If you know me you know how difficult it is to get that seal of approval, so this is high praise.

I remember playing Dynasty Warriors on the PS2 as a kid. Back then I didn’t get any of the story, I just liked cutting through hordes of soldiers and unlocking stuff (seriously there was so much to unlock in DW4).

I tried later Dynasty Warriors games later as an adult, such as DW8, and I couldn’t play more than 10 minutes. It was boring, ugly, I think the battles were also time limited? I don’t remember, but I see I have it on Steam so I might try it again just to compare.

I didn’t go into Origins expecting much but eventually it clicked. They completely revisited the formula for this one, and at first you think “there’s surely no way this will work.” But it does.

You play a single character that you can’t even customize and who is mostly voiceless, and the battles remain musou-style battles. But where the game truly shines is its story and characters. Yes, it’s the same Three Kingdoms story – revolt of the Yellow Turbans, and then the Wei, Wu and Shu, but this game really embraces the triple A budget and delivers immersive cutscenes. At first in fact I thought there were too many cutscenes/dialogues, but it totally works because past the very first ones, they keep them short. I mean, you just want to get to the next battle. But then there comes a point where you want to know why you’re having this next battle and this might seem completely obvious, but the very first battles in the game are kinda throwing you into it without too much context or reason for participating. It takes a little bit of time for the game to really mature is what I’m saying.

The characters are where the game truly shines. They’re all very strongly-written, especially the leads. I remember Roderic Day liking Black Sails for having characters who all somehow want to make the world a better place, even if they have flaws or conflicting interests, and I think the same is true in Origins. However, there’s tons of characters here – being based on actual historical events – and yet they all have their own personalities and lives. You can get short cutscenes with the usual primary characters of the series where they tell you more about what they like, why they’re fighting, etc (it’s a dating minigame let’s be honest). Everyone has a reason for being there and it all meshes together. You can be enemies in one battle and friends in the next.

There is some contrivance to it, in that you play an amnesic protag whom nobody knows but who fights like 10,000 men. So everyone kinda has to play along with you being their friend. To be honest though I put up with it to see where Cao Cao’s ambitions go (the real MC), I don’t really care about the Guardian of Peace thing.

I especially like that everything makes sense when they talk strategy when it comes to battles. I heard that the recent Napoleon biopic was criticized by some for discussing strategy but not actually showing it. Of course there’s still the aspect that the officers and your protag are gods on the battlefield, killing thousands of soldiers in one combo, but they still take time to explain why the battle is being waged, what to expect during it, etc. It’s hard to transcribe into words but I like when stories do this and actually get down to it instead of just alluding to stuff. A big part of being Chinese nobility was being well-versed in texts of the past, poetry, etc. and it shows here (though not directly). I like that the characters are all intelligent people who act instead of having things happen around them. They have agency.

The battles for this reason are much less boring than they felt in DW8. There’s kind of always a twist to your battles in Origins, something unexpected that happens forcing you to adjust. The downside is if you fail the battle the first time, you’ll know what to expect the second time around and there’s not much surprise to it.

This is a mainstay of the series, though as a kid playing DW3 or 4 I didn’t really pay attention to any of this and was just off doing my own thing lol. But here, at least on medium difficulty, if you fuck off to the other end of the map to do your own thing you will lose when the enemy forces force a pincer attack on your leader.

It’s a serious recommend from me. I usually uninstall games after trying them for a bit, but this is one of the few games I will actually play to the end. I might even replay to try other routes afterwards (make sure to make plenty of saves if you play it!)