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Dynasty Warriors Origins is about as deep as an English pothole of a rainy autumnal Tuesday. A middle of the road, superficial B-tier serving of polygonal slop that, while decked out with some power fantasy-satisfying grand-scale combat, quickly turns into a repetitive slog with very little in the way of a meaningful pay off. But what a power fantasy! At first, at least. Diving into battles where the odds are stacked against you – 1 vs 1000 in many cases – only to acrobatically and almost effortlessly carve through digital guts and sinew – it’s brilliant fun, comfortingly mindless and non-committal. It’s the kind of game you’ll want to pop on when a narrative-heavy AAA or a humbly progressive indie gem doesn’t quite fit the vibe. Brain-off escapism. An easy-to-pick-up and just as easy-to-put-down time-killer. Perfect stuff for a rainy Tuesday night. Too bad the thrill loses most of its appeal so quickly.
You play as a slender, pretty boy amnesiac shortly before the Yellow Turban Rebellion. You’re swept into battle without a clue about who you are, but boy can you fight. And fight you will as you play through a story of court intrigue and political hot potato, pledging alliance to one warlord then another as the tumultuous Three Kingdoms period unravels. Before long, you’re lauded as a Guardian of Peace tasked with getting everyone to just calm down a bit by, you know, killing tons of people. There’s some shaky narrative reasoning in there to explain it all, but it’s never quite sufficiently justified. Suspension of belief and all that.
Dynasty Warriors Origins feels like a game stuck in the past. Or, maybe stuck in its own past, tripping over its nearly 30-year-old back catalog trying to chart a path forward but invariably rolling back to the hackneyed tried and tested with some major fan-favourite omissions. For one, there’s no multiplayer, one of the main draws of any Dynasty Warrior game. No split-screen. No co-op. Nothing. The logic? A focus on storytelling. While a welcome shift given the series has always been known for its sparse narrative foundations, it’s done in a clumsy and naff fashion.
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Much of the story is told in a barrage of obtrusive, in-your-face story beats styled as endless dialogue segues starring a cast of dry, insipid characters with voice acting excavated from the mid-00s. It lacks subtlety and every conversation features sycophantic, mawkish dross about the protagonist’s feats in battle. It’s trite and glib all at once. You’re so often at odds as to who or what you’re fighting for due to a sustained machine gun volley of new characters. It’s exhausting.
It feels like someone over at developer Omega Force, or possibly the English-language localisation team, busted out the thesaurus midway through development and absolutely went to town to cook up the most unnecessarily wordy dialogue possible. Don’t get me wrong, a peacocky period TV drama needs era-appropriate language. But, this is on a whole other level. I’m a fan of opaque words and linguistic obscurities. But, it’s even too much for me. Everyone other than those with saint-tier patience will end up skipping much of it within an hour or two of firing up Dynasty Warrior Origins for the first time. It’s that drab and painful to get through. To the point that what is some prime source material – China’s Three Kingdoms period – just feels wasted. But, no matter, it’s all about the battles and Dynasty Warriors Origins delivers the goods. Sort of.
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Putting aside the dated character models and, at times, sketchy animation work, the combat is an absolute power fantasy romp. You’re slicing and dicing your way through armies with a selection of lethal tools, from basic attacks to souped up balletic flourishes of violence called Battle Arts, and a decent spread of mechanically-varied weapons. There’s a decent depth to the combat, too, thanks to battlefield tactics, parry mechanics, duels, a private guard you can call in to assist you, and a war god rager mode where you can go bananas on anyone unlucky enough to be in your immediate vicinity. The battles are these epicly hectic large-scale scraps – flying bodies, flashing lights, a bombastic score, and silly voice lines. It’s appealing stuff at first and there’s genuine delight in plowing into entire battalions of soldiers.
Unfortunately, a weariness does set in as the initial sheen wears off. By the tenth battle (there are hundreds of them), you’ve pretty much seen all the enemy variety on offer. You’ve cracked the best combos. You know that taking down named officers wins pretty much any fight. And the heavy reuse of environments with no clever cloaking or reskinning, especially in the optional skirmishes and missions, starts to grate. Any sense of depth soon evaporates. The story doesn’t pick up any of the slack either. What you’re left with is a succession of repetitive, samey battles that meld into one blurry and, to be blunt, boring button-mashing mess. Over a hundred hours of this? There’s just not enough substance to justify that much of anyone’s time.
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