From Failure to Revival: Dynasty Warriors Origins Explained

Introduction

Welcome back to another blog on Gamix, where we take a deep dive into the journey of iconic games and their transformations. Hi folks, it's Zaid Ikram, and today, we’re going to explore how Dynasty Warriors went from its early struggles to becoming the action-packed series we know today.

The Downfall of Dynasty Warriors 9

Hey, you remember back in 2018 when I did the uh before you buy for Dynasty Warriors 9? Remember how it was kind of an ambitious game with some good ideas that was terrible? I mean it, it is a fatally flawed attempt to bring the Dynasty Warriors formula of like epic battles and butt rock into an open world. It came off too much like an MMO, and not like a good MMO, but like a bad one, and on top of that, it wasn't an MMO. It was a single-player game that felt like the worst aspects of the worst MMOs.

It still had the cool battles, but it just was not enough. The series needed a major refresh, and it got some. And it got the spin-offs. Okay, they were great. Persona 5 Strikers, Fire Emblem Warriors, CLE CLE L. People were still hungering for Dynasty Warriors and really liked the licensed games where you’ve had the game play but in a different franchise. I mean, Hyrule Warriors is a fantastic game, but was it even possible to salvage the main series after how much of a misfire Dynasty Warriors 9 was?

The Improved Follow-up and the New Mainline Entry

Well, trick question, because they actually did make an improved follow-up to nine. Empires, which I mean doesn't exactly make the game good, but it was a step in the right direction. And now we're finally getting a proper new mainline entry in the series and they are pulling out all of the stops.

This is uh the refresh the main Series has needed for a long time, and I'm truly happy I'm the one who gets to talk about it today. It's Dynasty Warriors Origins acting as a kind of a reboot to the entire Series. This game is an adaption of the classic piece of Chinese literature Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a story of warfare and intrigue from ancient China.

The Unique Combination that Works

If you played Dynasty Warriors, you've heard somebody say that before, and to be truthful, it's actually a big oversimplification, but it's the takeaway of you're playing Dynasty Warriors because fighting in gigantic battles where you're killing more than a thousand guys on average is common. These games take the names and general plot of the original story and turn it all into larger-than-life superhero crap.

All of the characters that you can control are one-man armies. There's a ton of rock music. It's a bizarre combination, but it works and it has worked since the first real entry in the series, Dynasty Warriors 2 on PlayStation 2. I mean, the first Dynasty Warriors was a fighting game. The sequel completely changed things up and was all the better for it.

Revamped Combat System in Origins

What's interesting about Origins is that while a lot has changed, the game has almost completely revamped the combat system. It's more challenging, there's a whole lot of depth to the mechanics, and this is all, let me just say this, very welcome. It's not just a rehash of the old stuff. It is improved, but it's also impressively old school in a way. The later games in the series actually aren't in a lot of ways. Origins feels like a true return to form for the series.

 It takes all the good ideas, rejects a lot of the more boring and tedious ideas, and in almost every way, I would say that Origins is a big improvement. And I'm not saying just over nine, because you could make any game that is decent and it'd be a big improvement over nine. That game was utterly, it was horseshit, it was terrible. What I'm saying is that Origins is an actual improvement on the entire Series in general. It is not just a good Dynasty Warriors game, it is a good action game, period.

The New Main Character

Now, the question of if this is truly a great game is probably going to be more contentious than that. I'm not sure I can give you a definitive answer, but I love this game. It's what I wanted, and I got it, no questions asked. I'm also a huge fan of Dynasty Warriors despite the fact that it is at times a very simple and doofy series. But enough overview, let's get into it. Uh, the first thing that really stands out as being different here is that instead of bouncing between dozens of different heroes, you play as a specific character, an unnamed wanderer who is also, as the game reminds us constantly, the guardian of peace.

This blank-faced pretty boy isn't really the ideal protagonist, but as a player avatar, he works. Most of the recognizable cast from the other games are there in some way. There are a ton of characters and factions to play around with, but for the most part, you're not controlling them. Instead, the vast majority of the campaign is spent as peace dude, let's call him. For longtime fans of the series, that's probably kind of a bummer. We all have our favorite characters to play, so getting locked into a generic protagonist you can't even customize, it stings a little. But I got over it pretty quickly because, man, this game is fun as hell. Right from the start, you can tell they put tons of effort to make the usual hacking and slashing feel much better.

The stiffness of these games, it's gone. Fighting is fast, it's fluid, and it is satisfying as hell. I'm not saying the series doesn't have the satisfying thing, but fluidity, it's not something it's really known for. This feels like butter though. I mean, these games have you send dozens if not hundreds of faceless enemies flying around in a tornado of death, and that's never not been satisfying.

Improved Boss Enemies

But what really makes the difference here is how this game completely revamped enemy captains and commanders. In the old Dynasty Warriors games, beating your average chump was fun as hell, but those pesky captains would pop up and ruin everything by being annoying damage sponges. I mean, they didn't require a lot of skill, they just took longer. Sometimes it would be unfair and they would kill you very easily, and the fight was never really about becoming better, but just figuring out how to avoid them hitting you.

There wasn't really any special trick to it, there was just something dumb that they did that you it sucked. Those specific ones sucked, and not because the game wasn't fun but because it was a big buzzkill to be honest. In Origins, the boss enemies are just way more fun to fight, and for multiple reasons. For one, the dodging and blocking has been heavily modified here. It's much more in line with modern action game standards. Yes, there are perfect dodges. Yes, there are parries.

They're very forgiving parries, which is good because this is a chaotic game. Trying to perform a perfect block every time would just suck, like it would suck. Still, parrying is an essential part of today's Dynasty Warriors combat, and it's one of the key ways you can interrupt enemy attacks and break their guard, represented by these shields over their heads. Parrying isn't the only way to break shields. Normal attacks damage them as well. Think of them like the break meter that shows up in games like Nioh or Sekiro or about a dozen other action games.

Once these break, the enemy becomes vulnerable, and you can hit them with a special attack for big damage. I really like how the game gives you multiple tools for stopping or interrupting attacks. You can perform an automatic counter after blocking. If you're getting swarmed by hundreds of enemies, which in this game can actually be dangerous, and you can perform special moves specifically designed to interrupt enemy special attacks. So with enough skill, you can really lock down a tough enemy.

Enhanced Gameplay and Combat Mechanics

It's not groundbreaking or anything, but the presentation is just fantastic. Everything you do is so visceral in Origins, and it works even better because parts of this game can actually be challenging in a way that feels fair. There aren't just wild difficulty spikes like in some of the old games. I was talking about it earlier with some of the more powerful enemies. Not really a trick to them, they're just way overpowered or something, but they also the old games felt like they could be so easy you might fall asleep fighting a boss. You can still die really fast in this game.

You get stuck in a bad situation, but when it happens, it mostly feels like it's actually your fault rather than the game screwing you over. There is a lot of depth here, which is not something you would normally say about a Dynasty Warriors game. Sure, the basic sword is pretty much exactly like your usual Dynasty Warriors experience. Press light attack, and depending on how many times you hit the button, the heavy attack gets modified. You know, classic Yakuza controls. But the other weapons offer more variety to what you can do.

Fists, for example, change stances when you perform a heavy attack, or the wheels, which require careful timing to get the hang of because you can perform a special powered-up attack if you attack just as the thrown wheel comes back at you. There's just some actual complexity to the combat systems, not that it makes it overwhelming or anything, but mastering it feels challenging and rewarding in a way that you're not going to find in another Dynasty Warriors game. Clearly, they took their time and thought, "What can we do to make this a legitimately better game?"

Dynamic Battles and Improved Level Design

Another big improvement in Origins is just the way battles work. Essentially, it's the same as the old games. You got forts to capture to worry about, but the main battles just feel so much more dynamic and interesting. There's a pleasing feeling of actual tactics this time around. The things that you do seem to actually matter and affect the flow of battle. So, like going to an ally's aid, it unlocks an alternate route on the map, or you set things up for a final charge or swing morale in your army's favor in some kind of major way.

There's just a lot of different branches, and it makes it feel a lot more alive. A lot of the spin-off Dynasty Warriors games pretty much gave up on tactics. The level boils down to linear corridors of tons of bad guys to smack around, and just to be clear, that's not a criticism. Those spin-offs are essentially taking what Dynasty Warriors is known for and telling you a story in some other game's setting. It's a distillation, not necessarily a Dynasty Warriors game, but Origins goes back to basics with these sprawling battles with multiple fronts that for the most part, you actually have a lot of agency in how you tackle it.

Assisting your allies and completing sub-objectives actually seem to matter here. There's new mechanics that make the average rank and file enemies more dangerous. You can't just run straight to the enemy general and take them out anymore. You need allies, you need high morale, you actually need to pay attention to the ideas that have kind of been there in all of these games, but now they matter.

And that sounds like I'm ripping on the old games, but it's really not. It's just that while it's not a tactics game at all, the battles feel more tactical than I can remember them ever feeling. A lot of it, I will say, comes down to very good level design with much more interesting objectives to keep things exciting. You take all that with the enhanced combat, and the battles in this game are just an absolute blast. The graphics are better this time around too. They're not going to blow your mind or anything, but they're a big improvement compared to what we've seen from these games, both in the spin-offs and main series. The battlefields are a lot more visually interesting, and I have a feeling that is a result of relentless criticism of the open world in Dynasty Warriors 9.

It was so bland and so ugly and barren and just nothing. You can't say that about anything in this game. And on top of that, the armies are actually bigger than they've ever been. The number of enemies on screen at once can just get truly nuts, especially if you're playing it on a PC with the enemy density turned up all the way. Sometimes the screen is just a sea of enemies, and it is pure glorious chaos. The way your allies and enemies move around feels more natural too. Instead of just kind of milling around waiting for combat to start, enemies will jump you when you conquer a base, they'll flee the area and panic when a battle is won, your allies cheer, and your enemies get on their knees and surrender. There's just a lot more animation that makes it feel like an actual battle.

Charming JRPG-style World Map

And the between-combat segments are actually interesting. Instead of generic world map crap where you select missions from a menu, it has a JRPG-style world map you run around in, and I like this a lot. Yes, the same thing could have been achieved with a flat map in a menu, but this is charming in a way that is not. I miss JRPG world maps too, I'm not going to lie. That gets me on board with this idea pretty easily. Do you remember walking around a Final Fantasy 7 or Chrono Trigger? There's just something about that that we have lost in games. 

I don't know if it's necessary for every game to have that or for it to overcome the full open world or anything like that, but it is very charming here. You can go into towns, purchase weapons, engage in small-scale skirmishes with side missions, and advance the main plot. Which, by the way, the story—it's Dynasty Warriors. If you played these games, you're going to be seeing a lot of the expected characters and plot points. Yes, the entire first chapter is devoted to the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Yes, Dong Zhuo really hates some eunuchs. It's the usual stuff you see in these games, but told in a slightly more coherent way, making it a solid entry point for people who are not intimately familiar with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which to be fair, is a lot of people.

But in a first for the series, that's not all that's going on. Your main character has their own story going on in the background of all these events, and while it's kind of long-winded and dry, the presentation is solid. As far as stories go in these games, this is definitely one of the more accomplished attempts. I wouldn't call it excellent or anything, but they do a decent job introducing most of the central figures and explaining what's supposed to be going on and why it matters. I know that seems like a bit of a low bar, but honestly, you're not playing this game for the story. I mean, you might be partially playing the game for the story, but not like a JRPG, despite the fact the world map now reminds us of one.

Varied Gameplay Systems

There are a lot of gameplay systems. There are multiple upgrade paths, weapon proficiencies, and all kinds of character-building options that aren't, I mean, they're not exactly complex, but you can build your character in a lot of ways. There's lots of this stuff, but to the game's credit, it doesn't bog it down. It mostly comes down to picking your favorite weapon, doing a little equipment shuffling every once in a while, and it feels good. Thankfully, the game doesn't pull off a Nioh and shower you with hundreds of pieces of loot. Inventory management is pretty minor, and that is definitely for the best here. 

The real star of the show here is the combat and the big set-piece battles. Those are fantastic. There are some absolutely insane boss battles that pop up, and they'd normally be an absolute nightmare in one of these games, but in Origins, they are fun as hell. What stands out for me is how intelligently this game is designed. It's like the developers really put some thought into what it is that people actually like about these games and decided to focus and build purely on that. The massive battles, the free-form mission design, I mean, like I said at the start, the butt rock that accompanies it, it all just works better than it's ever worked.

Innovative Features and Fun Gameplay

Really, they even fixed some of the usual annoying things about these games, like dying. Because the missions are actually really open, and in a good way, not in a Dynasty Warriors 9 way. Checkpoints are usually pretty sparse in the old games, and even if you got one, it's possible they'd stick you in some pretty unwinnable situations. In Origins, if you die, the game has a timeline feature where you can view the battle in order and jump back to a few specific points, so you're never actually stuck. And man, is that a good idea. Just, that works perfect. The game is just fun, and that's the most important thing. Video games are supposed to be fun. 

That's why you hear myself or Jake or a number of other people out there talking about "gamey" games and how it's just nice to see more of this video-gamey stuff come back, and this is, I mean, about as video-gamey as you can get. I'm not going to say that the battles can't be overwhelming at first if you're not necessarily expecting it, and I'm not going to claim that the story is the most exciting thing that's ever happened. Anybody who's played Dynasty Warriors knows enough about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms that nothing's going to shock them here. 

Also, it's mostly just a bunch of characters standing around in war rooms and army camps talking. Happens a lot, trust me. But the fighting is slick, the battles are huge, dynamic, and fun, and most importantly, the damn game just works. I encountered maybe one or two minor graphical glitches, and that is the extent of the problems. This game ran silky smooth on my PC with the settings maxed out, and I am currently a couple years behind with this PC. I need to upgrade. I also wasn't the only one that played this at Game Ranks. It also runs pretty damn well on a laptop, not a new one. The game runs great, it looks good enough, and it's most importantly, super fun. Origins may be the best Dynasty Warriors game. 

That's a bold statement, but it puts the focus back on things that people actually like about these games while adding a satisfying amount of depth and actual challenge to the combat. And you can play as a few other characters occasionally. They'll join you as an ally and be switched to in case that's a big concern for you. I don't personally think it's that big of a deal that they made a main character and generally stuck us with that, but guess what, there's a demo. If you don't want to commit to buying it, check out the demo. It's fun as hell. Like I said, is everybody going to think this is a fantastic game? Might be a little more controversial than that. Dynasty Warriors is, for some, an acquired taste, but this is a great game by my standards. I love it. Give it a shot. It is way better than you might expect if your last experience was Dynasty Warriors 9.

Conclusion and Sign-off

That's all for today. Leave us a comment, let us know what you think. I'm Zaid Ikram. We'll see you next time right here on Gamix. Good bye.