Dynasty Warriors: Origins

 

Review by · January 13, 2025

It’s a weird experience when one of your favorite series is the industry’s favorite punching bag. Dynasty Warriors endures all manner of accusations of laziness and thoughtlessness that boil down to a belief that the series was born stagnant. Some of that reputation has been earned. Still, fans will tell you itโ€™s an ever-evolving series that never abandons its 1 vs. 1000 tactical system while experimenting with gameplay, map design, and storytelling in ways that make each entry stand out in some way. Especially in recent years, this spirit of experimentation has produced some of the highest and lowest points in the long-running series.

I know I’m one of those lifelong fans who revels in unpacking those eras. But I’m also one of those fans who has never forgotten the series’ lows, the entries that stripped away the strengths in the name of something new and left players with a hollow experience.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins comes in from a unique angle with a hard-to-predict trajectory. A dozens-deep roster gives way to a single, game-original character. The vast armory is pared down to fewer than ten unique weapons to wield. The deepest RPG mechanics we’ve seen in the series to date augment the action, genuinely making the jump to a true action RPG. Origins sacrifices some of the deepest foundations the series built itself upon and, in doing so, presents the strongest and most compelling entry in the series today.

Back view of the main character from Dynasty Warriors: Origins with a mass of opposing soldiers closing in.
Honestly, sending a thousand troops against you is kinda lowballing it.

The core of Dynasty Warriors is alive and well in the newest entry. Following a bombastic version of the classic Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the series combines a melodramatic retelling of the fall of the Han dynasty with a strong action core that sees these larger-than-life historical figures mowing down thousands of soldiers. While Origins introduces bonding events with individual generals, giving a deeper view of what drives the dense cast through one-on-one interactions, the characters generally feel like legends more than human beings. Their opinions are primarily about their battle ethos or what they believe makes a just ruler, and rarely about what makes them human.

While this leads to a different feeling from more modern RPGs that focus on creating relatable casts, it allows more time for portrayals of these figures that the series specializes in. It’s easy to find favorites in the cast, and learning more about their beliefs, doubts, and quirks still provides a unique view of the story we’ve seen retold throughout the series.

But the farther we get from that core, the more we see the big swings Origins takes. In a series renowned for enormous character rosters, we get a single nameable character with no customization outside a handful of unlockable costumes. But while this seems like a downgrade, itโ€™s central to what makes Origins feel like such a revelation.

In previous Warriors games, while plenty of characters have unique weapons and movesets, these movesets tend to work in much the same way: chaining light and heavy attacks together, with different chains having similar purposes regardless of the character. For example, three light attacks followed by a heavy will always help you clear a crowd. If you know how to play one character, it’s not a long walk to figure out any other. With a giant roster, this is essential, making the game feel coherent and making it easy to transition between characters as the story necessitates.

The main character of Dynasty Warriors: Origins wielding a spear with flaming arrows firing around him.
Weapons feel truly unique for the first time in the series, making new weapon types a treat!

But Origins only has a single character and a vastly trimmed-down number of weapons. This allows each weapon to feel wholly unique, utilizing similar controls to reach mechanically different ends. If you like the old control style, you would love the one-handed sword that feels functionally identical to your old favorites. But don’t expect that combo sequence to hold up with the other weapons. Some ask you to hold the heavy attack button for swift, repeated hits. Some will ask you to charge for powerful attacks, to absorb hits to power up your moves, or to time your presses for empowered attacks.

It’s easy to plan on using a favorite and sticking with it, but Origins is packed with thoughtful ways to engage you with its systems. Your character level is a summation of your skill level in all available weapons, meaning switching between weapon types is essential to improve enough to face increasingly challenging battles. Allied officers offer challenges worth points toward expansive skill trees, forcing you to utilize different weapons, attacks, and tactics. The game encourages you to use skills you might otherwise have ignored, leading to a more dynamic experience than the series has seen before.

This is vital, even on easier difficulties. Dynasty Warriors Origins is a much more defensive game than previous entries, making parries, perfect dodges, and guard breaks downright essential in defeating the generals in front of you. Pressing on in a full offensive is an easy way to fail battles, and your defensive toolkit is more robust than ever to make that defensive game compelling. Even for players like myself, who live on aggression in action combat, the more methodical pace fits a series whose greatest strength is tactical thinking across an entire battlefield. With Origins, the battles against generals feel as meaningful as your decisions for where to set your overpowering might.

Simply put, this is the most fun I’ve had moment-to-moment in a Dynasty Warriors game. There are layers of added complexity, but none ever rob the game of the simple joy that the series was founded on. Here, we have more than a new take on combat. The entire game is structured in a new way for the series. Instead of using menus to navigate battle to battle, a world map of China opens up throughout the game, littered with towns, resource points, characters to meet, and random and plot-relevant side battles. There’s always a lot to do between main battles, and regular interaction between these battles often leads to powerful rewards and narratively satisfying events. This gives the world a more robust sense of place than before.

Exploring the world map of Dynasty Warriors: Origins
An explorable world means plenty of opinions from the peanut gallery.

And this doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of how much content is packed into this game. Branching paths, features that only open up after a first playthrough, higher difficulties, and more substantial rewards are just a handful of the replay value even after a meaty 40+ hour main story. I could barely complete more than a single branch of the game for review, but I’ll be spending a huge chunk of 2025 seeing everything there is to see in the game.

I’ll be upfront: this is the best mainline Dynasty Warriors game I’ve played, and I’ve played them all. I’m struggling to think of a spinoff that reaches the same highs as Origins, and if you are a series fan, you are likely to feel the same. Or at least I hope so, as this game only reaches the point where all three kingdoms become firmly established factions of their own, and it’s clear the intention is to see this new vision of the series through to its conclusion.

But that doesn’t mean the game is without its faults. For all the new gameplay wrinkles in Origins, some non-fans may still feel the series isn’t for them. Your character is still a wrecking ball on every map they set foot into. The action mechanics never feel as weighty or impactful as a soulslike game, nor as mechanically complex as a character action game. This is still the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story, told through a new lens, with a similar tone to past versions of the story.

Those who prefer their action games punctuated by grand, unique boss fights will be disappointed. There are large armies to battle and army tactics that your character can use to make each battle feel like more than a single character drifting through the battlefield. The variation of these battlefields can make some fights feel unique, but don’t expect each area to be punctuated by a fight that feels fundamentally different from what you’re used to.

There is reused content, as is typical for a Warriors game trying on a new suit. Unique and iconic weapons get replaced by unique skins on a handful of weapons. Origins character designs look familiar from previous games, half of all new weapons are recolors, and most tellingly, the game reuses maps regularly for side content. While I never found any of this to take away from the core joy while playing, these details have soured fans in the past. Still, I recommend those upset over what they DID to Zhang He hold their fury until they see the changes and understand why.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins screenshot of Xiahou Dun taking out dozens of enemies.
You don’t spend a lot of time playing as the classic cast, but they feel plenty impactful!

As an important note, we received a Steam review code for this game. While the PC port was sufficient for reviewing the game, it is not the recommended play method. With specs far above recommended, I experienced regular slowdown throughout. While on the standard difficulty, this didn’t interfere with gameplay significantly. On higher difficulties, this made the more precise parry timing challenging to pull off. Issues worsened in stages with a lot going on, especially when it rained. There were also audio syncing issues, where most cutscenes triggered voice lines too early, only for them to be interrupted and restarted when they were actually supposed to occur. While demos of the game on other platforms promise better performance, PC players should exercise caution before diving in.

So long as those flaws don’t seem like deal breakers, Dynasty Warriors Origin is the easiest recommendation I’ve had in the mainline series. It’s got a more substantial format, more potent storytelling, and more engaging combat than the series has seen before. While individual elements of other games may stand out, Origins is the most complete package currently, even though it’s not the full Romance of the Three Kingdoms story. It’s the starting point for a direction we’ll almost certainly be seeing more of, and it’s a direction we’re lucky to have sitting ahead of us. As it stands, Dynasty Warriors Origins is the top of the mountain. It’s not to be missed.


Pros

Impressive gameplay revamp, interesting combat variety, a compelling twist on an old story, classically metal Dynasty Warriors soundtrack, boundless replayability.

Cons

Asset reuse, a smaller scale, occasionally frustrating objectives, unsteady PC port.

Bottom Line

While Origins offers some scary prospects for longtime fans, it shakes off the specters of past failures and delivers something completely new that invigorates the series.

Graphics
86
Sound
95
Gameplay
96
Control
89
Story
78
Overall Score 93
DISCLAIMER
This article is based on a free copy of a game/album provided to RPGFan by the publisher or PR firm. This relationship in no way influenced the author's opinion or score (if applicable). Learn more on our ethics & policies page. For information on our scoring systems, see our scoring systems overview.
Wes Iliff

Wes Iliff

Wes learned to read playing Dragon Warrior on the NES and they haven't stopped playing RPGs since. Through a superhero-esque origin story, they started writing like crazy and eventually ended up writing features at a site they'd been reading since high school, which was... some time ago. They love sharing the joy in whatever flawed masterpiece has caught their attention this week, usually to the captive audience of their girlfriend, children, and small menagerie of pets.