Musou games have become something of a Dynasty themselves. These games are ubiquitous and evergreen, weighty in their sheer expression of quantitative ephemerality. The long-running line of Hack and Slashers spearheaded by the Dynasty Warriors series, itself proliferated by over 25 entires, has mostly run its course. What’s left, then, but to reinvent them from the ground up, which is the job of Dynasty Warriors: Origins, the most robust and richly featured game in the whole genre.
The most essential thing about the ground-up reworking of Origins is that you still get what you came for. Those who want an indelible 1 vs. 1000 brawl-fest will get that from the top. That’s still what the game is, down to the DNA of its coding. It’s everything else Origins does that makes it new and makes it sing.
This time round, instead of a plethora of playable characters drawn from the histories of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history, there is one main protagonist. The hero of the story is “The Wanderer,” a cliche and amnesia prone anime-looking character with boyish features and expressive eyes. The Wanderer is a blank slate, an anonymous avatar situated in the usual Romance mythos. This cedes space for the non-playable characters, a history-rich cross section of figures from the Wei, Wu, and Shu kingdoms, of which the player will eventually swear allegiance to one and fight alongside them.
Whereas Dynasty Warriors 9 attempted to go open world, and was heavily critiqued for its vast stretches of empty nothingness, Dynasty Warriors: Origins refocuses the campaign on staged battles. Set in the late Eastern Han period (184-209 AD (so, in the beginning stages of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms histories,)) a gorgeously-drawn overhead map details the lay of the land, and the player navigates to their next chosen objective.
The core gameplay loop remains basically the same — Hacking and Slashing, mowing down waves of assailants to build up meters for special attacks. Combat is now more nuanced, revolving around breaking opponent fortitude (shields), parrying, and using charged moves to set up powerful stylized finishers.
The main crux of the combat patterns now, though, is based on battles against Generals. Generals are tougher customers, surrounded by swarms of feeder troops to build your meters. You’ll need to approach more strategically, balancing support to your own team of Generals with the right combat tactics to overtake bases and take out high-ranking members of the opposing Kingdoms.
Variety is now afforded not by a range of playable characters but by nine weapon sets with their own distinct characteristics. There’s short swords for stabby close quarters combat, twin pikes for spinning around like a helicopter and vanquishing large masses of enemies, and staffs, gauntlets, and other fun new toys, each with expanded leveling systems. Once they’re each maximum level, they all bring unique utility to the combat and feel distinctly different to wield, changing the shape of how you’ll play the game.
Quantity is still king in Origins. There’s so much to do. One playthrough won’t cover it, as there are two whole other paths to go down. Good news is the post-game is intricately designed to go back to touch-points in the story and finish any unfinished business. The whole product feels cohesive and elegantly realized in a way one of these never truly has. Sure, we’ve had examples of Dynasty Warriors games that have really nailed down the Musou formula, but few that have elevated it to another space, where new systems take precedent and fold in the old design to compound into a bold and favorable new concept.
It’s clear: Origins is the best Dynasty Warriors ever made but also a reexamination of what these games can be. It expands the mechanical expression of these games into more strategic and tactical ground, while renovating the moment-to-moment action so it’s deeper and more involved, but still has hyped up moments where sometimes a single button will plow down an entire field of combatants. Best of all, Origins feels like a statement of intent, it’s meaty and fully featured, and points toward a new format for future entries which promise to engage at a higher, more mechanically involved layer. Drawn from the same well of historical 1 vs. 1000 combat, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is nothing less than a full-fledged reinvention and statement of intent for the future.
Reviewed on Steam Deck