Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a complete retelling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms beginnings. DW is known for epic battles featuring heroes of Chinese myth fighting hundreds of foes. Origins dials it up to eleven, as your protagonist will face thousands of enemies simultaneously. You are the Guardian of Peace, a new character made specifically for this series reboot. There are a ton of changes and nearly all of them are positive. Let’s dive into the nitty gritty and see how Dynasty Warriors: Origins holds up for new and returning players.
Romance Me Zaddy
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has been the heart of Dynasty Warriors, and after nine mainline entries and many more spin-offs, we’re going back to before it all began. Telling the storylines of Liu Bei, the Sun clan, and Cao Cao, you are a mystical “Guardian of Peace” who will help shape the future of the land.
Unlike past titles you do not jump from one legendary hero to another, instead you are always your main character. Your protagonist, who you can name how you want though your nickname will be said in cutscenes, suffers from amnesia. That dastardly memory wipe that doesn’t exist in real life but shows up constantly in stories has robbed you of your past, though not of your ability to kick ass.
The game features five chapters, a few of which are unbelievably long. It looks like there are at least four endings, one for each of the main lines and then another that requires certain criteria to be met. I backed my boy Liu Bei, the kindest mf’er in the land. Once you’ve rolled credits the first time you can jump into any point of the story to more quickly see the other endings.
As the political strife picks up you’ll have a handful of choices to make, though they mostly just changed response dialogue from what I could tell. The dreaded open-world map returns, a recent addition to the series. You’ll walk across the entire kingdom as an enormous, incredibly handsome giant man.
Thankfully, it works well at giving you a sense of where things are occurring without feeling tedious. The map is “big” while being “smol” if that makes sense. You can run across the entire thing in 45 seconds but it is still a proper representation of the lands themselves. This, of course, is all in service of the classic Musou gameplay.
Musou time
You are an army of one, facing hundreds early on, and thousands later on the battlefields. Featuring nine distinct weapon types and dozens of upgrades to unlock, Dynasty Warriors: Origins gameplay is fantastic. X is your main attack, and Y is your heavy, with modifiers unlocked using the left bumper and right trigger abilities over time.
The left bumper is your parry/block button as well, with the timing on parries being rather generous on default difficulty. The right trigger is your dodge button, with perfect dodges giving you a satisfying slowdown and eventually extra benefits. There’s a lot of grinding to be done in DW: Origins as you smash through tens of thousands of foes.
Early on the game feels basic, with a few combos on your initial starting weapon. Quickly you’ll unlock more weapon varieties, mastering each as you complete levels, gaining new combos and Battle Arts. Battle Arts are the “build up your meter to do really cool shit” move sets. You’ll hold the right bumper and press a face button to activate each, at the cost of Bravery. To earn said Bravery you beat the crap out of people, easy peasy.
As you progress through the story you’ll get an armed guard, become an on-field leader, and even get to call in special group attacks that require friendly combatants around you. Lobbing giant rocks at enemy lieutenants or firing arrow volleys that take down entire divisions of troops is as satisfying as ever, working on a timer cooldown system.
While single-handedly smashing large armies of nobodies apart is a blast, the game shines in one-on-one combat. Most mission objectives will revolve around taking out a handful of specific targets, each of whom is a far tougher fight than the average soldier. These lieutenants and heroes of the realm have your weapons and move sets available, far larger health bars, and will require you to master parrying and dodging.
The Art of War
Mission types vary just enough in DW: Origins to never grow stale, even though they are by their very nature repetitive. The open world will always have a mix of golden path main quests, set side quests, and random encounters to engage with. Early on I did damn near every random encounter I could and ended up over-leveling the game straight through to the end. As you master each weapon type you’ll gain health, attack power, and defense rating.
The basic side quests offer up talismans and extra Guard members/abilities, so you’ll want to do them every time they show up. Talismans give you either flat buffs to certain stats or condition-based ones. The difference is, for example, 5% more attack damage all the time or 15% when you’re above 50% HP.
Items are generally a one-time use per fight and can offer up more defense, and damage, and are one of the main ways to heal your fellow lieutenants/heroes. You can also heal your allies by running to their sides from far enough away. Each battle is broken up into zones, when one gets called out as being a dire situation you can run or gallop to it. Once you’re close enough friendly heroes will heal up even if they’re on the brink of death.
You’ll earn a horse early on which you can summon by pressing in the left stick. Your mount can level up over time, becoming faster and unlocking extra passive bonuses. DW: Origins is a title of never-ending carrots on sticks for you to chase down. There is enough variety that fighting the same fight on the same map for the 15th time still didn’t bother me. I was leveling a new weapon, trying out a new art, or marveling at the Ultimate Musou attack I had just unlocked.
With a press of the B button, you can unleash a devastating hit that causes all enemies around you to go flying. This has three levels to it that you’ll unlock over the campaign. The 2nd level is Rage Mode, which is activated by clicking in both sticks. Level 3 is essentially Super Rage Mode, as you fill three levels of meter. During this time you can use battle arts without having to build up Bravery, depleting Musou meter instead. Once the meter runs dry, or if you press B, you’ll unleash a Musou Attack, potentially felling a thousand or more foes in one hit.
In certain fights, you’ll have a brother-in-arms who you can tag up to do large attacks with or take over and control when their Musou meter is full. Holding down the view button see your ally jump in front of you, do some nasty attacks, and then you’ll fight as them until your Musou meter reaches zero, and they unleash a devastating Ultimate.
Senses
Graphically, Dynasty: Warriors Origins is a nice step up from previous entries. Running only on current generation hardware it’s a good but not great looking title. The hero models are high quality, with solid material work on their fabulous outfits and clean animations. Environments run the gamut from stellar to PS2-level textures. I’m not sure if it was an issue with the game’s engine not loading higher-quality assets or not. During a few cutscenes, the camera would linger on an incredibly low polygon world texture, like a tree or side of a building.
The focus is on a rock-solid framerate while facing hundreds, and eventually thousands, of foes at once. I’m on an LG OLED with VRR running at 120hz. The game offers a 30hz, 60hz, and 120hz selection. I primarily played at 60 as I captured footage for the video version of this review. I’m not sure if the 120hz mode pushes a higher frame rate or is there for lower input latency. Outside of looking a little fuzzier, it didn’t feel that different, though I mostly notice frame rates in first-person titles.
I do not remember any performance issues until the last two main missions in the game. The on-screen effects and combatant counts were so damned high that my cavalry charges felt like a slide show on occasion. Outside of those specific instances, the game ran well, with fast load times on my Xbox Series. X
Most of the title is fully voice-acted. The English dub is surprisingly solid, though I opted to swap to Japanese eventually as it felt right (despite the title being set in China…). The game’s writing is fine, though the plot points and the way things are stated can suffer in translation, a bit. Often the main story-driving elements are just plainly stated, with little subtext or surprise to be found. It is more of a cultural difference and how translations can work than any issue of skill.
The music is a mix of classical and modern. During cutscenes, the overworld, and pre-rendered moments you’ll get large, sweeping orchestral pieces. Missions feature a ton of butt-rock-sounding guitars that felt a little odd at first but grew on me over time. It had been a while since I played a Dynasty Warriors game, forgetting just how much they love their 80s-sounding guitar riffs while you’re on the ancient battlefields.
Wrapping Things Up
Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a brilliant reboot of the series. Playing as a central character instead of hopping between classic heroes works. It looks damned good most of the time, sounds great, and features an excellent mix of group and single-fighter combat. For those new or returning to the series you’ll find dozens of hours of combative bliss.
A key for this game was provided by Koei Tecmo’s PR
Dynasty Warriors: Origins
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Massive Battlefields
- Solid Group Combat
- Challenging single foe fights
- Fun to grind
CONS
- Some odd graphical hiccups
- Translation can be a bit on the nose
The new beginning of backlog begins…
Great review.
“I backed my boy Liu Bei, the kindest mf’er in the land.”
As a fan of the series, not sure how I feel about not being able to play as all of the “Heroes”. Everything else sounds great though.
This IS looking quite cool. Could even be something I’d buy but no way at full price.
I’m always afraid that a game like this will get repetitive too quickly.