there can be a danger in Dynasty Warriors) is tactile, and the sound of a thousand footsteps thunders in harmony with the game's guitar-heavy soundtrack. It all comes to a bombastic head when you collide with the first soldier and send a shockwave of bodies recoiling through the air.
Tactical Retreat
Between battles, a giant version of your character wanders around a large overworld map in what is a clear concession to the panned open-world experiment. Out here, you will visit different villages, find items, talk to allies, and, of course, engage with battles both mainline and optional. Fast travel points are aplenty, but running around allows you to find hidden items that can be impactful for the gameplay. Bringing a classic JRPG element to the forefront is just one example of their "back to roots" approach, and as a result, makes the open-world nature of DW9 even worse. It’s nice to slow down between fights, but that you're given meaningful things to do and not just staring at a menu with battle names is a tremendous bonus.
My biggest concern was also abated pretty quickly. Foregoing the series' tendency to put you in the shoes of these heroes you’re now simply teaming up with made me wonder if we were ending up with an even more shallow story experience than in the past. One benefit of the bonds you can form manifests in the ability to bring allies with you on certain missions. This person will not only fight with you and chirp in your ear but also a fighter you can switch to. Especially early in your character-building journey, this switch allows you the opportunity, more than anything else, to see what true power looks like. Otherwise, in lieu of the different play styles that classically came with different characters, you now have access to nine different weapons, which you can switch out mid-battle as you like, each with its own move set, upgrade tree, and exclusive Battle Arts. Variety is the name of the game more so than any other entry in the series.
Romance, Indeed
I'm in awe once again, just as I was on the Playstation 2 seeing a paltry 30 enemies on my battlefield at once. Not only does Dynasty Warriors: Origins feel like the ultimate realization of an idea hatched more than two decades ago, it does so by exploring outside of its own series roots and evolution, and doesn't make any "let's make it open world" type mistakes. It leverages a ton of modern tech to create great looking battles featuring hundreds of soldiers, all while keeping the performance high. It was so close to a consistent 60 FPS on the Steam Deck and looked great at a constant 120 on my desktop (with a 240 option built in that I couldn't use). From meaningful interactions among a familiar story to a worthwhile overworld, it simply layers systems on top of each other at every level to create a joyous experience. The game allows you to play in many ways. The difficulty can be as forgiving or as hardcore as you want it to be. And because of all of this, it's more replayable, with more variety, than ever before. Whether it’s your first Dynasty Warriors or your Fifteenth, Origins is the best way to play Dynasty Warriors.
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9.3
fun score
Pros
Stellar performance of massive, beautiful battles that mix large-scale power fantasy with intimate duels. The systems outside of each battle add meaningfully to the overall experience and inform subsequent battles.
Cons
Occasional frustrations will occur when mission-critical characters head into disadvantaged battles halfway across the map or you’re blindsided by repeated unblockable attacks from behind by squads of soldiers, stun locking/juggling you for an extended
