So far as franchises go, few evoke as a lot of a Marmite response because the Musou.
When somebody hears the phrases ‘Dynasty Warriors’ they already know precisely how they’re going to really feel concerning the sport, and whether or not it’s for them or not.
We’re the identical. Whereas the PS2 period of the franchise wowed with mammoth battles and campy storylines, it had been a very long time since we had a compulsion to select one up.
The exception to that is the sport’s varied crossover spin-offs, akin to Persona 5 Strikers, The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Warriors, and Fireplace Emblem Warriors, every of which introduced a brand new gentle to the considerably drained formulation.
So it was to our nice shock that Dynasty Warriors: Origins wasn’t solely a breath of recent air, but additionally appears like a sport that can give those that’ve solely written off the collection a motive to leap again in.
Dynasty Warriors Origins is about within the Three Kingdoms period of China. As a anonymous protagonist, you’re confronted with restoring order to the world through whichever of China’s varied factions you see match. The tactic of doing this, as is commonplace for the style, is by killing 1 billion folks each 40 minutes.
Fight in Origins is a mixture of hack and slash for the fodder minions that flock to you of their 1000’s, and extra thought-about Souls-light, parry-based fight for extra vital enemies. This combine is balanced slightly properly because the insignificant enemies function gasoline to cost up your highly effective particular assaults, which do extra critical harm.
Within the bigger battles, we discovered ourselves sprinting from normal to normal, beginning as many fights as attainable. There’s a Royal Rumble really feel to the sheer quantity of high-powered enemies which are surrounding you at anybody time.
The sport’s parry is satisfying, and the velocity with which you’ll be able to recurrently carry out your signature strikes imply that when we entered a base in our session, there was by no means a second for breath, it was all motion.
Throughout battles, the enemies will generally try to retake a base that you simply’ve beforehand captured, as illustrated by a mini-map that fills with color corresponding to every of the armies in play. You can be completely dominating the west aspect of a map, however if you happen to’re not diligent about taking up the map equally, the opposite aspect may grow to be overwhelmed with enemies, leaving your smaller bases susceptible.
There was some quantity of spinning plates in our session the place we needed to resolve when it was time to dive into the ultimate base and finish the battle, as a result of if we did that too rapidly and misplaced too many males, our smaller, earlier bases might be overwhelmed, leaving our normal uncovered.
It didn’t really feel like the biggest tactical battle within the early battles we took on, however this gentle layer of thought on high of a mountain of sword-swinging nonsense was welcome.
Our hardest problem got here throughout a battle throughout which the enemy deployed the legendary warlord Lü Bu. Whereas each normal we’d met as much as that time might be taken down briefly order, Lü Bu minimize by our military like he had an AK47 and a lightsaber.
After being pounded into the mud for a number of makes an attempt, we determined that the one method we have been going to win the battle was to run previous Lü Bu and see if we may take down the opposing boss earlier than Lü Bu atomized the remainder of our squad. So, whereas the remainder of our workforce was attempting to stem the tide of Lü Bu’s rampage, we determined to skip previous him and head for the highest of the compound.
We have been greeted with the biggest group of enemies we predict we’ve ever seen in a online game. Seas of shield-wielding guards. Baddies are far as the attention may see, all lined up in rows main up an enormous stone staircase, on the high of which sat the boss, and the one method to win.
In a second of questionable self-preservation, we smashed into the primary enemy we may, and repeated the method again and again, selecting a gap by their defenses like we have been attempting to scratch away at a jail gate with a toothpick.
In the meantime, as we have been doing this, the sport was having a light breakdown at the truth that Lü Bu was rising the variety of widows on our aspect of the battle by an element of about 1 million.
By the point we acquired to the highest, nearly our total aspect was lifeless. Nevertheless, because of the massive quantity of fodder enemies we may decimate to cost our particular talents, and the one NPC on our aspect that had someway adopted us up the steps, we lastly beat not solely the boss, however his mosh pit of actually 30 sub-bosses that surrounded him.
We requested the PR particular person watching us if that was the way it was alleged to be carried out. They only laughed.
The satisfaction of pulling off that heist of the century is strictly the second that we determined we have been eager to play the total sport when it got here out.
If we’d needed to smash away at Lü Bu for hours on the off-chance we killed him, our pleasure would have dropped like a stone, however the cinematic, clumsy, slapstick thrill of forcing our method up that mountain to the boss was a tremendous second, and one that provides us religion that the remainder of Dynasty Warriors: Origins is properly value preserving your eye on.
