Dynasty Warriors: Origins brings the franchise back to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms-inspired beat-'em-up storyline that originally put it on the map. Unlike the other games in the series, Origins doesn't put you directly in the shoes of the most famous members of the classic story. Instead, you take control of a nameless hero who's called Wanderer by default. The Wanderer is drawn to the heroes of the age, joining them on the battlefield and offering them his skills. Due to a convenient case of amnesia, however, he doesn't know why. He must venture through one of the greatest periods of turmoil in China's history to discover the truth behind his mysterious past and figure out how to use his skills to bring peace to the land.

Origins doesn't deviate much from the standard retelling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms plot. Yes, the Wanderer has his own history and a few serious plot beats, but by and large, he's a bystander who happens to be at major events of the fall of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era that followed. Dynasty Warriors fans shouldn't expect this to be too different from what they're used to. The game allows you to break the canonical plots by saving characters who die but also writes them out of the story, so aside from some minor differences in the ending, the plot beats still occur.

Origins plays a lot like the standard Dynasty Warriors titles but has been revamped for a single protagonist. Your character has the familiar combo mechanics used throughout the franchise's history, but rather than having a defined set of skills, their abilities are tied to equipped weapons. It isn't the first time a Warriors game has prioritized weapons over characters, so this isn't unusual, but it feels odd to have no real customization or choice in the playable character.

That said, the weapons and skills are rather customizable. There are roughly a dozen different weapons, each with its own gimmick. Swords are nice and reliable. Lances can be charged up, and if you take damage while charging, your moves get stronger. Gauntlets have special combo finishers that can be extended into different attacks and complex strings of attacks. The game all but demands that you swap weapons, since your character's level is determined by rank, which levels up as you gain proficiency with each weapon. That means sticking with one weapon significantly weakens you.

One change is that rather than attacks being big-ticket combo finishers, they form interconnected, smaller combos or special attributes. Your strong attacks are tied to Bravery, a resource that you build up as you attack. You can equip up to four Bravery skills at once, with stronger skills requiring more Bravery. These skills can be customized so you can select the ideal character build. Use Spears, and you might prioritize powerful counterattack skills or want massive AoE crowd-clearers. You still build up the Bravery by attacking, but it feels like the standard combo finishers have been separated into something you can use at will.

Your Musou Gauge, which is used for the most powerful attacks, is also a tad different. Musou attacks are weaker in Origins than they are in other games. They are still strong, but they're really big attacks rather than attacks that clear out an entire army. However, as the game progresses, you'll eventually unlock a Rage mode that consumes multiple Musou bars but temporarily grants infinite Bravery and finishes with a powerful Musou attack — more of what we're used to from the franchise. At the maximum upgrade, you can perform an Ultimate Musou attack that clears crowds in classic Warriors fashion.

While the Wanderer is your only playable character, you can bring a number of classic Warriors characters onto the fields as allies. The allies follow you around the battlefield and occasionally assist you in attacks. As they follow you around, they'll gradually build up a meter that allows you to temporarily swap to them. When playing as the character, you'll find that they basically function as a full-power Warriors character, complete with Ultimate Musou attacks that they use when their timer runs out. It's effectively how you get to play as the full-powered Warrior characters before the endgame.

Origins emphasizes counters, reflects and dodges more than other games in the series. Pretty much any attack in the game can be directly countered by a Perfect Block, a Perfect Evade, or a special Bravery technique that counters an enemy's attack. Battles against Officers tend to be fast and brutal, since you're constantly rushing in, knocking them off balance, and shifting between attacks. It's not quite Sekiro, but you still need to do quite a bit of parrying if you want to succeed.

This is important, as a major factor in dealing damage to enemies is breaking their Fortitude. This is a mechanic that has appeared in other Warriors titles under different names. Functionally, every major Officer enemy has a series of Fortitude bars that become vulnerable shortly after they attack or if they're countered. Damaging the enemy breaks these bars, and once the bars are broken, you can unleash a powerful attack on the enemy. If they have enough HP, it will cause big AoE damage, and if their HP is low enough, it will instantly kill them.

Thus, combat boils down to a constant game of exposing and reducing enemy weak points. This is the kind of combat flow that's become more common in the franchise, especially in the spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors, but it feels quite good in Origins because the combat is fast-paced enough that it rarely feels like you're whittling down enemy HP bars and instead having a compelling back-and-forth. There's even a special Duel mechanic where you can take on enemies in one-on-one fights; Fortitude is exchanged in this simple back-and-forth combat, so if one side manages to damage the other enough without taking damage, they'll instantly deplete all of the opponent's HP.

A major element of Origins compared to most games in the series is that it emphasizes the average soldier. As is standard for the franchise, you'll buzzsaw through huge swarms of enemies, but  the generic soldiers are not necessarily helpless. Generic soldiers can group into larger Forces that have their own shared health bar. While part of a Force, enemies are more aggressive and can launch deadly attacks that must be countered, like you would an Officer's attack. Rush into these big swarms of enemies, and you will be cut down.

However, this also applies to your own allies. Partway through the game, you're able to gain a squadron of Guards who follow your protagonist. These Guards can be used to execute powerful Tactic attacks which are incredibly strong but have long cooldowns. Not only can these Tactics change the course of a battle, but if you use them in the right spot, they'll gain bonus damage and effects. Your Guards are vulnerable to damage, so if you play like a standard Dynasty Warriors protagonist, they'll get torn to pieces and you'll need to retreat to a nearby base to replenish before you can use Tactics again.

Origins is incredibly slow to start. The premise is that it's following the path of your protagonist from what a nameless general to one of the big bosses, it takes a lot longer than any other Dynasty Warriors title to introduce every option and mechanic. It can take more than a dozen hours until you know all of the basic gameplay mechanics, such as Tactics and Rage modes. Even then, a number of those mechanics are slow to be introduced. Things such a weapon reforging and crafting aren't introduced until you've finished at least one of the storylines.

I didn't enjoy the earlier parts of Origins because of this. It felt less like a full game and more like a fancy tech demo. Once I got deep into the meat of the game, it started to feel like a proper Dynasty Warriors title. I get what the game is going for, but it doesn't work in its favor to take so long to get going. Most other Dynasty Warriors titles let you jump into the action and start smashing armies, but Origins makes you build up to that.

Once Origins gets going, it is genuinely a whole lot of fun. The biggest battles feel great, as you're constantly darting across the battlefield, saving lives, swapping between Bravery attacks, Musou attacks, Tactics and combos, and constantly parrying and reflecting enemy attacks. Once everything is firing on all cylinders, it has some of the most weighty and compelling gameplay the franchise has ever seen. It takes long enough to get there that it's easy to picture longtime Dynasty Warriors fans wishing the game would get to the proverbial fireworks (or should that be fire ships?).

There is still a whole lot of content in Origins. Relatively early on, you can ally yourself with one of the three kingdoms that vie for control over the land. Each one has its own storyline, missions and quests. There are also alternate plot paths within those storylines that allow you to alter the fate of certain major characters — and in doing so, alter the course of the entire history of the land. Finishing the game once unlocks the ability to craft weapons, which is necessary since you also unlocked a harder challenge mode that lets you to take on optional objectives to get stronger weapons. It takes a while to get there, but eventually, you'll have the full Dynasty Warriors experience.

Visually, Origins is also one of the best-looking Dynasty Warriors titles. The animations are incredibly good, and everything has a fantastic sense of weight that has been missing in some other Dynasty Warriors games. I enjoy the combat animations, especially the variety of different finisher animations that occur when you take down a foe. The audio is more of a mix bag. The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic and contains some of the best remixes of the franchise's trademark electric-rock soundtrack. The voice acting is the very definition of a mixed bag. None of it is particularly good, but it's clear some actors are trying hard, some aren't, and some don't have context for what they're saying. Names are frequently pronounced in three or four different ways. It's the same cheese that the franchise is known for, but it's still not great.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a solid addition to the franchise. It's not the newest numbered game in the series, but I enjoyed it more than Dynasty Warriors 9. It has a solid core set of mechanics and some really excellent level design. The only thing holding it back is that the focus on a single character and a relatively smaller number of weapons makes it feel empty compared to the games it will likely be compared to. If you're a fan of the franchise, there is a lot to like in Origins, and it's the ideal starting point for newcomers who want to get into the Romance of the Three Kingdoms part of the Warriors franchise.

Score: 8.0/10