I swore that I was never gonna review another Dynasty Warriors game after the letdown that was Dynasty Warriors 9 because I felt personally slighted by the changes made to characters, like my beloved Sima Yi. Thankfully, since Dynasty Warriors: Origins makes you experience the beginnings of the three kingdoms through the eyes of an unknown warrior, so I knew they couldn’t possibly do him anymore harm.
Against better judgement, I downloaded the demo for Dynasty Warriors: Origins and really enjoyed the introduction of the parry system and the tactical advantages of being able to command a mini-squadron. Needless to say, seeing the welcomed changes by the team, it was time to travel back to the lands of Ancient China. How does the new reboot shake up the franchise? Find out in our Dynasty Warriors: Origins review!
Dynasty Warriors: Origins
Developer: Omega Force
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Platforms: Windows PC (reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X
Release Date: January 17, 2025
Price: $69.99
I want you to know that I’ve put about 60 hours into this game thus far, and my beloved Sima Yi is nowhere to be found. How could you do this to me, Koei Tecmo? 0/10, literally unplayable. Not only that, but if this is Dynasty Warriors: Origins, why isn’t this a 2D fighting game? You forgot this game franchise started as a fighting game, didn’t ya?
Alright, personal disappointment aside, Dynasty Warriors: Origins tells the story of the beginnings of the Three Kingdoms era of legend. The very first thing that happens in the game is that you, as the unnamed Wanderer, find a group of peasants who are rebelling against the government forces so they don’t continually live under tyranny.
You’ll join up with and assist Zhang Jiao (aka Zhang Jue) in a battle which inevitably leads to the formation of the Yellow Turbans. Skip forward a short amount of time and the Wanderer comes across the band of brothers – the infamous leader leader of Shu, Liu Bei, accompanied by Zhang Fei and Guan Yu.
The Wanderer then partners with them to stop the oppression of the quickly corrupted Yellow Turbans, and that’s what kicks off the Wanderer’s internal struggle to regain his memory and remember who he is while the story unfolds.
If you’re familiar with the story from one of the other endless entries of the Dynasty Warriors, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or the litany of other games based on this time period, you pretty much know how things unfold for each of the three dynasties.
What makes Dynasty Warriors: Origins unique from a story standpoint is the added backstory that makes the Wanderer’s experience an integral part of the history instead of simply choosing one of the generals to experience the story from their perspective.
The Wanderer’s story doesn’t really add all that much, but it’s nice that he’s given some semblance of a story instead of solely existing to be the player character with no further explanation.
The Wanderer, whom you quickly learn is given the nickname Ziluan, is given conversations with almost everyone, and in some cases, he’s even weirdly hit on; which he never seems to really know how to react to.
In truth, let’s be honest – you don’t play Musou games for the story – you play them because you want to single handedly murder entire fleets and armies of dudes, and this game delivers that in spades.
It’s impressive to run into the vast armies that guard castles when you come galloping over the hillside, and there’s like 500 enemies on screen at any given moment.
The dense packs of enemies mean you’re chewing through people while avoiding squadron attacks from other generals, all the while using your special attacks to interrupt unblockable attacks that you also can’t parry.
The most fun part about combat is finally having the ability to block at the right time to trigger a parry that releases a counter attack that breaks through your enemies fortitude.
Each enemy has fortitude stacks which serve as armor stacks, and once you break them all, the enemy is stunned giving you the opportunity to perform a flurry of attacks or outright execute them if their health is low enough.
As you progress through the game, the Wanderer starts equipped with a sword, but you’ll gain access to use spears, wheels (rings), bladed gauntlets (sweet hand to hand combat ensues), podaos, swords, staffs, crescent staves, and once you finish a campaign, you gain access to halberds as well as weapon mastery up to rank 11.
Once you’ve completed the main story, you can then revisit previous fights to see how they would unfold, while also replaying battles to see how you can alter history and see what happens.
In my case, I always side with Wei, so I remained loyal to Cao Cao the entire time. There’s a fight that Dian Wei isn’t supposed to survive, but you can alter fate to save him to see how the story would continue. This provides a lot of replayability as it’s not easy to alter history, so it’s a challenge to see this stories completely unfold.
Whichever path you take, the story eventually wraps up with the Battle of Red Cliffs (Chibi), so that’s a pretty good stopping point for an introduction, though it would have been feasible to combine some of the battles so that it didn’t quite take as long to get through a storyline for subsequent replays.
Additionally, once you complete the story, you unlock the hardest difficulty called “Ultimate Warrior” and you might find yourself with the overwhelming urge to snort, run, and shake wrestling ring ropes.
Playing scenarios in the hardest difficulty presents a new challenge, and those challenges unlock new items such as mounts and weapons not normally found throughout normal gameplay methods.
The harder difficulty is rough, so you’re gonna want to make sure you really have the timing down for the parry system, and story points will be much higher level than you likely are.
For example: Going back to one of the fights in chapter five was a recommended level of 76 while I was only level 53, so it was significantly above my current hero level.
There’s plenty of mini-skirmishes and side quests that you can do to grind and level up, but your character level only improves as you gain proficiency with weapons – so you’re gonna wanna vary up your arsenal.
While most veterans aren’t afraid to replay maps a bunch of times for different win conditions, there isn’t any local or online play, so this might be considered disappointing for some players.
Overall, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a really good revamp of the classic formula, but it’s also a pretty good action game for newcomers to the franchise. Considering these games have always had a niche following, it’s good to see them get a shot in the arm that might bring in some new blood.
especially given how much damage they did to their reputation by Ubisoft’ing Dynasty Warriors 9 up that success for this game might be the thing that keeps this long running series alive.
Dynasty Warriors: Origins was reviewed on Steam using a code provided by Koei Tecmo Games. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Dynasty Warriors: Origins is now available for Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.
