Review | Dynasty Warriors: Origins - Old Dog, New Tricks
My curiosity was piqued for the new entry in the Dynasty Warriors franchise, not just as someone who was keen to see what the decades-old series had done with a reinvigorated premise, but as someone captivated by the new concepts and design decisions Omega Force brought to the table this time. The series had been formative for me in my childhood. I still remember the many days I spent playing Dynasty Warriors 6, and also possess distinct memories of playing split-screen games of Dynasty Warriors 4 with my brother as we would battle across what felt at the time to be the expansive fields of Wu Zhang Plains and the fortress of Hu Lao Gate.
My then-small brain had had no idea of the true meaning of the word expansive, which the newest entry seems to truly embody, boasting ahead of the launch of battles with thousands of enemies across battlefields. This promise ahead of release and some additional updates were enough to convince me to dust off my spears and love of extremely dodgy voice acting. The updates touted, from shortening the game down to the first half of its source, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, to the return of select older mechanics alongside refined duels and new parry systems all give the sense that Dynasty Warriors: Origins is an earnest attempt to be bold with the newest game in the long-running series.
This commitment works best where it matters, in its gameplay. The focus here is to provide a better mix of worthy adversaries and still give satisfying combat with plenty of flair and massive moments, making regular battles feel satisfying. Weapons handle with a honed sense of speed — the twin blades hold great heft, the wheels fly at tremendous pace and the sword flows from your character’s hand with smooth animations and classic sound design underpinning each movement as you fly through the battle. Enemies and officers also have more competence and greater strength. This is amplified through the new fortitude system, similar to many games that require you to stagger enemies for critical attacks. Here, you can break an officer’s fortitude using heavy attacks and new battle arts to then land large heavy attacks on them with special animations for killing blows. This system makes fights with officers much more intense, with key characters having sizable fortitude to break down as well as devastating Musou attacks, and gives each encounter more overall flair and satisfaction.
To that end, the aforementioned battle arts become the game’s greatest strength. Fighting builds up bravery that can then be spent to use these arts, with each weapon having extensive bespoke arts that you can use to alter your playstyle. The system is a stroke of genius, giving each weapon a signature style that you can determine and you can use to both find favourites and retool weapons (which can now be switched on the fly in battle) to suit your own playstyle. These simple systems merge together to make this edition of Dynasty Warriors feel much more physical.
Add to this the battles themselves. The level design and mission structure is mixed enough to keep things fresh mechanically. Whether it’s through doing rescue missions to run to the aid of a fellow officer such as the Assault on Nanyang, or — a personal favourite of mine — running through a castle whilst infamous Lu Bu literally pursues you, there’s a good degree of variety to satisfy and prevent the game’s missions from feeling repetitive. These are accompanied by some classic missions and even a few one-on-one boss fights that will please plenty of fans. Even if some of these are better than others (escorting an elderly man through a map while fighting assassins being one of the lowlights), it does certainly help the overall game structure. The big highlight of the game is the missions that end with large-scale battles where your force charges as one against another opposing force. Here, the game taps into every bit of power of the current generation of consoles, populating the battlefield with thousands of enemies, with officers launching new attacks, generals fighting everywhere and arrows flying en masse. This feels truly impressive and like Dynasty Warriors at its best, with Musou attacks sending soldiers flying everywhere and your knockout numbers escalating exponentially. Despite these masses, the Xbox Series X tackles this very well, handling this without obvious frame drops on a VRR display and presenting an acceptable visual identity. The game isn’t the strongest graphically, with flat textures and some maps lacking intrinsic detail in castle environments, but the game’s landscapes do feel suitably epic and it certainly looks better than previous iterations. For all that technical prowess, it does forgo split-screen multiplayer, which is a glaring omission even if we are in an age where it is less popular.
If this all sounds a little too manic, other gameplay mechanics help to solve this. A good suite of gameplay options allow you to set how many battlefield alerts you receive, how your map looks and even the transparency of soldiers. The other key thing is your character’s Eyes of the Sacred Bird. This slows down time for you to see where generals are around you and allows you to use soldiers to employ tactics such as firing a volley of arrows at a location, or charging an area.
All of this is to say, the actual core gameplay feels truly refined and with its bolder ideas, it feels earnestly fun with a surprising degree of depth. You'll notice I've been vague about elements beyond the mechanics. That's because the game’s swings when it comes to the story and overall structure are a miss. It's not for want of trying out more bold approaches here. Instead of playing as any of the Dynasty Warriors’ named heroes, you take control of a Wanderer, adorned with black robes and a crimson sash. This identifies him in our story as a “Guardian of Peace” whose “light represents the hope of people”. Somewhere, Sora's ears are burning. Throughout the game, you control this character, level up his proficiencies with the various weapon types and explore the land with an overworld map as you choose allies and look to explore your own forgotten past. Sadly, there's no character customisation available, which would have made the Wanderer at least feel like a more player-curated character rather than the simple vessel you use to slay enemies in the thousands. Whilst you can select other characters as companions for missions and take temporary control of them, it just serves to remind you how hollow your own character can feel, as the Wanderer has no variation in voice lines. By mission number ten, the simple delivery of “The enemy officer has been defeated” becomes background noise.
Between these elements, the story feels messy and bland. For one, the Wanderer's murky past is hardly mysterious as a set of obvious motivations and twists across its story fail to create meaningful drama or emotion. As for the overall story, it does get an advantage through its shortened coverage of the source material. In turn, early events such as all of Lu Bu's exploits and the Yellow Turban Rebellion get plentiful screen time, although they feature inconsistent voice acting quality. The best bits of the story come in the form of the one-on-one conversations with characters who are seemingly willing to divulge any personal flaw in front of you. Whether that be Zhou Yu’s concern at picking up Sun Ce’s mess, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei’s worries over Liu Bei, and Yueying’s discussion of creative skills being used to serve war, there are attempts to hit at more complex and personal ideas which are admirable but not really the focus.
Many may wonder why I’m spending paragraphs writing about this. After all, this is a Dynasty Warriors game. Story has never been at the forefront. That is absolutely true, but this game seems keen to make it so at the expense of putting roadblocks in the way of its fabulous core gameplay. In some cases, you’ll find yourself wandering the world map before entering a cutscene, then wandering again to find another character, followed by a cutscene with them, after which you finally get to the battle where you can then do your battle preparation. I do love narrative, but the elements of the world map and excessive concentration of cutscenes serve to frustrate and hurt the overall flow from mission to mission. Some more efficient writing or a reframing of the world map could solve many issues here, but without those, the campaign feels much like being tasked with endless admin before getting to the game’s true excellence. In a sense, this is the great conundrum of Dynasty Warriors: Origins. It’s a game that is deeply satisfying to play, but has a lot in the way of that game.
Despite these reservations, Omega Force should be applauded for what is the boldest entry in the franchise in recent times and a game that, once you wade through the muck, stands as an engaging and intense Musou game that maintains its classic feel whilst evolving the series. For fans, this game is certainly not an entry to eschew, or rather e-Shu.
