Should you dive into the origins of the famous musou series?

Experience an unrivalled sense of realism on the battlefield, fuelled by exhilarating 1 vs. 1,000 action and the rush of massive armies! A nameless hero conquers the turbulent and chaotic Three Kingdoms in this latest DYNASTY WARRIORS series entry.

The Dynasty Warriors games have always followed a formula, for better of worse. It hasn’t deviated much over the years, but has produced a good number of spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors, Fire Emblem Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Warriors Orochi to name a few. These also didn’t change the formula too much, but the series does have an impressive fanbase, so I can understand why they’d stick to what they know.

Before Origins, Dynasty Warriors 9 came out but wasn’t received greatly from critics or fans over a number of issues. So I have to give credit to Omega Force for knuckling down here and going all out with Origins. It is definitely a vast improvement over DW9, but also the series as a whole. I was shocked by how many characters could be on screen at any one time, with it not impacting the performance at all.

The game can also run at 120FPS if you have a compatible TV, which makes it all the smoother. Combat itself is also more refined, more engaging and there’s even proper boss fights now. The core fundamentals of the game remain in taking bases and taking out the captains, while also defending your own…but it’s definitely more polished overall.

The campaign itself is actually pretty lengthy, which you wouldn’t think when you look at the trophies and see it only has a small number of chapters…but each can take hours to complete, so there’s plenty of content on offer here. The story is pretty good too and hopefully will continue in future entries.

The visuals are the best in the series by a mile. The battlefields are nicely designed, enemies are animated well and the general scope of everything feels expanded beyond what we are used to seeing from this series. The soundtrack also steps it up a notch, while voice-acting is also impressive in both English and Japanese.

The Verdict

Dynasty Warriors Origins refines what made the series enjoyable, while implementing new mechanics well. It definitely feels like a much needed step for the series and I hope this is just the beginning of what’s to come from Omega Force and Koei Tecmo.

Score: 8.5