Warriors Orochi 3

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: Beat-'em-up; Sub-Genre: Collecting?

ESRB: T (For a whole lotta "Psh psh! Shing shing! Uwaaaa!")

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 30/10

Developer: Omega Force 

Wiki page

See that above? It takes 3 highly cluttered wallpapers to show all the playable characters in this game (which is about 132 in all). So if having a shit ton of options is your thing, then this game outdoes everything. But for those in the know, you might wonder why I gave this game more than one star. Does it introduce a lot of new concepts to round out the usual empty experience it offers? Nope. It's definitely still rooted to the franchise's determination to make the same game over and over. But you know what? Games like Call of Duty and Madden aren't entirely faulted by that from the fans. There's always some little thing here and there that's new enough for them. And I find the story less stupid than that of the usual realistic shooter, too. At least this game knows what it is. And the characters offer things that are more interesting, too. Like, Guan Yu has a cool ass beard. And Da Ji is some kind of bikini-clad elf demon thing. Their personalities and arcs are non-existant, but I find myself remembering SOMETHING about them.

Quick! Name this shooter character! You lose points for every second you hesitate!

Here's how a "Warriors" game works: you pick your character out of the million there are to offer (make sure to choose one that wields a big polearm for your first outing) and then you wade into hundreds and hundreds of enemy soldiers and mash combinations of X and Y until they are all dead. Oops, I mean "KO'ed." If you're smart, you'll press B to use your Musou (super move) to get yourself out of danger. And that's it. Do it a million times. Then get frustrated because 3 minutes ago some asshole general was like, "Help! I'm dying!" but you didn't hear him because of all the sword explosions happening on screen so he dies and the game says you lose. Very, very straight forward game for the most part. Just beat up tons of dudes.

Sword explosions all over your screen. Not kidding.

There's no need to even talk about the story. It doesn't matter. In fact, it matters so little that they didn't bother to translate the voices, just all the text. I'll go ahead and lay it all out right now so you know literrally everything. Basically, time travel/dimension ripping bullshit happens so the Chinese "heroes" of around 500 AD and the Japanese "heroes" of around 1800 AD meet up with a few stragglers from random other video games (like Ryu from Ninja Gaiden) and some other Koei games (like Joan of Arc and Achilles) to go fight some demons from various Oriental mythologies (Orochi and Da Ji, etc). Thankfully everyone speaks modern day Japanese otherwise none of this would make sense. But since they do, that just cements everything together in one solid "Weeeee! Fighting!" explanation. Somehow this has happened three times (although this game is number 2 in Japan, hence the screens at the beginning of this review) because demons get reborn as Hydras or some shit.

"Hey, what should we do for a the next game?" "A hydra." "Stop right there, that's all the ideas we need!"

Maybe you've deduced just how familiar I am with this franchise. The question then is: "Why did I bother?" The short answer is that I'm an idiot. But the long answer is that I've always felt there was some promise for something really amazing. I started with Dynasty Warriors 3, and the game hasn't done much to really improve in the ways I want it to. They always add more characters, add technical things to the game engine like swimming, and then shuffle around how the game handles itemization and character growth. The pinnacle of the franchise so far has been the first Samurai Warriors. It added talent trees, had a create-a-character mode with this weird but oddly compelling training mode, and you could roll. Which is what I want, man. I want to be able to shape a character with more depth. I want to have to deal with avoiding damage in a skillful way. But Omega Force seems content with what they are doing because they keep doing it! I suppose I really should just give up on them.

Conclusion:

Hey, remember the X-Men arcade game from the 90's? That's what this is like, but with way more... STUFF. If you're not exhausted with Dynasty Warriors games and you want the most mindless beat-'em-up action then check this shit out! It's even got splitscreen co-op! Remember when games had that shit? Wow!

Hope this image of Da Ji caught your attention. Some of the music in this game is brilliant, by the way.