Hands-On: Dynasty Warriors Origins is the refresh lapsed Musou fans need

As far as franchises go, few evoke as much of a Marmite response as the Musou.

When someone hears the words ‘Dynasty Warriors’ they already know exactly how they are going to feel about the game, and whether it’s for them or not.

We’re the same. While the PS2 era of the franchise wowed with mammoth battles and campy storylines, it had been a long time since we had a compulsion to pick one up.

The exception to this is the game’s various crossover spin-offs, such as Persona 5 Strikers, The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Warriors, and Fire Emblem Warriors, each of which brought a new light to the somewhat tired formula.

So it was to our great surprise that Dynasty Warriors: Origins wasn’t only a breath of fresh air, but also feels like a game that will give those who’ve entirely written off the series a reason to jump back in.

Dynasty Warriors Origins is set in the Three Kingdoms era of China. As a nameless protagonist, you’re faced with restoring order to the world via whichever of China’s various factions you see fit. The method of doing this, as is standard for the genre, is by killing 1 billion people every 40 minutes.

Combat in Origins is a mix of hack and slash for the fodder minions that flock to you in their thousands, and more considered Souls-light, parry-based combat for more significant enemies. This mix is balanced rather well as the insignificant enemies serve as fuel to charge up your powerful special attacks, which do more serious damage.

In the larger battles, we found ourselves sprinting from general to general, starting as many fights as possible. There’s a Royal Rumble feel to the sheer volume of high-powered enemies that are surrounding you at any one time.

The game’s parry is satisfying, and the speed with which you can regularly perform your signature moves mean that once we entered a base in our session, there was never a moment for breath, it was all action.

During battles, the enemies will sometimes attempt to retake a base that you’ve previously captured, as illustrated by a mini-map that fills with colour corresponding to each of the armies in play. You could be absolutely dominating the west side of a map, but if you’re not diligent about taking over the map equally, the other side could become overwhelmed with enemies, leaving your smaller bases vulnerable.

There was some amount of spinning plates in our session where we had to decide when it was time to dive into the final base and end the battle, because if we did that too quickly and lost too many men, our smaller, earlier bases could be overwhelmed, leaving our general exposed.

It didn’t feel like the largest tactical struggle in the early battles we took on, but this light layer of thought on top of a mountain of sword-swinging nonsense was welcome.

Our toughest challenge came during a battle during which the enemy deployed the legendary warlord Lü Bu. While every general we’d met up to that point could be taken down in short order, Lü Bu cut through our army like he had an AK47 and a lightsaber.

After being pounded into the mud for a few attempts, we decided that the only way we were going to win the battle was to run past Lü Bu and see if we could take down the opposing boss before Lü Bu atomized the rest of our squad. So, while the rest of our team was trying to stem the tide of Lü Bu’s rampage, we decided to skip past him and head for the top of the compound.

We were greeted with the largest group of enemies we think we’ve ever seen in a video game. Seas of shield-wielding guards. Baddies are far as the eye could see, all lined up in rows leading up a massive stone staircase, at the top of which sat the boss, and the only way to win.

In a moment of questionable self-preservation, we smashed into the first enemy we could, and repeated the process over and over, picking a hole through their defenses like we were trying to scratch away at a prison gate with a toothpick.

Meanwhile, as we were doing this, the game was having a mild breakdown at the fact that Lü Bu was increasing the number of widows on our side of the war by a factor of about 1 million.

By the time we got to the top, virtually our entire side was dead. However, thanks to the huge amount of fodder enemies we could decimate to charge our special abilities, and the one NPC on our side that had somehow followed us up the stairs, we finally beat not only the boss, but his mosh pit of literally 30 sub-bosses that surrounded him.

We asked the PR person watching us if that was how it was supposed to be done. They just laughed.

The satisfaction of pulling off that heist of the century is exactly the moment that we decided we were keen to play the full game when it came out.

If we’d had to smash away at Lü Bu for hours on the off-chance we killed him, our excitement would have dropped like a stone, but the cinematic, clumsy, slapstick thrill of forcing our way up that mountain to the boss was an amazing moment, and one that gives us faith that the rest of Dynasty Warriors: Origins is well worth keeping your eye on.