Dynasty Warriors: Origins review: thrilling historical drama lacks substance

digitaltrends.com:

Dynasty Warriors: Origins MSRP $70.00 Score Details Pros

• Sleek structure
• Multifaceted combat
• Thoughtful RPG progression
• A few engrossing storylines

• Serious tone doesn't always land
• Repetitive as ever
• Some exhausting missions
• Thematically nonsensical story

Why do well-intentioned leaders always seem to become the very thing they sought to rebel against? Is violence inseparable from power? How many bodies must stack up to achieve peace? Don’t expect Dynasty Warriors: Origins to offer any insight.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has played Omega Force’s long-running adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a foundational Chinese novel. While the hack-and-slash series has its roots in real Chinese history, Dynasty Warriors mostly sees that politically dense subject matter as a goldmine of war set pieces and historical melodrama. That’s allowed the series to thrive as an over-the-top soap opera — it’s Days of Our Lives for gamers.

Now, Omega Force hits the limits of that approach with Dynasty Warriors: Origins, a new starting point for the series that tries to take its subject matter a bit more seriously. It’s perhaps the studio’s most mechanically refined Musou yet, with more multifaceted combat, some exhilarating battles, and a closer look at moments of the Three Kingdoms era that Dynasty Warriors has always glossed over. But all the cutscenes in the world can’t hide the fact that the series still doesn’t have much to say about a historical era that begs to be dissected.

Changing the formula

After struggling to shake the series up with Dynasty Warriors 9’s open-world ambitions, Omega Force takes a more streamlined stab at evolution. Dynasty Warriors: Origins reimagines the Musou as a modern, narrative-heavy character action game. It’s loaded with cutscenes, it has straightforward skill tree progression, and it sticks to one playable