REVIEW: Dynasty Warriors: Origins


Title	Dynasty Warriors: Origins
Developer	Koei Tecmo, Omega Force
Publisher	Koei Tecmo
Release Date	January 17th, 2025
Genre	Action, Musou
Platform	PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X\|S, PC
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

I have been playing the Dynasty Warriors franchise for many years, so when I got a chance to check out the latest release, Dynasty Warriors: Origins, I jumped on it. This is a new start for the series and the developers have really changed things up a bit here from the usual formula. I didn’t really know what to expect when I fired this one up, so let’s see if I like this new direction or I just want to go back to the past!

One big change is instead of playing as many different characters in the Dynasty Warriors franchise, you will instead play as one mysterious man. This man has a mission to bring peace to the lands, but he has no memory of who he is or where he comes from. This is all revealed as the story progresses, and you will have to side with one of three famous leaders.

Players can choose to aid Cao Cao, Liu Bei or Sun Jian in their quest to unite these troubled lands under one banner. Completionists need not worry. When you finish the story of one faction, you can restart the game back at the split and take on dozens of new bonus missions as well. I was a little disappointed I couldn’t play as all the other characters like usual, but I think the game’s storytelling made up for this. I got really invested in the comrades in my faction and I was eager to see how their story would turn out.

Graphically, Dynasty Warriors: Origins looks fantastic. All of the character models are amazing with plenty of details, environments are nicely done and there are even some weather effects thrown in here for good measure. The Ultimate Musou moves are really impressive and show off just how much care was put into each character model. I played the game on the Performance setting on PlayStation 5 and the game not only looked great, but never slowed down even when there were hundreds of enemies on the screen at the same time.

I usually love the soundtrack in any Dynasty Warriors release and this one was no exception. The hard rocking battle tunes will get you pumped for combat and humming along as you slay the thousands of foes that stand against you. There are some more traditional tracks for story moments and these really help bring out the emotional impact of several scenes. The game is voiced in both English and Japanese, but there is no way I could personally play one of these dubbed. It just wouldn’t feel right to me, so all I can say is the Japanese cast does a great job bringing all these characters to life and the English dub is there if you want it.

The gameplay here hasn’t changed a whole lot from what you know and love about the franchise. You still have two basic attacks that you can chain together into combos. The officer battles have been made a bit tougher, and you will have to use your weapon skills to your advantage if you want to come out on top of these battles. This will consume a bit of Bravery, which is gained just simply by fighting, but these skills will not only clear the area, they really help chip away at the officer’s health. Learning to block and parry will make even the toughest battles much easier, and thankfully it’s not too hard to pull off. I suck at parrying in games and I could still do this consistently.

Since you can only use one character, the game gives you nine different weapons to master. These unlock gradually as the story unfolds. As you master these weapons you will gain ranks, this will level up our protagonist and allow him access to better skills on the skill tree. Skills on the various trees include things like giving you more health, holding more items in battle, better healing and much more. Of course you’re not gonna get these skills for free, you will need a certain amount of skill points to unlock each one. These are obtained from combat and completing objectives given to you by the various heroes in the game. Most of these objectives are pretty simple such as use X number of skills with a certain weapon, take over X number of bases and other tasks you can complete during combat.

Instead of having a list of missions, players can fully explore a map of China. This map acts like a central hub for all the different battles the game has to offer. Some are short little skirmishes that will only last a few minutes. These don’t give too great of rewards, but they are great for completing some of the objectives I mentioned before. There are larger battles on the map that give greater rewards. These give you rarer items and other goodies that really help you in the main story battles. Main story battles will begin from this map as well. The game will automatically guide you to these if you just follow the wind, so there is no need to worry about getting lost. I caught myself wandering around just seeing what I could find many times and taking on little battles just to test out new weapons and skills.

Overall, I had a great time with Dynasty Warriors: Origins. The new combat is great, the storytelling is much better than previous entries and the music is just a pure joy to listen to. I do miss the fact you cannot use just any character in combat and I hope they add a Free Mode where you can do this in the game at some point down the line. I feel bad for folks that bought these games to play multiplayer as well, since this one is single player only. That being said, I got about 30 hours out of one story path without doing the extra bits, so there is plenty to love here at the $69.99 price tag.