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(For Malaysia and Indonesia) PlayStation Store Ramadan Deals starts March 12PlayStation Store welcomes a new promotion: Ramadan Deals! For a limited time*, you can enjoy discounts across a variety of games on the storefront, including the likes of ENDER MAGNOLIA, Dynasty Warriors: Origins, EA SPORTS FC™ 25 and many, many more. Head to PlayStation Store now to see the full list and find out your […]
Mar 18
PlayStation Store Mega March promotion starts March 12PlayStation Store welcomes a new promotion tomorrow: Mega March! For a limited time*, you can enjoy discounts across a variety of games on the storefront, including the likes of Dynasty Warriors: Origins, Diablo IV and many, many more. Get a preview of just some of the game deals below, then head to PlayStation Store when […]
Mar 12
WARRIORS: Abyss – ReviewIt has barely been a month since we took a closer look at Dynasty Warriors: Origins, the single-player-focused Musou title that many fans of the series had been waiting for. We concluded that Origins offered the best combat in the series and had an interesting campaign progression. Sadly, it lacked co-op functionalities and had a severe lack of character variety, driving it further away from a perfect experience. Now, Koei Tecmo is steering the Warriors franchise in a different direction with WARRIORS: Abyss, a roguelite title where many Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors’ characters will descend to hell to restore order. We were curious to see what this genre shift had in store for this beloved franchise. Story WARRIORS: Abyss surprisingly comes with a story, which is something we didn’t expect given the game’s format and setting. You’ll be one of the many heroes summoned to hell, not to pay penance for things you may have done while alive, but to defeat a great evil that has knocked King Enma off his throne. Gouma has escaped his fiery prison and has taken control of hell, leaving King Enma in a weakened state. All he could do was summon you, grant you a bit of his power and wisdom, and hope for the best. That’s pretty much all there is to it, but it does serve as a nice framework for what the game is about. Graphics Probably the most underwhelming aspect of WARRIORS: Abyss is the quality of the graphics. While we wouldn’t say that the game looks bad, it just looks a bit bland and dated. The different heroes look like they do in the Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors games, albeit less detailed, and you’ll look at them from a zoomed-out perspective. The enemy designs lack variety, and these look a bit uninspired. The boss designs aren’t bad, but the textures look dated, and even the animations look clunky. The arenas you’ll be battling in feel empty, and when there are actual obstacles, these are barred off by invisible walls, sometimes even interfering with the gameplay. Nonetheless, the attack and skill animations look great, and it’s still ever so satisfying to clobber massive hordes of enemies with your chosen character. One thing we do have to mention is that telegraphed enemy attacks were hard to see when you unleash special moves. This caused us to be hit a lot more frequently, simply because we couldn’t see where the enemies were attacking. Sound The sound design of WARRIORS: Abyss isn’t too bad. The supporting soundtrack is decent, the SFX pack a proper punch, and even the voice acting during story segments is nicely handled. That being said, the soundscape is a bit simplistic and there isn’t that much variety as a whole. Gameplay WARRIORS: Abyss is a roguelite spin-off title of both Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. While technically the game could still be called a Musou title, it feels more like a hack-and-slash combo of Diablo and Vampire Survivors with a bit of Hades sprinkled in for good measure. In WARRIOS: Abyss, you’ll descend further and further into hell, clearing floors of demons. The goal of how many demons you’ll have to kill increases for each floor, and on every eighth floor you’ll have to defeat a boss. After clearing a floor, you’ll be presented with your reward as well as three options to choose from where you’ll go next. You can opt to select floors that simply require you to kill demons, but some floors reward you with materials, additional clear conditions for bigger rewards, or simply more hostile floors. It’s all straightforward stuff for the most part, but some of the game’s mechanics do get explained poorly. For example, the game made hero formations seem awfully complicated, even though these formations just give buffs depending on what upgrades you have unlocked during your run. The game’s mechanics prove to be easy to learn but hard to master. You’ll have a light attack and a heavy attack, a dodge, and some special moves you can activate when the corresponding gauge has been filled. Things become slightly more complex when you clear floors and start bonding with heroes. These heroes can then be summoned at the end of a specific combo, adding even more destructive power to your attacks. Summoning them does sometimes take time, as some combos take a while before they are wrapped up. This sometimes made it hard to dodge enemy attacks (which are telegraphed beforehand) if we wanted to summon specific heroes. WARRIORS: Abyss does allow you to dodge and then continue the combo you were already trying to perform, but getting the timing right is a bit tricky here. All in all, WARRIORS: Abyss is a fun grind, as you collect more and more Karma Embers. These Karma Embers in turn allow you to unlock more heroes to play with, eventually adding up to a roster of 100 playable heroes. Unlocking new heroes also comes with other benefits, as each unlocked hero will also slightly raise the stats of the other heroes further, slowly making it easier to descend further into hell. However, the game suffers from severe difficulty spikes, especially during boss battles. Whittling down a boss’ defense is a bit long-winded and takes the flow out of the otherwise fast-paced nature of the game. Even so, for something as simple as WARRIORS: Abyss is, and given how limited the content may be, everything feels reasonably polished. Conclusion WARRIORS: Abyss is an enjoyable spin-off title that’s fun to play in short bursts, while slowly making progress to descend further and further into hell. The Musou and roguelite genres blend well together, and the impressive character roster was supposed to ensure that no two runs end up the same. Sadly, the enemy variety is a bit on the low side, which eventually makes these supposed different runs feel a bit similar, safe for the RNG of what hero combinations you’ll end up with during each attempt to defeat Gouma. The gameplay loop is extremely enjoyable, but the overall package does look a bit dated. It feels as if WARRIORS: Abyss could have used a few additional layers of polish before hitting the digital stores. Nonetheless, if you’re a fan of the Warriors games, then we reckon this one will certainly manage to entertain you as well. The fact that it comes at a reduced price, might just be a reason to pick it up already.
Feb 22
Dynasty Warriors: Origins Patch Adds Gold Serpent Spear, Rumor Frequency SettingOmega Force provides a free new weapon to celebrate the Lunar New Year while adding a Frame Skip toggle and pausing for events.
Feb 21
Dynasty Warriors: Origins Has Sold Over 1 Million CopiesKoei Tecmo has also confirmed that the free demo has crossed two million downloads. It's out now on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC.
Feb 14
Dynasty Warriors: Origins Exceeds 1 Million Sales, Demo Downloads Hit 2 MillionKOEI TECMO America and developer Omega Force announced today that Dynasty Warriors: Origins, the latest installment in the long-running tactical action franchise, has sold over 1 million units worldwide following…
The post Dynasty Warriors: Origins Exceeds 1 Million Sales, Demo Downloads Hit 2 Million appeared first on TwistedVoxel .
Feb 14
Official PlayStation Podcast Episode 507: Rogue MetaphorEmail us at [email protected]! Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or download here Howdy, folks! This week the crew sits down to talk about this week’s news. This week, Tim and Kristen discuss their playthroughs of Dynasty Warriors: Origins, Alien: Rogue Incursion, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. Stuff We Talked About The Cast Thanks to Dormilón for our […]
Jan 31
Ignoring Love Is Dynasty Warriors: Origins’ Biggest Flaw
Jan 28
Dynasty Warriors: Origins Review – Front seat nation romanceThe post Dynasty Warriors: Origins Review – Front seat nation romance appeared first on Checkpoint .
Jan 24
Dynasty Warriors: Origins ReviewOmega Force is no stranger to dealing in RPGs with its hack-and-slash gameplay. Dynasty Warriors: Origins sees things coming full circle and applying that found expertise in its flagship series.
The post Dynasty Warriors: Origins Review appeared first on RPGamer .
Jan 23
Dynasty Warriors: Origins – ReviewThe Dynasty Warriors series has been going strong ever since 1997 and is actually part of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games franchise that hails from 1985. The Dynasty Warriors games and the Empires spin-off titles put the Musou or 1 vs. 1000 genre on the map, and we have seen quite a few releases over the years. Sadly, the quality of the last few installments went down quite a bit, and we haven’t seen a new main series release in some time. That changes now, however, with the release of Dynasty Warriors: Origins. This new installment promises to be bigger and better than ever, and for the most part, this statement proves to be true. Story As is the case with other Dynasty Warriors titles, Origins also revolves around the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story. The story starts with the Yellow Turban Rebellion and then makes its way through all the key points of the aforementioned narrative. While previous entries in the series often stuck more to the traditional format, Origins does add a few new elements to the mix. This installment introduces an unnamed and amnesiac protagonist who will play the key figure in many of the battles the game throws you in, for example. While the story is a mix of superficial conversations and information dumps due to the sheer number of different important characters, the plot proves to be enjoyable and fairly accessible in this new format. We also see a bit more fantasy thrown in the mix to spice things up, creating a believable premise as to why your character is such an amazing warrior. Graphics This is by far the prettiest and most impressive Dynasty Warriors game out there. Compared to Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires, Origins truly brings the franchise to the ‘next generation’. The environments are more varied, more backgrounds are used, assets are less repetitive, everything looks extremely polished, a pretty overworld is introduced, and above all, the attack animations are fluid and look so impressive. Of course, we did see a few repeat environments during the smaller optional missions, but this didn’t detract from the otherwise good-looking experience. The different characters also never looked better than they do in Origins, but we noticed that some of them have somewhat ‘porcelain’ faces with stiff facial animations. As you’ll be fighting battles against hordes of AI opponents, things get a bit cluttered on the screen. In previous releases, this often resulted in frame drops, slowing down the overall excitement. Dynasty Warriors: Origins is clearly very optimized, as we didn’t encounter any frame drops, even when disposing of hundreds of enemy soldiers at once. Sound Origins’ sound design is very good. The supporting soundtrack feels very cinematic, which is appropriate for a single-player-focused game such as this. The game also boasts quite a bit of voice acting in English and Japanese. We do have to say that we find it a shame that this title doesn’t come with Chinese voice acting as well, especially given the setting. Nonetheless, voice acting in both available languages is great and adds to the cinematic nature of Origins. The sound effects include a lot of familiar SFX from earlier entries in the series, which truly makes it feel like the next installment in the long-running series. Gameplay Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the latest entry in the popular 1 vs. 1000 Dynasty Warriors franchise. This so-called Musou title revolves around grand-scale battles in which you, as a single warrior, combat thousands of enemy soldiers. The game offers extremely small battles for you to fight through but also large-scale battlefields in which you’ll have to conquer bases, combat enemy officers, prevent your own officers from falling in battle, and even go through boss battles. All in all, like other entries in the franchise, the offset is straightforward and Origins also offers different difficulty options. As the game is all about combat, we were expecting the same tried-and-true formula of the Dynasty Warriors games. For the most part, this is the case, but everything just has a bit more polish and combat feels better than ever as a result. The developers spent a lot of care and attention to ensure combat is fluid and responsive. Blocking and parrying have a more prominent role in Origins, especially when dealing with enemy officers. As you progress, you’ll (very) slowly unlock new weapons, which need to be leveled up individually. Going up a weapon rank will level up your character as well, slowly unlocking more skill trees as you go. This weapon and skill progression system was rather enjoyable and created an incentive to keep pressing forward, even though it also brought a few problems with it, which we’ll delve into below. Even though the general gameplay loop from the overall progression to the actual combat is extremely satisfying, Dynasty Warriors: Origins does have a few issues that dull down the overall excitement over time. For starters, this title is extremely repetitive due to the fact that you don’t really have different characters to actively choose from. You do unlock battle companions, which you can take control of for very short periods of time during battles. Sadly, you can only do so when filling a gauge. On top of that, the weapon unlock system also prevents you from trying out different weapons early on, making things feel even more repetitive. We also don’t understand that the weapon upgrade system is actually locked until you have beaten the game once, as it would have been nice to work on your weapons during your first playthrough as well. There are luckily some incentives to keep grinding small battles, as these grant you rewards when the peace in certain regions becomes more stable. That being said, we would have loved a proper character selection or at least some more customization options. We sadly missed being able to play this title in co-op as well, as for us this is a key selling point of pretty much all the games in the series. Conclusion Dynasty Warriors: Origins is probably one of the best titles the franchise has to offer, as it offers an engaging storyline, extremely satisfying combat, an enjoyable progress system, and a near-perfect audiovisual presentation. It sadly fumbles when it comes to character diversity, weapon unlock pacing, and the repetitiveness of its side missions. Even so, if you’re a longtime fan and truly want to see what a next-gen installment of the franchise has to offer, then picking up Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a no-brainer.
Jan 23
Dynasty Warriors: Origins Reaches Nearly 70,000 Concurrent Players on SteamThe Musou action game is Koei Tecmo's second biggest launch on Steam in terms of player count, far surpassing Dynasty Warriors 9.
Jan 20
Dynasty Warriors: Origin Reveals Full Roster of 47 WarriorsDynasty Warriors: Origin Reveals Full Roster of 47 Warriors
Jan 13
Fans Review the Evolution of Diao Chan's Costumes in the Dynasty Warriors SeriesFans Review the Evolution of Diao Chan's Costumes in the Dynasty Warriors Series
Jan 13
Origin Global Unlock Times Announced: Early Access Begins January 14 at MidnightOrigin Global Unlock Times Announced: Early Access Begins January 14 at Midnight
Jan 13
Dynasty Warriors: Origin Now Available for Pre-Load on Xbox, Requires 44.59GB of SpaceDynasty Warriors: Origin Now Available for Pre-Load on Xbox, Requires 44.59GB of Space
Jan 13
Dynasty Warriors: OriginsBecome immersed in exhilarating battles as a nameless hero in the Three Kingdoms
