Remember Dynasty Warriors 9? Sadly, we do. The Dynasty Warriors franchise had never been a paragon of quality in games, but up to a certain point, it had never failed to deliver at least a certain level of unabashed enjoyment. In 2018, however, when Dynasty Warriors 9 came alone, the Koei Tecmo series hit its lowest point ever, emerging as a widely criticized title for everything from its dull combat to its bland and shoehorned open world design.
As anyone who played the game will tell you – including the staunchest of Dynasty Warriors fans – all of that criticism was well earned. At times, you definitely see games falling victim to a bandwagon mentality that maybe takes criticism farther than a game might deserve, but when Dynasty Warriors 9 is described as one of the worst high profile releases in recent memory, it’s hard to argue with that. What should have been an open world revitalization of an aging franchise instead turned out to be its worst mainline outing ever, to the extent that it almost seemed to entirely miss the point of what makes Dynasty Warriors great most of the time.
Sadly, that’s been our lingering memory of the series for a while now (2022’s Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires didn’t do much to rectify things), but thankfully, at long last, it looks like the beloved franchise might finally be on the comeback trail. In May of 2024, Koei Tecmo announced Dynasty Warriors: Origins, a game billed as a return to the roots outing for the long-running series, and each time we have seen more of it, as we get closer and closer to its looming release, each time, it has looked like an increasingly exciting prospect- especially for Dynasty Warriors fans who are longing for a return to the series’ golden days.
Eschewing its predecessor’s open world structure, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is instead going to adopt a world map structure, with players being allowed to travel to and mess about in maps of varying sizes, both big and large, both linear and more open ended. It’s a structure that will be way more familiar to fans of the series compared to Dynasty Warriors 9’s bland take on open world design, and that in and of itself is enough to excite fans of the franchise. But of course, that’s not the only reason Origins has piqued our curiosity.
Dynasty Warriors’ combat is obviously always been its biggest drawn, and in this department, Origins is looking like it’s hitting all the right notes. It probably makes sense to lead with developer Omega Force’s ambition to finally be able to display as many as 10,000 enemies on screen at once with Dynasty Warriors: Origins. Even its less busy scenes will, in fact, see players going up against much larger groups of foes than in previous titles. Coming up against massive hordes and enemies and mowing them down like an unstoppable force of nature has always been one of Dynasty Warrior’s USPs, so it’s encouraging to see Origins focusing so much of its energies on that area.
In fact, if hands-on impressions for the title and the extensive gameplay footage revealed for it so far are anything to go by, it also looks like Origins is going to bring back some of the relatively stiffer challenge of Dynasty Warriors games. Obviously, this has always been a series about delivering strong power fantasies to players, so you’re not going to find FromSoftware levels of difficulty in a Dynasty Warriors title by any means, but with time, the series has lost more and more of its edge, to the extent that, even though combat has almost always remained fun, after a certain point, it felt like it had lost almost all of its bite.
With Dynasty Warriors: Origins, though players will still have the option to stick with lower difficulties and plow through endless hordes of foes with reckless abandon, ramping up the difficulty will result in an experience that pushes back. Based on what has been revealed so far, it seems like several enemy types won’t be mere pushovers anymore, and actually making use of tactical abilities, managing the morale of your army, and smartly commanding the soldiers under your command will be a big part of the gameplay loop. There’s obviously inherent appeal to Dynasty Warriors’ brand of mindless button mashing action, but it’s good to know that Origins is going to be a little less one-dimensional than that- for those who wish it to be, at least.
Meanwhile, the game’s different take on the series’ tried and true narrative formula is also looking interesting. Dynasty Warriors games are, of course, always retellings of the well-worn Romance of the Three Kingdoms story, and that much obviously isn’t going to change with Origins. What is changing is how much of that story the game is covering, with Omega Force deciding to only cover a part of the Three Kingdoms story, rather than all of it in its entirety. Now more focused on telling the story of the rise of the eponymous three kingdoms rather than covering the entire saga, the much more zoomed in tale of the game will be able to dive deeper into characters and events in a way that past games weren’t able to do. Meanwhile, Origins will also feature younger versions of plenty of well-known characters, which means fans of the series (or really, of that period of time as a whole) will be able to see familiar personalities through a different lens, which always has potential to be interesting- when done right, at least.
Another area where the game is looking impressive is its visuals. No, maybe it hasn’t taken our breath away with spectacular next-gen graphics, but we’re obviously not going to hold every single game that releases to that standard. On its own merits, Dynasty Warriors: Origins touts great graphics, and that’s doubly true if you’re familiar with what the series’ standards have traditionally been in this department in the past. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Dynasty Warriors games were consistently ugly or anything along those lines, but without a shadow of doubt, Origins is promising to be the series’ best looking outing by a country mile. From the character models to the detailed and varied environments to the enemies, the large armies you take on, and the way the explosive action is presented on-screen, the game is looking impressive in more ways than one.
Whether Dynasty Warriors: Origins can touch the highest highs of the franchise – from 4 to 5 to 8, or whatever one strikes your fancy – remains to be seen, and with a series that has had as many instalments as this one has had, it can definitely be difficult to keep hitting the highest levels of quality after a certain point- because of diminish returns, if nothing else. But after the disastrous misstep that was Dynasty Warriors 9 and a few years of rest and recuperations afterwards, the series is back with what’s looking like the exact right sort of comeback that it needed. Dynasty Warriors: Origins could still end up disappointing in ways that we haven’t been able to foresee based on its pre-launch coverage, but for now, it’s looking like that classic, adrenaline-fueled musou action game that fans have been starved of for so long- and that’s incredibly exciting.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
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