Dynasty Warriors: Origins Review - Musou All The Way Through

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Gaming

Dynasty Warriors: Origins makes a lot of bold claims, and for the most part, it lives up to them. First and foremost, it attempts to reboot a 28-year-old series, still developed (as always) by Omega Force and published by Koei. It promises an entirely new approach to the Dynasty Warriors formula, one-versus-one-thousand action like you've never seen before. It aims to be a perfect series entry point for newcomers, but also to satisfy longtime fans with its complicated tactical gameplay and new spin on a familiar story.

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Dynasty Warriors: Origins

Released January 17, 2025

Developer(s) Omega Force

Publisher(s) Koei Tecmo

Engine Omega Force

ESRB Teen // Violence, Mild Language, Use of Alcohol

It's all wrapped up in a neat little package, easily the most technically impressive Dynasty Warriors game ever released. It finds a perfect balance between mindlessly absurd combat and intricate real-time strategy that is, in its greatest moments, intensely satisfying and lots of fun. But in its worst moments, it's repetitive, grindy, and dull. Its lows don't detract from its highs, but they can distract from them. Still, it maintains enough of that classic Musou charm to carry it through.

Classic Musou Combat Evolves In Dynasty Warriors: Origins

A Familiar Formula With New Twists

Ziluan throwing a pair of spinning wheels at a large enemy force in a screenshot from Dynasty Warriors Origins.

The Dynasty Warriors series has always been predicated on the idea of 1 vs. 1,000, throwing the player into epic battles in which they control a single character who must fight off enormous enemy hordes. Never before has a game lived up to that promise as thoroughly as Dynasty Warriors: Origins - armies are intimidatingly massive with the addition of the new Large Force mechanic, in which swathes of footsoldiers and officers congregate in a single area.

It's incredibly rewarding to chip away at these Large Forces piece by piece, sending enemies flying through the air with your strong attacks, and eventually watching the whole army scatter as you focus in on its leader. Battles are intense and chaotic, which is both a positive and a negative. The intensity forces you to focus and choose your next move carefully, and the chaos of it all means you're often blindsided by unblockable, near-deadly attacks from well outside your field of vision.

Still, Dynasty Warriors: Origins gives you a whole new arsenal of special attacks to deal with that chaos. Your strong attacks fill up slots in your Bravery meter, which you can use to unleash powerful special moves. These may have any number of effects: crowd control, breaking down defenses, or interrupting incoming attacks. I greatly enjoyed learning and experimenting with new moves throughout the game, customizing my arsenal for each different weapon type (and, eventually, each particular battle).

Of course, Morale, the Musou gauge, and Rage mode return from previous games, working much as ever. Later on in the campaign, players can give commands to a small retinue of their own soldiers. While these vary in usefulness, they greatly expanded the strategic aspects of each battle. And speaking of strategy, both the player's and the enemy's team will occasionally activate Grand Strategies, massive attacks or huge advantages that they can only implement if they meet a certain goal within a time frame. These add a great sense of time pressure, forcing you to make snap decisions.

Ziluan sending several enemies flying into the air with a swing of Twin Pikes in a screenshot from Dynasty Warriors Origins.

One of the more divisive aspects of Dynasty Warriors: Origins is its focus on a single main character instead of a vast array of playable characters. To compensate, its player-named protagonist, nicknamed Ziluan, is totally customizable down to the last gameplay detail (although not in appearance). Players can select one of seven weapon types, each of which completely changes Ziluan's playstyle and base combos. They can also select his special moves and squad tactics, level him up with a skill tree, and find or craft accessories to grant various perks.

In other respects, Ziluan is a poor substitute for the myriad playable characters of previous games. He's just as fun to play, but doesn't have nearly as much personality. Unlocking each new weapon type is always nice, but it's nothing compared to the joy of unlocking a whole new character in other Warriors games. And while one mechanic does let you appoint companion characters for certain late-game missions, your options are strictly limited, and you can only control them briefly.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins Has A Hit-Or-Miss Story

A Close-Up Look At The Three Kingdoms

Dynasty Warriors: Origins is positively massive in scope, not unlike its inspiration, the classic Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It's a hefty, epic tome, but this game only covers roughly half of it, which gives it more of an opportunity to delve into specifics regarding its pivotal people, places, and events. The game is divided into five different chapters, each of which focuses on a different part of the saga.

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Origins' adaptation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms spans from the rise of the Yellow Turban rebellion, to the formation of a coalition between the three warlords of Wei, Wu, and Shu, to the dissolution of their alliance and the opening salvos of their struggle for power. But its constantly shifting focus causes inconsistency in the story, making certain chapters engaging and full of intrigue, while others are slower and more predictable. Still, the characters are always interesting, and it's the conflict between their hopes and the thorny politics of the Three Kingdoms period that carries the narrative forward.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins also has a Persona-style Bond system, which allows you to deepen your relationships with your companions. These scenes are a lot of fun, and go a long way in fleshing out some of the characters involved. They also make it hurt harder when those characters die, or you're forced to turn against them. Depending on how you look at it, character development is either helped or hindered by the cheesy, over-the-top voice acting. For me, that was part of the charm: at times, line deliveries evoke a poorly-dubbed martial arts movie in their lovable earnestness.

The mysterious gray-haired character appearing in one of Ziluan's visions in Dynasty Warriors Origins._

In the second half of the game, the story branches out a bit as you choose whether to hitch your wagon to Liu Bei, Cao Cao, or Sun Jian - the heads of what eventually become the titular Three Kingdoms. While I only had time to explore one path during my campaign, this seems like an interesting and variable system that lends the game tons of replay value, completely changing the face of the late game depending on which side you choose.

But against the high-stakes, epic saga of the Three Kingdoms, Ziluan's personal journey is sluggish and clichéd by comparison. At its center is an overused RPG trope - the protagonist with amnesia and a terrible destiny to fulfill, if he can only remember what it was. This kind of generic storytelling does allow for him to fit seamlessly into the various branching storylines, but doesn't do his own momentum any favors.

Exploration & Side Content Fill In The Gaps

A Not-Quite-Open World

Again, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is positively massive, and it gives you a fair bit of free rein in deciding what to tackle next. Between battles, you find yourself wandering a sort of scaled-down, RPG-style overworld, choosing to stop at towns, take on optional battles, or talk to NPCs on the way to your next story chapter. I greatly enjoyed my time on the world map. You get small doses of open-world style exploration as you gather materials, search for hidden secrets, and chat with NPCs, but without the inherent bloat and boundless FOMO that comes with actual open-world games.

Although you're permitted to explore the world map, it's not truly open-world: new sections open up as you complete pivotal events in the story.

You can also choose to (or choose not to) take on optional battles as you wander the overworld. These range from simple and mindless to complex and strategic. However, side content can get repetitive; there's very little to do other than watch cutscenes and fight, and optional battles tend to reuse the same maps and enemy types repeatedly within the same chapter. I had a lot of patience for the side content, as the satisfaction of sending hundreds of enemies flying across the map never diminished for me, but I could see some players getting annoyed by the repetition.

There's some variation in the win conditions to keep things interesting: kill all the enemies, seize the base, escort such-and-such to the extraction point, et cetera, but it's nothing you haven't already seen in the main quest. Of course, no one's forcing you to 100% Dynasty Warriors: Origins, but by the mid-to-late game, you'll start lagging behind if you haven't engaged with at least some of the side content. You need the extra points towards your weapon proficiency and skill tree to keep pace with the recommended ranks for the game's toughest battles, which is frustrating and disruptive to the story.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

Screen Rant Gives Dynasty Warriors: Origins A 7/10

Dynasty Warriors: Origins is, for me, a complicated game to rate. I can acknowledge its flaws, but I'm willing to put up with them to enjoy its strengths. I have a soft spot for the campy voice acting, and apparently boundless patience for its repetitive side content. But I can easily see both of those things getting on other players' nerves. I can't, however, justify its inconsistent story, and I have mixed feelings about its choice to compress the gargantuan rosters of previous Dynasty Warriors games into a single, bland playable character.

But at its core, Origins is a Dynasty Warriors game through and through. The delightful rhythm of a successful combo, the irresistible chaos of a large-scale battle, and the thorough satisfaction of a well-executed strategy are all perfectly intact. If you've ever enjoyed a Warriors game, or even thought you'd enjoy a Warriors game, you'll find a lot to love here. In these regards, Dynasty Warriors: Origins makes a more than worthy successor.