Dynasty Warriors Origins

If you’ve read my previous reviews, you would know that I really like a lot of Musou games. I’ve talked about a number of them in my 4+ years of reviewing, like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Persona 5 Strikers, with the most recent being Fate/Samurai Remnant. So it might be surprising to hear that I’ve never actually played a Dynasty Warriors game, the franchise that birthed this style of game, though I have been itching to for a while now, I never really got the chance. That was until the announcement of Dynasty Warriors Origins during Sony’s State of Play in May 2024, with the lead developer proclaiming that they used this as an opportunity to reinvent the series, to make it less stale for fans. And I decided to use this game’s release as an excuse to finally give this series a try. Dynasty Warriors Origins was developed by Omega Force, published by Koei Tecmo and was released on 17th January 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows. 

Story

This game, like all other Dynasty Warriors games, is a loose adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong. You play as Wanderer, a lone vagrant who’s lost all of his memories and is an incredibly skilled warrior. The game starts at the end of the Han Dynasty, with the citizens of China oppressed by the Government and soldiers. Your character joins with the Yellow Turban Rebellion, alongside fellow warrior Guan Yu in a giant battle while trying to leave a town, making the two fast friends. Time passes and the Yellow Turban Rebellion has now changed from being saviours to oppressors, bringing in a reign of terror. Wanderer, by sheer coincidence, reunites with Guan Yu, and meets with the two men he calls brothers, Zhang Fei and Liu Bei, the leader of the volunteer army, who requests that you join them in a mission to take down the vanguard of the Yellow Turbans. Now battling with the volunteer army, eventually gaining the support of generals Cao Cao and Sun Jian, the Wanderer now enters the battlefield, to try and take down the rebellion, discover more about himself and help pave the way towards the establishment of the Three Kingdoms era. 

I quite enjoyed the story. You grow attached to the characters and gain a massive amount of respect for them, to the point where you almost feel sad when the sides diverge and start going against one another. I also felt interested in learning more about Wanderer and discovering what his backstory is. Overall, I think the team did an excellent job in fleshing out this game’s plot, and kind of makes me interested in reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms myself. 

Presentation

As said before, this is the first actual Dynasty Warriors game I’ve actually played, but I have watched clips and gameplay from other games in the franchise, and from what I’ve seen this is easily the best looking game in the series. To start off, characters look great, models are looking very clean and, while not looking realistic, small details like added colour to the skin and clothing and louder than life designs make the game great to look at. 

Environments look great too, looking incredibly vibrant and expansive despite you fighting in a confined space. I’m also surprised by how much variety there was, I was fully expecting this game to just be grasslands and meadows with keeps spread about, but we also have more dirt or sand filled map, there’s one that’s covered in snow, and even ones with smaller changes, like fighting during sunset, help to make this land feel more varied.

Now, the battles of this game are ginormous, having some battles forcing you to take on hundreds, possibly thousands of enemies in one section of the map. It would not have surprised me at all to see the frame rate drop or stutter during these battles. And yet, I found that the game’s FPS remained consistent throughout, running perfectly with little lag, or at least none that I noticed (though I have seen some people note that they’ve had some frame rate drops on their end, so your mileage may vary). 

When it comes to voice acting, there are three languages that you can pick from, English, Japanese and Chinese. Personally, I picked Japanese because that’s the language that the lip syncing was matched to. I also found the English voice acting a little too jarring for me personally, the characters having the speech patterns and the over exaggeration that you would expect to find in an anime, so for me seeing that with a more realistic art style felt a bit off to me. That’s not to criticise the actors however, the acting as a whole is very good and if you don’t have my personal gripes I’m certain you’ll have a good time with the English dub, but for me the Japanese just felt more natural.

I found myself really liking the soundtrack to this game. During a mission, the music becomes incredibly action heavy, each song having an intense guitar riff that any rock/metal fanatic will absolutely adore, and brings with it a sound that perfectly matches the activity of decimating entire armies. Though the game isn’t afraid to go soft either, some songs being militaristic and inspiring and others being soothing and emotional. I’ve heard a number of fans say that it’s one of the series best, and from what I’ve heard I’m inclined to agree. 

Combat

This series was the originator of the musou game, thus you can guess what to expect from this. Unlike a number of other Dynasty Warriors games, and kind of like Fate/Samurai Remnant, you spend the majority playing as one character this time around, Wanderer. There are some battles in which you can temporarily swap control to another character, but for every mission, you exclusively play as Wanderer. To make up for this, the game gives you access to a variety of weapons, each one being unlocked the further into the game you go. I expected each weapon to play at least somewhat like each other, having strong and light attacks that can be linked together to make a unique combo depending on where you use the heavy attacks. But to my surprise, that style of combat is exclusive to the sword, with each weapon’s strong attacks working very differently from each other. For example, the wheel’s strong attacks involve them being thrown in some way, the podao revolves around charge attacks, and so does the lance except how powerful the attack depends on how much you were attacked during the build-up. Personally, I preferred the combo attacks of other musou games, so I found myself favouring the sword, but I also really enjoyed all the other weapons and tried to become more proficient with each of them. 

One big difference compared to all the other musou games I’ve played are the objectives… or rather, the lack thereof. Yes, you do get an overall objective that needs to be completed in order for you to beat the level, as well as conditions that will lead to your defeat, but there are no mini objectives that you are given throughout the level, instead you’re just given free reign to do whatever you want. If you’re confused however, the game does give you some hints on what you can do. It’ll point out skirmishes and battles between generals and captains on the map and will even tell you who has the advantage in said battle. It will also point out the movements of allied and enemy forces, as well as indicating the route they’ll take to reach their destinations. This is a feature that I wasn’t entirely sure about at first, but I very quickly grew to love this feature. The game essentially gives you freedom to do whatever you want during the mission without pressuring you to focus on your main objective, letting you determine what you should prioritise over others and incentivises you to keep a closer eye on the state of your allies and the battlefield. 

One big thing you have to do is build up and maintain your army’s morale and make sure that it is higher than your opponents. The morale of both sides will fluctuate continuously throughout the mission and will mostly determine the power of your and your opponent’s troops. The higher the opposing army’s morale, the tougher of a time you’re gonna have. Morale will shift into each side’s favour depending on certain events during combat, from small things like key figures getting eliminated and capturing keeps, to helping your army advance closer towards your enemy. It’s a great system that’s easy to understand but also punishes you for ignoring it for too long. 

A new mechanic they’ve added into this one is the guards. Guards are a band of troops that stay with you during battle, and have a list of abilities called tactics that you can pull off to gain an advantage in a fight, such as firing a volley of arrows into an enemy legion or strengthening allied troops. This is a cool mechanic, though I didn’t find myself using them very often outside of main missions, partly because of the time it takes for one of their tactics to charge up, partly because their numbers decrease the further into the mission you go, so some tactics aren’t possible. I do like it, but I wish I had more chances to use them. 

Another unique ability is the Eyes of the Sacred Bird. Your character has the ability to sense the goings on on the battlefield, and the game lets you utilise this skill. It sounds cool, but I never really found myself using it aside from select occasions, mostly while having to detect the source of magic spells so I could dispel them. Also the fact that the game paused when you used them, thus halting the action and meaning that I had to spam the ability to know exactly where I was going, made using these eyes kind of a chore if I’m being entirely honest. 

As mentioned before, while you do almost exclusively play as Wanderer, some missions do let you go into battle with a companion. These companions essentially play like your character, wielding weapons that you do, thus having those weapons movesets, and also having skills that you can unlock. They need time to charge up before you can play as them, and when you do you can only play as them for a limited amount of time, but they are really powerful, being able to unleash powerful abilities without you having to waste your resources. But even when you’re not playing as them they are really useful. On occasion, when you pull off one of your skills, your ally will use one of theirs immediately after. They will also give you access to the Ultimate Musou attack, where both characters unleash a musou attack at the same time, widening the damage caused by the strike while not using up any of your musou gauge. 

I’ve mentioned already that you fight giant armies in this game, battling hundreds, sometimes thousands of enemies at a time; well that really doesn’t come into perspective until you encounter a Large Force, a cluster of hundreds of troops, often fought at the end of a mission, being commanded by numerous generals. More often than not, you’ll get a prompt to charge in with a sizable portion of your army. These forces will even have their own health bar that will deplete as you eliminate legions of troops, more so if you take out a general. During these sections, generals on both sides will give out commands that will power up their troops, and you’ll be given an objective that has to be completed within a time limit, often it’ll be something like “defeat 300 enemy troops” or “protect your commander for 30 seconds”. These parts of the game are super enjoyable and can be seriously challenging if you’re not careful. Not to mention it’s incredibly fun to eradicate multitudes of enemy troops all at once and these parts give you the best chance to do so (I’m not a psychopath I swear).

Finally, very rarely in certain missions, when you encounter an enemy general they will challenge you to a one on one duel. These sections change the game into something akin to a 3D fighter, where you enter a circular ring and have a one-on-one battle with the general. Health and shield bars are replaced with a singular bar, similar to the one that indicates morale, and your attacks will push the bar more in your favour. These parts are also quite fun, despite it only being against one opponent, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed and I found these bouts to be the more difficult ones I encounter. 

Combat overall is bigger and wilder than any other musou game that I’ve played, and specifically for that reason it’s become one of my favourite musou games period. The grand scale of these fights just makes them so addicting, to the point where I felt inclined to prolong missions for as long as I could, especially when against the large forces. 

Side Content

Side missions will continuously keep popping up on the overworld map. There are some recurring missions that will appear consistently and at random throughout the map. These missions have a singular small objective that you can easily complete in only a couple of minutes. Missions like “Find and defeat the enemy captain”, or “Protect the villagers”. They’re quick and easy, and are a good way to gain proficiency with a particular weapon. 

Other side quests on the other hand are much bigger. These will always have bigger battles than the smaller side missions, and will be more like smaller versions of the main missions – to the point where you are almost guaranteed to battle against a named character. The rewards you get from these missions are always worth it, from new skills that can be used with a certain weapon, to items and accessories that can be equipped to make you stronger, or added numbers to your guards. These missions are also worth it just because of how much fun they are as well. If you think the game isn’t challenging enough, then these missions will likely give you the struggle you desire. 

Finally, there are the requests. During the game you can meet and commune with allies and friends you’ve encountered. These conversations will not only increase your bonds with these allies, they will also give you a series of requests. Sometimes these requests will be a side mission that they’ll join you on, but most of the time they will be a checklist of actions for you to perform in battle. These are always really simple to do and can even be done in a smaller side mission if done right. Completing these will increase the number of battle points you gain at the end of missions, which you can then spend on your skill tree. I do like these missions, it encourages you to learn more about the game and each weapon and will even incentivise you to test out new weapons instead of just using the same ones over and over again. 

Issues With The Map

If I had to point out one flaw in particular that I had with the game, it’s the overworld map. As a whole, the overworld map is fine, it’s split off into different provinces and you can warp from one province to another easily enough, so there’s not too much of an issue there. My main problem is the game not really telling you where things are. When you go into the map menu and hover over the province, it will tell you if there is a side mission or conversation that you can do, but it doesn’t tell you exactly where it is, meaning that you have to wander across the province trying to figure out where you’re meant to go. And then there are the boats. Some of the places you can go are on smaller islands, so to get from one island to the next, of course you have to go via boat. The issue with that is that the boats only follow a straight line, starting from one bit and ending at another with no deviation, so sometimes trying to get from one island to another can be like a maze, with trying to figure out which boat you’re meant to take. It’s not terrible, but it can still be an annoyance. 

Conclusion

I’ve said before that this is my first time playing an actual Dynasty Warriors game, and personally, I think I’ve picked a good one to start off with. The changes that this game makes to the musou formula makes the game feel fresh compared to all the others I’ve played, and it’s still a ton of fun fighting and decimating entire armies. If you’re a fan of Dynasty Warriors, or are like me and are looking for an excuse to give the series a try, then I definitely recommend this game. It’s a ton of fun and has only increased my enthusiasm with playing this series. 

9.1/10