Warriors Orochi 3

Dynasty Warriors is notable by its simple combat, hordes of enemies, impossibly beautiful cast, wonderfully overly theatrical dialogue and the numerous and frequent releases in the series. Dynasty Warriors 4 through 7 each had three versions that came with small tweaks and additions. When Warriors Orochi, a crossover between Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, was first released many wrongly dismissed it as just another Warriors game. Hopefully people’s opinions have changed because Warriors Orochi 3 has made some very interesting changes to a familiar formula.

The majority of your time will be spent playing the main Story Mode, set in the Sengoku era. the enigmatic Kaguya (based on Kaguya-hime from Japanese folklore) appears on the battlefield to aid the first three characters you take control of ‒ Ma Chao, Hanbei and Sima Zhao ‒ who are fighting a losing battle against the massive Hydra. This is the first and also the penultimate stage of battle as Kaguya has offered her time traversing abilities to help you alter the time line to change the outcome of the otherwise unwinnable battle. Having entered a pact with Kaguya you are set on a journey to visit each separate battle, sometimes twice, to rescue comrades and enemies before their demise so they can help with the war effort and, in so doing, join hands against one common foe: Orochi. The interesting thing here is that you don’t stay with the afore-mentioned three characters. Each Stage has a “Recommended,” threesome. By picking this team you almost inadvertently create Bonds between characters that unlock secret stages where you can rescue a previously felled warrior or acquire a powerful weapon to assist you in the slaying of the Hydra. That isn’t the only reason you’ll be wanting to switch characters, though.

By far and away Warriors Orochi 3’s biggest triumph is the huge roster of characters and their different attacks, be they Normal, EX or Musou attacks, there is a huge variety of styles, moves and attack types to use against the legions of enemies. This is where switching between three characters at will is so much fun. Each character is effective in different ways and at different times in the battle so it makes sense to pick your team with this in mind.  Some characters have slower but wide ranging attacks that are most effective in taking down swathes of lesser enemies. Others have more concentrated attacks that are more advantageous when facing stronger enemies. You might want to fill the third slot with a faster character to traverse the stage quicker, or perhaps one whose Musou can rack up huge combos necessary in raising your True Triple Attack gauge. This gauge allows you to perform a huge, devastating special attack allowing you to take out those nefarious Orochi soldiers while rewarding you with Gems or Crystals, used to create weapons at the Weaponsmith at Home Base.

The creativity of the Musou attacks (special moves that deplete either a little or all of your Musou gauge) for each individual character is really thrilling; they are often spectacular and each character’s special moves vary considerably, to the point where you might find yourself re-playing levels with different characters just to try out their special moves. Another impressive aspect of the combat is the variation between each character’s Normal attacks. Their combo is altered dramatically by simply pressing triangle at different points of the standard one-button combos. One criticism of Warriors games is that just pressing Square repeatedly can get boring, but this problem has been remedied simply and effectively by changing the nature of the final strike. Pressing Square Square Triangle will yield a much different result than Square Square Square Triangle and so on. Using this simple combo system along with the unique Normal, Charge and Musou attacks for one character alone works well but it’s when switching between either of the two other characters in your team each stage becomes much more exciting. As the player there is always an aspect of combat to think about and taking out enemies by choosing between them and building up a rhythm is just brilliantly satisfying and so much fun.

The most interesting new feature is Musou Battlefields, a mode where you can basically re-mix stages from the main game by editing everything from which character says what and when, during the course of the stage, to which enemies appear where and when.  You can then upload your own and share by downloading other users’ creations.  No doubt this is for the staunchest of Warriors fans but there is definitely fun to be had for those inclined to look under-the-hood and tinker.

The vast majority of your time will be spent playing, unlocking and re-playing stages with different team members on a higher difficulty.  Each weapon has eight empty slots that are filled by attributes like Ice, Bolt and Range by forging weapons and transferring these attributes over. Weapons with these attributes are more readily available in stages by defeating Officers on the highest difficulty.  On Easy, Normal or Hard these attributes aren’t really necessary but they come into their own in Chaos mode, the highest difficulty that substantially changes the game and how you play it. Chaos difficulty will only be viable many hours into the game but when you do reach it you will need to use each character wisely as your inactive party member’s health and Musou gauge replenish over time. Sadly there are no end game bonus levels that would necessitate this higher level of play and Online Multiplayer is very limited.  The game suffers slightly from a lack of objectives upon finishing the main story, which is regrettable, but just playing the game can be reward and reason enough.