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yeonchi · 7 days ago

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Koei Warriors Retrospective Part 31: Dynasty Warriors Origins

Dynasty Warriors Origins (真・三國無双 ORIGINS) Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC Release date: 17 January 2025

Why is it so hard to find clean box art covers for games on Amazon? I used to get them there all the time for posts on EDGN, but now I can't find a good high-quality box art cover without having a box outline and a glossy edge crease on it.

Well everyone, we have finally come full circle. Back in 2022 when I got the idea to do this retrospective, SW5 and DW9E were the latest Warriors games to be released. A lot of things happened in the next two years that delayed things, but when I finally managed to start working on this retrospective series itself, Koei Tecmo announced the release of Dynasty Warriors Origins.

I've recounted this before as the origin story of this series, but after leaving the Koei Tecmo fanbase in 2018 following DW9's release, I just continued to play 6 Special, Multi Raid 2 and Vol. 2 on PPSSPP on my potato computer. When the pandemic happened, I decided to rekindle my love for the series and got back into the modern era with WOZ, DW8 and later DW7 on my laptop. I then got a job and later decided to build my own PC which I moved all my games into. Soon after that, I learnt that RPCS3 was a thing and that development had come a long way, so I realised that I had no excuse to not play the games I had shunned for not having an English dub or me not having a PS3.

And so we come to now, the conclusion of a year-long project 3 years in the making, celebrating 20 years of me playing the game series that defined my life, and 10 years of ranting about English dubbing and the Koei Tecmo New Normal Copium. It isn't over until we cross the finish line, so let's jump in.

This instalment follows on from my review of the demo in Part 16. A warning for spoilers after the break.

Dynasty Warriors Origins

Tomohiko Shō returns as producer for this game, the first mainline game with his involvement since the classic era and DW6. After Origins was announced, Shō began posting about his experiences developing the Warriors games for Omega Force on Twitter and I used some factoids from a few of them in the instalments for the classic series games.

Before development for this game began in the second half of 2021 (after DW9E's development), Omega Force was working on what would have become Dynasty Warriors 10, going back to how things were in 8. Shō believed that while their idea wasn't bad, the series needed to return to its roots instead of being just "another one". With the release of the PlayStation 5, he wanted to create the best Warriors game that could be made utilising the full potential of the console's specs, just as he did for DW6 on the PS3. As such, development of DW10 (I'd be surprised if they didn't end up calling it Dynasty Warriors/Shin Sangoku Musou X) was cancelled, or rather frozen, and all efforts went into the development of Origins, with the aim of creating a unique game with the tactical action that the classic series aimed for. The game also took in elements from previous games, making Origins a culmination of the entire Dynasty Warriors series up to that point, like how DW5 was a culmination of the classic era. Shō stated that Origins is not a spinoff or side game per se, but a mainline game on par with the other numbered titles, so it will be treated as such.

Shō has been wary of adding too many characters into the Warriors games, fearing that it would become more difficult to portray each character in depth and less energy could be devoted to other things. Hell, even he thought DW9 got too big. His belief was that it's not having a large amount of characters that matters, but rather how the gameplay and story deepens and evolves with each game. As such, it was decided to limit the scope of the game from the Yellow Turban Rebellion up to the Battle of Chibi, and the cast was cut to half of what it was in DW9, with only 47 characters featured in this game.

Like with SW5, the reduced scope of the story meant that some characters were redesigned to look younger than they had normally been depicted in the rest of the series, and a number of characters also had their seiyuus recast as a result (listed in bold):

Wei (Cao Cao Forces)

Xiahou Dun

Dian Wei

Xu Zhu

Cao Cao

Xiahou Yuan

Zhang Liao

Xu Huang

Zhang He

Zhenji

Jia Xu

Guo Jia

Yue Jin

Li Dian

Yu Jin

Xun Yu

Xun You

Wu (Sun Forces)

Zhou Yu

Taishi Ci

Sun Shangxiang

Sun Jian

Sun Quan

Lu Meng

Gan Ning

Huang Gai

Sun Ce

Zhou Tai

Ling Tong

Lu Su

Han Dang

Cheng Pu

Shu (Liu Bei Forces)

Zhao Yun

Guan Yu

Zhang Fei

Zhuge Liang

Liu Bei

Pang Tong

Yueying

Xu Shu

Zhou Cang

Other

Diaochan

Lu Bu

Dong Zhuo

Yuan Shao

Zhang Jiao

Chen Gong

Yuan Shu

Hua Xiong

Out of the list of 47, only 9 - and later 10 - characters are "playable" in this game, and by "playable" I mean they act as your bodyguards that you can do Extreme Musou Attacks with, then when their Swap Gauge is filled, you can switch to them for a total of 60 seconds, with the first 30 seconds being devoted to free actions and the last 30 seconds being devoted to Rage Mode. Each of the "playable" characters correspond to the weapons you can use in this game, or as Jim Sterling puts it, "they are, in fact, nothing but temporary reskins doing the exact same stuff you can do with a different character model":

Crescent Blade: Guan Yu

Lance (Pike): Zhang Fei

Spear: Zhao Yun

Pole: Zhou Yu

Wheels: Sun Shangxiang

Gauntlets: Huang Gai

Podao: Xiahou Dun

Twin Pikes (Axes): Zhang Liao

Sword: Guo Jia

Halberd: Lu Bu

As I've said in my review for the demo, there are also generic officers that use clubs, pikes and throwing knives, plus there are also officers using blades (dao), feather fans and shaman rods.

In this game, you play as an amnesiac Wanderer who you can name in the prologue, but almost immediately, we learn that he is a Guardian of Peace and in his first meeting with Cao Cao, he witnesses his prowess in battle and nicknames him Ziluan (紫鸞) after the sacred bird. And then we find out in flashbacks that his name is actually Ziluan and half the characters in this game address him as such half the time. Hey, Koei Tecmo, a little protip, don't give the Wanderer an actual name if you're going to let players name him but not customise him! Either the Wanderer is a nameable self-insert or he isn't. If you're going the visual novel route with this game, then you can't have both. There are gaps in the dialogue which take the place of the name you give the Wanderer and it's a bit awkward even if it feels seamless. I would forgive this if he wasn't addressed as Ziluan half the time.

In the first chapter, Ziluan seemingly has numerous encounters with Zhuhe and is plagued by voices and visions of a whitehaired boy, who in the flashbacks, is revealed to be Bailuan, the next chief of the village of the Guardians of Peace. The Guardians of Peace were founded by a hermit who helped Emperor Gaozu (Liu Bang) establish the Han Dynasty. The hermit's goal was to find those who possessed the right qualities and teach them to preserve peace in the land. Towards the end of the Han Dynasty, when the eunuchs held the balance of power in the imperial court, the Guardians were split over whether they should continue to support the Han or uphold their mission and help bring about a new age. As Ziluan joins the Han forces in fighting the Yellow Turbans, Zhang Jiao (who has now become a Donald Trump expy) understood that his followers lost their way, something he became disillusioned by, and came to accept his punishment at the hands of Ziluan, a Guardian of Peace.

In the second chapter, Ziluan is joined by Yuanhua (aka Hua Tuo), a young doctor who offers to help him regain his memories. Ziluan joins the elimination of the Ten Eunuchs and the coalition against Dong Zhuo, but the vision of Bailuan tells him that the land is too vast for a single individual to make a difference, which is why he must choose a hero who he can help create a new world with. By the time the coalition disbands after the Battle of Hulao Gate, there are three such candidates; Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Jian.

The third chapter is where Ziluan (aka you) makes his decision over which lord to serve. As you contribute more to a certain lord, you will be locked out of serving the other two lords. Sun Jian also dies in this chapter, passing everything to his son Sun Ce. Yuanhua also helps Ziluan regain his memories by getting him to gather certain herbs so he can recreate the incense that the Guardians of Peace used. Through Ziluan's flashbacks, we get some insights into his origin story; he was taken in by the village as a child after he lost his parents to war. The village gave Ziluan his name along with that of Bailuan and Zhuhe, and the three of them grew and trained together to become Guardians of Peace. After helping the Han deal with a rebellion in the south, the village took in another child.

The story and flashbacks continue in the fourth chapter. The village leaders discover that the child is related to the rebels that are still being hunted down by the Han and they plan to hand him over for the sake of the village. Ziluan stands up to them and when Bailuan hears of this, he reminds everyone of the Guardians' mission and offers to speak to the chief with them. It took some convincing, but the chief agreed with them, meaning that they would have to fool the Han and convince them that the child doesn't exist. Bailuan says that this is the start of their mission, to find the hero of the age that they can help create a new world. Soon after, the Han forces discover the child's existence thanks to an informant and they send out forces to invade the village. Zhuhe tells Ziluan to look after Bailuan, but Bailuan tells Ziluan to go after Zhuhe.

In the Battle of Baima and Yanjin, or the Battle of Mt. Xisai in the Sun family path, a mysterious stranger appears in support of the Wuhuan in the north or the Shanyue in the east, recognising Ziluan when they meet. After the battle, Ziluan sees some incense being used and follows it to the mysterious stranger, who is revealed to be an older Bailuan, but Ziluan doesn't remember him. Bailuan tells Ziluan that if he had his memories, he wouldn't have allied himself with Cao Cao, the usurper of the Han, or Sun Ce, the vassal of the Han (so is Bailuan supporting the Han or opposing them given that they burnt down the village? Pick one). He also reveals to Ziluan that Zhuhe is dead, and has been since the destruction of their village. Bailuan says to Ziluan that if he insists on following his path, then he will not hesitate to stand against him. He's basically the anti-colonialist/imperialist of this game, siding with the oppressed against the oppressors that are Cao Cao and Sun Ce.

After this, Ziluan and Yuanhua head to the village so the former can receive closure from what is now actually a vision of Zhuhe. With Yuanhua's work now done, he initially plans to part ways with Ziluan, but he decides to stay with him for a while longer.

Bailuan's actions in the fifth chapter change depending on who you decide to follow. In the Cao Cao story, he is surprised to see that Cao Cao survived the Battle of Guandu and is eradicating the rest of the Yuan family in Ye. He uses incense to summon phantom troops and cover Yuan Shang's escape, which catches Ziluan's attention and the two engage in battle. After Ziluan wins, Bailuan challenges him to a rematch in the north at Mt. Bailang, where he manages to buy some time and tire out Guo Jia, indirectly resulting in his death.

In the Sun family story, he was implied to be indirectly responsible for Sun Jian's death by creating phantoms of Huang Gai and Zhang Jiao to distract the former and Ziluan, allowing Huang Zu to ambush Sun Jian with boulders. After Bailuan makes himself known to Ziluan and other forces join the Shanyue in rebellion against Sun Ce, he lays a trap for Sun Ce by creating a fog of confusion in the forest, causing him to be killed by a stray arrow. As Sun Quan leads the Wu forces to fight Huang Zu, he receives a report that the Shanyue are rebelling again and is forced to return home. Bailuan appears at the end of the Subjugation of Kuaiji and prepares to go after Sun Quan when Ziluan faces off against him. Ziluan wins the duel and Bailuan tells Ziluan to kill him, but Sun Quan stops him, telling Bailuan to watch as he tries to win him and the Shanyue over and make them into heroes who fight for peace.

In the Liu Bei story, Bailuan appears in the Battle of Xinye to distract Zhang Liao's reinforcements in fog, proclaiming that he cannot lose Liu Bei for the take of defeating Cao Cao. After the battle, he learns that Ziluan has followed Liu Bei and informs him that he must be protected. Later on, before the Battle of Changban, Bailuan makes contact with Ziluan again and questions him why Liu Bei is taking so many commoners with him as he flees for Jiangxia, risking their lives and slowing him down in the process. Just before Liu Bei reaches the escape point, Bailuan decides that he must be stopped, but Ziluan recognises the fog and fights Bailuan.

So yeah, this is a tl;dr of Bailuan's attitudes towards the three heroes:

Cao Cao: "I hate imperialism"

Sun family: "I hate colonialism"

Liu Bei: "liU beI is RiSKing ThE LIveS Of thE pEoPLE! tHey're ONLY SlOwINg HIM Down!"

Anyway, after winning against Bailuan for the final time, he admits that he doesn't have the strength to defeat Cao Cao or Liu Bei, or that Sun Quan managed to win even him over. In any case, he makes it clear that he will not stand with Ziluan, and that if his chosen hero strays from their path, he will not hesitate to fulfil his duty as a Guardian of Peace and bring him to ruin. As Bailuan leaves, the vision of young Bailuan greets Ziluan for the final time, saying that this is the new way of the Guardians of Peace, with Ziluan championing the heroes and Bailuan keeping them true to their path from the shadows. When Ziluan asks the vision who he really is, the vision just says that the founders of their order were ageless mystical beings who had the faces of children with hair as white as snow, and eyes as blue as the surface of a frozen lake (so, not that blue then).

The story continues from there, but each faction also has an alternate route that leads to their True Ending. It works more like the hypothetical conditions of 4 rather than the what-if routes of 8 because the stories are the same for the most part; it's just some cutscenes that are different. Cao Cao has three forking points, the Sun family has two and Liu Bei only has one. When you achieve the conditions at the forking points, the words "Fate Altered" (天命変化) will appear on the screen.

For Cao Cao's story, you need to save Dian Wei at Wan Castle, Guo Jia at Mt. Bailang, then prevent the fire attack at Chibi. To save Dian Wei, you need to get into the castle quickly when the ladders go up, then defeat Hu Che'er as fast as you can before clearing out the other enemy officers inside Wan Castle. At Mt. Bailang, you need to encounter and defeat Bailuan within 5 minutes, occupying all bases and defeating all officers on the way (I recommend you do this on easier difficulties because enemy officers will be going after Cao Cao from the eastern paths). After Guo Jia survives, he will step down as a strategist and either become a regular officer if Dian Wei is alive, or retire if he isn't. At Chibi, you need to head to the altar and defeat Zhuge Liang, then head back to the ships and wait for Huang Gai to come down as the winds change. Once you confront him, Huang Gai will reveal himself to be a traitor, then you will need to defeat him quickly or else the fire attack will happen anyway. After this, you can complete the battle and the story will end without moving onto the Battle of Huarong Path.

For the Sun family story, you need to save Sun Jian in Xiangyang and Sun Ce in Wu. To save Sun Jian, you need to get to the southwestern area quickly (whether through the normal path to the south or by turning around and heading through the north, which is how I did it somehow) and defeat the Zhang Jiao phantom. Upon reaching Sun Jian, the boulder event will still happen, but Ziluan throws him out of the way and saves him. Sun Jian will ask for him and Huang Gai to help him back before he requests that they not reveal his survival to the rest of his family and army so as to prevent Yuan Shao from going after the Imperial Seal and to make his children step up and lead his army in his place. To save Sun Ce, you need to go into the forest as he disappears within it, then find and defeat Bailuan quickly. He will still be struck by a stray arrow, but Ziluan manages to find him in time and bring him to Yuanhua. Yuanhua, out of concern that Sun Ce's nature will lead him to death once again, suggests that they fake his death like they did with Sun Jian earlier.

Before the Battle of Chibi, Bailuan will approach Ziluan again, saying that while Cao Cao is fighting Sun Quan, he will sneak into Xuchang with the Wuhuan and Shanyue to liberate the Emperor and cripple Cao Cao's influence in the capital. He asks Ziluan if there is anyone he knows who can be a commander to those armies and he brings him to Sun Jian and Sun Ce. After Cao Cao's defeat, Ziluan reveals the truth to everyone and after the Emperor is rescued, Sun Jian and Sun Ce remain in Xuchang to guard him, leaving Sun Quan to rule over Wu.

For Liu Bei's story, you just need to defeat Cao Cao when he arrives at Changban. Cao Cao's army will retreat upon their defeat, then you'll defeat Bailuan as normal. Aside from a different cutscene at the end, there's really nothing much to it. I honestly think they should have added another forking point to Shu's story for Xu Shu, but that's about it.

If you've maxed out the Peace levels in all provinces and you play a True Ending, you'll get some extra cutscenes after the credits. You'll head back to the village and meet Bailuan again; he initially thought that Ziluan had abandoned his mission, but it turns out that they were walking different paths toward the same goal. On top of that, you'll also unlock a Dream Battle, where you'll fight all the Other forces alongside Cao Cao, Sun Jian and Liu Bei.

The open world from 9 returns in the form of the world map, except it only covers the equivalent of 60% of the entirety of Han Dynasty China and it's a tenth the size of what it was in 9. You'll travel around to different castles and towns to fight in battles, stock up on supplies and interact with officers. You can also ride around on a horse or use the Eyes of the Sacred Bird to find out where you need to go.

In the first inn you go to in the township of Ji (薊), the innkeeper there says that he'll keep your mail for you, but you can also access it in different towns. Oh my God, the Chinese invented email. Anyway, through this and playing through the story, you can raise bonds with characters and unlock interactions with them. Each character will have five bond levels, with each level unlocking a bond event, a set of three training missions or a request mission which is either a mini-battle or just going to get something from a hermit elder to take back to the officer.

Speaking of bond events, I know Ziluan's a main character and I'm sure I'm not the only person who has noticed, but the dialogue from the officers in the bond events seems rather (homo)erotic. You've got Guan Yu saying he wants to etch the features of your face into his memory, Yueying wanting to take your measurements to build a life-size doll, Zhenji wanting to have a secret fling with you, Huang Gai just barging into your room to talk, and even Lu Bu wants to top you (in strength) and make you his. Tomohiko Shō has stated that these yaoi/BL elements were unexpected as he left the writing to other writers, but honestly, I found it amusing because, and say it with me now, BECAUSE DAMN IT EVERYTHING IS GAY ABOUT THIS!

Aside from the story battles, you can also participate in small-scale skirmishes to increase peace in a province, or medium-scale mission battles to obtain items and additional guards. Liang Province is honestly a bitch to increase peace because it's like one small corner of the map and you have to run in and out to get a skirmish to spawn. You'd have an easier time if you cleared all the stories and gotten all the endings first.

The Eyes of the Sacred Bird mechanic is utilised in the story quite often. It's mostly used for detecting sorcery and incense, but in the Ten Eunuchs' Rebellion, you use it to find the secret passages within Luoyang. Time slows to a halt when you press L2, so if you're doing a time-limited mission and there's a lot of battle dialogue going on that may affect the next event to be triggered, you can slow down time to let the dialogue pass.

At the Battle of Sishui Gate, you start off with 10 guards accompanying you. Completing the mission battles will give you another 28 guards, then the Ultimate Warrior Challenges will give you 12 more for a total of 50. If your guards die, then they will respawn if you go into an allied base. Tactics can also be triggered with nearby allied troops and sometimes, you can ambush enemies with them and achieve a Dramatic Success, which will also lower their Courage.

When dealing with strong archers atop of towers, base doors or siege weapons, you can't open or destroy them yourself like you could do in previous games; you have to command your guards/nearby allied troops to do it if someone isn't doing it already. If you're alone on the inside of a gate or a door, you can pull away the bar and open it yourself, but that's the only time you can do it. Entering castles during sieges requires you to at least wait until ladders or siege towers are put up like in 6, so you can't just grapple hook your way up like you could do in 9.

I said in the demo that there are two types of assaults, which are the Storm Rush assault or the Mighty Strike assault. Apparently, it turns out that there's two of the latter. From what I could see, the difference in which version is performed depends on how much life an enemy officer has left before and after an assault. If the damage value of the potential assault is lower than the enemy's health after it, the Storm Rush assault will be triggered. If the damage value is higher and the enemy has more than 10% health left, the medium-range Mighty Strike assault will be triggered. If the enemy has less than 10% health or when you win the tug-of-war in a duel, the close-range Mighty Strike assault will be triggered. There is also something I noticed in regards to the Storm Rush assault; when I apply a damage multiplier in the trainer (from FLiNG Trainers), the assault never finishes off the officer I'm attacking, but it can finish off other officers who are caught up in it, meaning that if their health drops close to zero, it will just keep dealing zero damage and I have to finish them off with another attack. I suppose this is another way of making the game a bit more harder so it's not a complete wash like the modern era.

In the demo, I said that the weapon movesets were a mix of play styles from previous games and it still applies here. I did mention how the wheels use the Flow/Trigger Attack system from 9, but after playing with all the weapons, I've seen how the system is applied here; the system isn't based on what state the enemy in front of you is in, it's based on the state that you are in when you perform a Charge Attack. Charge Attacks are different based on whether you press the button by itself, in the middle of a Normal Attack string, when you're in the air, when you're guarding or when you're evading. Holding the button can also trigger something different as well depending on the weapon. Some weapons will also have on-screen prompts to help players utilise their respective gimmicks.

The weapons in this game are also good candidates for me to do a Weapon Moveset Power Rankings series on, so that'll probably be a future plan down the line alongside the weapons for SW5.

Your character's rank level is based on the proficiencies of all your weapons added up. Increasing weapon proficiency unlocks additional special attacks and Battle Arts. Each increase in weapon proficiency increases your rank level and with it your stats. At certain points, you will receive a promotion in rank and unlock new skill panels.

Skills are unlocked using Skill Points. 3 Skill Points are unlocked every 100 KOs and each training task from an officer rewards 15 Skill Points upon completion. Skills can increase stats, unlock common Battle Arts (which can be used regardless of weapon) and unlock special abilities, including the ability to perform Extreme Musou Attacks with your companion or even enter Musou Rage and perform Ultimate Musou Attacks as you would when swapping to your companion, the latter of which is unlocked after you gain closure with Zhuhe.

There are five gems that you can choose from and power-up to give you different effects in battle. Powering up gems uses Pyroxene (輝石), which can be found all over the world map. You contribute an amount of Pyroxene per attempt and the amount and type of gems created varies, with bonus gems being created occasionally. Sometimes, your Eyes of the Sacred Bird will allow you to see a light in the Pyroxene and predict what gem types will be created, or you can use a Moongrass to induce a bright light and directly induce a prediction. Gems can be upgraded to a maximum level of 30.

Chapter 2 unlocks the Shui Jing Retreat, which would be run by Shui Jing/Sima Hui's apprentice Pang Tong from Chapter 3 onwards. You can find out the status of your bonds with other officers and also who can be interacted with for bond events or tasks. You'll also collect 500 Old Coins in this game, the equivalent to Hunting Points from 8, and obtain rewards like items, gold and pyroxene based on how many Old Coins you've collected so far. When you've obtained all the Old Coins you can in battle, the last few are scattered on the world map, so you have to go into every nook and cranny to find every last one. A March 2025 update added another feature in New Game+ where you can trade Skill Points for Panacea, Musou Bonds and gold, which is a good use for them after all your skills are unlocked.

In battle, you'll have a cache of 4-6 meat buns and you can take up to another three items into battle. Each item you take can only be used once per battle, like in the modern Samurai Warriors games. Depending on the setting, the meat buns you pick up can be used automatically to replenish your health before they refill your cache for later use. Entering War God's Rage also enables you to refill your health with each attack.

Like in the demo, you can summon and mount onto your horse by pressing L3. While playing the game, I've found a lot of times that I can accidentally press L3 and end up interrupting my attack; updates have made it so I can remap it to the down button and swap it with the function to zoom in the minimap, or I can make it so that the L3 button needs to be held down to summon the horse, which does help a bit.

Sometimes, enemy officers can enter Musou Rage and perform Ultimate Musou Attacks, especially on higher difficulties or when a large enemy army employs this as a Grand Tactic. This can be prevented by depleting the enemy's Fortitude Gauge.

An update in April 2025 added Photo Mode for those who are interested. There are less features in this compared to 9's Photo Mode, but I'm sure it'll be sufficient for most players.

After clearing the game once and entering New Game+, you'll unlock the Ultimate Warrior difficulty, which is this game's equivalent of Chaos/Ultimate difficulty. On Hero difficulty, enemies will become more aggressive, blocking attacks (or being attacked) drains your Bravery and enemies will not drop meat buns, but you'll earn more gold and Skill Points in return. Ultimate Warrior difficulty reduces the windows for Parries and Perfect Evades, but you'll be able to complete challenges that will reward you with gold, old coins, pyroxene, items, guards, special horses, Battle Arts, Grade 7 weapons and Grade 8 Luan weapons.

You can also start the story again from the beginning of a chapter or a restart point, particularly if you want to play a different faction's story or retry for the True Ending. You don't have to play all the way from Chapter 1 if you don't want to.

New Game+ also gives you the ability to merge weapons by reforging them, whether to boost a weapon's attack power or transfer traits from one weapon to another. You can only reforge weapons of the same type and grade.

Once again, there's not a lot of DLC in this game because everything is part of the pre-order bonuses. The only piece of DLC available for this game is the Original Soundtrack, which contains 20 original tracks from older games that received a new arrangement for this game, and the Official Book, which is something that I'd expect to see in a Treasure Box release and wouldn't you know it, it exists and it's in there. They are also available in the Digital Deluxe Edition as well, where the book can be viewed in the game. The only catch is that the Official Book is only in Japanese.

Koei Tecmo released the Official Book for international fans and it's only available in Japanese.

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There's not even a Chinese version of it either. I don't know about other languages, but I wouldn't mind if they only translated an English version of the book for the West. Like, you go out of your way to send the Official Book out to as many people as you can, and you can't even get it translated to the languages that a great deal of your fans understand.

Players who preordered the game physically or bought the Treasure Box also four four additional Garb of the Flying Bird variants in blue, red, green and purple, while players who preordered the game digitally would receive the Nameless Warrior Garb from Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty- wait. They released variants of Ziluan's initial costume and yet they couldn't release variants of his Wing Uniform when he joined a faction? The Photo Mode update also added the Lion Dragon Armor based on Zhao Yun's costume in 3.

Up to 30 January, there was also a free Early Works Soundtrack Collection DLC containing 191 BGMs from the classic era. What about the modern era BGMs, huh? Also, in February, a free tie-in DLC was released in collaboration with Ichiran, which is another health-recovering item. Yay?

The Digital Deluxe Edition includes 10,000 gold and 30 pyroxene which is obtained through letters that will be available in-game. Additionally, players who preordered the Digital Deluxe Edition or the Treasure Box could also get access to the game 72 hours early, and the early access was unlocked on 14 January whereas everyone else had to wait until 17 January.

Jim Sterling made a video on how gaming companies are using early access incentives to prey on the FOMO of players and extract extra money out of them instead of making actual content, and when you look at what's available in the Digital Deluxe Edition and the DLC (which there barely is any), they're not wrong. The base game costs USD$70 and the Original Soundtrack/Official Book DLC costs USD$20. Guess how much the Digital Deluxe Edition costs. Yep, USD$90, and for that price, you also got to play the game 3 days early with some bonus in-game currency, except the game's already been out so all you're really getting is free currency you could still get if you played a few battles or sold a few weapons. If the Official Book was also available in English and Chinese, if the Deluxe Edition included the Early Works Soundtrack Collection and the pre-order costumes, then maybe the Deluxe Edition would be justified at that price point. But now, the Deluxe Edition is no better than buying the base game and DLC separately, especially with no Season Pass to recycle content with (unless it's on sale, at which point it's partially justifiable).

Also, releasing a game 3 days earlier for people who pre-ordered is still releasing a game, it's just that everyone else can't play it for 3 days. The scene groups managed to crack the game and make it available as soon as they were able to get the game 3 days before everybody else. You're not fooling anyone. Early access is a scam if you get your head out of your FOMO-blueballed ass and think about it.

Onto localisation now. This game is available with voices in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and English, plus texts in Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and in a later update, Arabic. What, no Portuguese translation? You did it for 9.

Most PlayStation 5 releases outside of Asia, including Japan and the West, do not have support for Chinese texts or voices. Conversely, within Asia, there is a separate version that only has support for Japanese and Chinese texts and voices. Xbox Series and Steam releases have all language options intact. What the hell, Sony.

The Mandarin Chinese dub for this game was produced by another Beijing-based studio, 8082Audio, who also produced the Chinese dub for Black Myth: Wukong. Olivia Tong Xinzhu (佟心竹/C小调), who voiced Diaochan in 9 and also reprises her role in this game, served as the main voice recording director in this game after transferring to 8082Audio from TrioPen Studio. While a number of characters have been recast, a lot of the voice actors from 9's Mandarin Chinese dub return in this game, whether to reprise their roles or voice new ones, so kudos on that.

Initially, I predicted that the English dub would be produced by the New York-based 3Beep (who produced the dub for Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty), but I was proven wrong. The English dub for this game was produced by the LA-based Rocket Sound and Dave & Dave Recording Studios, who have worked on both union and non-union projects alike with union and non-union actors. When I first listened to the English announcement trailer, I thought that David Lodge, who voiced Fu Xi in WO2 and Ling Tong in DW6-8, was the narrator in it and therefore, would be the narrator for this game (I was on my way home from a holiday at the time and I was watching on my phone over tea). I was wrong on those fronts, but I unintentionally predicted that he would have a role in this game's dub. The narrator in the trailer turned out to be Guan Yu's voice actor William C. Stephens and the narrator in the game turned out to be the older Bailuan, voiced by John-Henry Kurtz.

As is obvious, the English dub was recast by Rocket Sound, but interestingly, three voice actors from DW8 (out of 57) were cast in Origins. Kyle Herbert, who voiced Sima Yi, Xu Huang, Zhou Tai, and Ding Feng, was cast as Lu Bu; Kaiji Tang, who voiced Sima Zhao, was cast as Chen Gong and Gan Ning; and David Lodge, who voiced Ling Tong, was cast as Cheng Pu. The voice cast was gradually revealed on social media during the leadup to the game's release; the main voice actors (for Ziluan and the nine companion characters) were the first to be revealed when the game's website was launched, plus they are credited in the game's opening credits sequence, a first for the series.

Unfortunately, for an English voice cast that's full of DEI (there's quite a number of minority and LGBTQIA+/non-binary voice actors in the mix), they sure can't pronounce a lot of Chinese names properly or consistently. Some examples include "Xi" for "Xu", "Zuluan" for "Ziluan", "Su(a)n Sua" for "Sun Ce", and the most egregious examples, "Kong Zong" for "Kong Rong" (it's not Vietnamese) and "Lui/Louie/Looey" for any name that uses the umlaut "Lü", like "Lui Meng" for "Lu Meng" or "Louie Bu" for "Lu Bu" (it's not Cantonese). And like in 9, they still managed to pronounce Cao Cao's name as "Tsao Tsao" and not "Cow Cow". In a world where the entertainment industry is overtly left-wing liberal and #StopAsianHate crybabies get so anal-retentive over how non-Asians pronounce Asian names, this comes off as unintentionally funny at best and wilfully ignorant at worst. I'm surprised the 3 voice actors from DW8 weren't consulted on how to pronounce certain names properly. Say what you will about the Voicegroup dubs, at least they were consistent with their pronunciations in each game even if they were technically incorrect, with some pronunciations being changed in later games.

There are also points in the game where the line said in the voice track is incorrect, but the subtitle for it is correct. A couple of examples can be found with Cheng Pu in the Chapter 4 event Nemesis and the Chapter 5 event True Loyalty. I swear at one point I thought Taishi Ci said a line that was totally different than the subtitle, but maybe I remembered wrong or the line was corrected in an update.

The English localisation was once again headed by Digital Hearts and dear Lord, some of the lines use some pretty big or weird words. It's like they ran the script through a thesaurus or something. When officers (even Ziluan) order archers to fire their arrows, they say "Loose!" instead of "Fire!" After looking into it though, "loose" is technically a more accurate term since "firing" is usually associated with firearms.

The quality of the Rocket Sound/Dave & Dave English dub is way better than Voxx Studios' dub of 9, but in my opinion, and maybe it's my (toxic) nostalgia talking here, they could never reach the pinnacle of quality that was Voicegroup's dubs of 4-8.

Also, to the dub haters and opinion-neutrals who like to say "just read the subtitles" when dub fans complain about games not being dubbed, I dare you to play this game with Japanese/Chinese voices and try reading the battle dialogue when you've got enemies attacking you every which way and you're trying to concentrate on your character. Yes, I know battle messages can pause the game briefly depending on your settings. Oh, and you're not allowed to hold down L2 while the battle dialogue's on the screen because that would be cheating.

Dynasty Warriors Origins is an amazing game, easily the peak of the postmodern era. By combining elements from all three eras, Omega Force continued the postmodern era by taking what made the modern era great and giving them some classic era touches to add some real punch.

Like the modern era games, you're bound to rack up 2000-3000 KOs in battle, but the game makes you put in the effort so it doesn't feel too easy and become a complete wash. There's a degree of challenge like in the early classic era with enemies attacking more aggressively, plus the large army battles and castle sieges add depths of immersion that hasn't been seen in previous games.

Some parts of this game won't appeal to everyone, like the limited history scope, the lack of character customisation or the game's hyperfocus on an original protagonist that everyone gushes over. This game isn't going to be perfect for everyone and that's okay. There have been fans who would have liked to see an actual Dynasty Warriors 10 that went back to how things were in 8, like the original plan for this game. I can't deny that I'm one of those people, but maybe this reboot is the kick in the pants that the Warriors series desperately needed, which brings us to the rant for this game.

Rant: A Reality Check (The Current State of Koei Tecmo)

At the time of publishing this retrospective, Dynasty Warriors Origins has been out for 5 months now. It's been rated highly by reviewers and critics, beating DW4 on Metacritic as the highest-rated mainline Warriors game, sold 1 million units worldwide in the month after its release, and before its release, won an award from the Future Division of the Japan Game Awards at TGS 2024. So what's next for Koei Tecmo and Omega Force and what direction would they take the Warriors games toward?

After reaching its first peak in the classic era with DW4/5 and SW1/2, Dynasty Warriors and Koei Warriors games as a whole began to experience a decline at the tail end of the classic era that persisted throughout the modern era and came to a head in the postmodern era.

The first two Warriors Orochi games featured a dream crossover between the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series, but the features were lacking, the stories were disparate despite efforts to connect them, and the culmination of those games in the form of Z failed to reach the West presumably due to SCEA's vetoing of a localised release.

DW6 was Tomohiko Shō's attempt at creating the best Warriors game that utilised the PS3's specs to its fullest potential, but characters and Musou Modes were cut and most characters that remained had shared weapon movesets, not to mention the Renbu system homogenising the Charge Attack system that had been a staple of previous games.

SW3 attempted to modernise Samurai Warriors like DW6 did for its series, but the Nintendo Wii exclusivity hampered the game's performance and in turn, its reception, which resulted in the Xtreme Legends expansion and Empires spinoff remaining Japan-exclusive and the beginning of the end for English dubs in Samurai Warriors games or English dubs for Koei Warriors games in general produced by Voicegroup.

DW7 celebrated 10 years of Dynasty Warriors, began a modern era peak and allowed Omega Force to regain the respect it lost with 6, but weapon clones remained and not every character was given their chance to shine in the vanilla game's Story Mode, not to mention the reused assets in costumes and DLCs marking the series' biggest example of autoerotic assetflipsiation.

WO3 concluded the crossover story of the first two games and brought in characters from Koei Tecmo's other IPs, but the lack of an English dub, a physical release in the US or proper scrutiny in the translation hampered the awesome potential of the game that was only partially regained a decade after its original release with the release of the PC port.

DW8 improved on its predecessor by literally building on from its foundations, but it cheapened the 1 vs 1000 experience by making the game too easy on lower difficulties or too hard on higher difficulties, continued its predecessor's autoerotic assetflipsiation and the spinoffs began to show that Omega Force was beginning to burn out after releasing numerous games, expansions, ports and spinoffs year after year.

SW4 was Samurai Warriors' turn to celebrate 10 years of their series, but Capcom's lawsuits towards Koei Tecmo likely derailed their plans for its Xtreme Legends expansion leading to it becoming a repetitive retread of its main game, not to mention the lack of English dub or certain characters not being prominently featured dampening the anniversary hype.

WAS, DW9 and WO4 were all in development at the same time so resources were being stretched across these three projects among others, leading to them suffering from being unpolished in the final products, particularly DW9 as it aimed to be "ambitious" with an open-world format and a deconstructed combat system only for it to be an absolute dumpster fire, with WO4 acting as damage control.

SW5 was Omega Force's first step in a new direction as the scope was only centred around a specific period and group of people in Sengoku era Japan, cutting out characters that were extraneous to it. DWOrigins continued this with an original story intertwined with a fleshed-out scope covering the first part of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Recently, DenFaminicoGamer published a gargantuan interview with producer Tomohiko Shō about Dynasty Warriors Origins and the series in general. Towards the end of it, the topic shifts to game development and how things have changed in entertainment since the PS2 era.

In the West, the volume of content is what matters these days; the gaming industry there has essentially become another Hollywood over the past 10 years. The scale of development has noticeably expanded as well, as companies are investing lots of money in the hope that their teams can create high quality content (YMMV).

There wasn't much choice for entertainment back in the PS2 days compared to today, so Koei Tecmo releasing a new Warriors game every year was somewhat reasonable. But eventually, people will get tired at some point - even though Japanese fans, who love the Three Kingdoms era, were willing to play the Yellow Turban Rebellion again by the time 5 came out, Shō thought that they were starting to get tired of it.

Nowadays, it's impossible to expect a new game in a series every year, hence why sequels tend to be released every 2-3 years. Even small indie games require a lot of energy and time from the people making them and a new employee at a gaming company going into a new project will only see it completed and released to the public in 3-4 years. According to Shō, university graduates will aim to join gaming companies because they love games, but most of them have never even experienced the mindset of a creator. He also states that for better or worse, there have been more talented people in the gaming industry and less passionate people in recent times.

Take two of Koei Tecmo's mainline simulation franchises, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition. ROTK is going to be the more successful franchise because there is a large market in China and the original novel covers a large time period and a massive amount of people and events. Nobunaga's Ambition, on the other hand, is inevitably still going to be a niche franchise outside of Japan because there's not many fans who are interested in it, and also because, in my view, there is no one book that has covered the entire Sengoku period or romanticised it like ROTK. Plus, ROTK came to Japan during the Edo period. Romanticised foreign history vs. violent recent domestic history - you make the call.

Action games inevitably cost more to develop than simulation games. Reflect that onto Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors and you can see why the former has more advantages, more fans and more sales, especially overseas.

During the modern era, we saw how both series became too big and too broad while lacking in innovation or excessively overdoing it, making each game shallower and shallower with each release. Remember what Shō said about how having more characters makes it harder to portray them all in depth and devote energy to other things like gameplay or story.

So this is my reality check for the fanbase. We should not expect every new game to be bigger than the last one. We should not expect things to go back to how they were in DW8/SW4. We should not expect more and more characters and battlefields in a game covering such broad periods of history that are as bloated as they are already. We should not expect characters to all have individualised weapons with individualised movesets and gimmicks. And most of all, we should not expect every game to be translated or dubbed into every goddamn language in the world.

Instead, we should look forward to how the series will continue to evolve, what features would be implemented, what new mechanics will be invented, what characters and battles will receive focus, and most importantly, how these things will be received by everyone, in and out of the fanbase.

Do you want a series with sequels that get better with each release, or do you just want each new game to be "another one"?

Admittedly, I'm in the latter camp and I'm okay with it, but working on the Koei Warriors Retrospective and seeing all these insights from people inside and outside of Koei Tecmo made me realise that I want to look forward to how the Warriors series continues to evolve. I've been negative, angry, even entitled, over some of Koei Tecmo and Omega Force's decisions in the past, but I've realised that this isn't the classic era where every game can get an English dub or the modern era where I can play with 94 characters and weapons. This is the postmodern era where we don't know what era will come after this one, but we can look forward to deeper gameplay and storytelling. And while it may be hard for someone like me, who isn't into a diverse set of franchises and fanbases, to imagine how the Koei Warriors series can evolve, I know that I'm not the only fan capable of imagining, so hopefully I'll remain optimistic for what comes next after Origins, even if it takes years to be realised.

Well, it's been fun working on the Koei Warriors Retrospective for the past year. I hope you enjoyed reading these instalments, long-winded though they may be, just as I enjoyed writing them, and-

OH, GODDAMN IT.

#dynasty warriors #dynasty warriors origins #koei tecmo #koei warriors #koei warriors retrospective

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