Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Review

Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate is the latest release in Koei Tecmo's Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors spinoff series. An updated version of the original 2012 release, it follows the same hack-and-slash gameplay model that the series is known for.

Characters and Combat

Each character has two special attacks and a “Musou” special attack that deals greater damage and makes you invincible for a short time. The variety comes from having a total of 145 unlockable, playable characters, each with their own movesets. Mashing square mindlessly is a valid way of getting through the easier difficulty settings, but on higher difficulties, it pays to know what sequence of squares and triangles do. Some are pop-ups, some are guard breakers, some are area attacks, etc. What the Orochi series has done differently from the main games is giving you a team of three to select.

You control one character at a time. The inactive pair recharges health and energy until switched in, and switch attacks and even a triple attack can be performed by hitting R2 & L2 when a certain meter fills. Story Mode follows the plot of the game and is where most of the characters and stages are unlocked. Free Mode is just story mode without the pre-battle dialogues. It can be played online and offline. Local co-op is also present. Gauntlet Mode is a new addition to the series where instead of picking a team of three characters to switch between, you have five that are all on the screen at the same time and can choose formations for them.

Effectively a dungeon crawl, you explore a map looking for items, experience, and the way out, while a miasma slowly increases the difficulty of the enemies but also the quality of their drops. It's an interesting idea, and the difficulty ramps up dramatically, but the tutorial explanations are vague, and the mode itself does not feel fleshed out. Duel Mode is a simple three-vs-three arena battle against another player or the computer. Cards collected through the game can affect how matches go, but it is not a fleshed-out fighting game. Musou Battlefields is a light map editor.

Storyline

The storyline is absurd and frequently campy. Characters from Koei Tecmo's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises have been kidnapped wholesale to a world created by the mythical serpent demon Orochi. By this game, Orochi himself is dead and replaced by a gigantic, eight-headed hydra that is bent on exterminating everything. A small group of heroes are rescued by a time-travelling mystic whose powers allow them to travel through various points in time to try and alter the past and recruit anyone and everyone they can across 4 chapters of the original game.

After building a literal army of playable characters to choose from, the hydra is defeated and the storyline of Ultimate is unlocked, where a new mystical villain turns heroes against each other, sewing chaos and dissent and leading to even further time-travelling shenanigans. The new content isn't quite as lengthy as the original game, but it is still hefty, occupying another 4 chapters of story. Warriors Orochi 3 came out in late 2011 in Japan and early 2012 in the West, and since Ultimate is built on top of that, the graphics are beginning to show their age.

Graphics

Character models themselves are distinctive and detailed, but the environments have some ugly textures when examined up close. The grunts are significantly less detailed than the playable characters, but that's only really noticeable during cutscenes. Otherwise, its difficult to tell they have muddy face textures when they get sent flying by the dozens with a sweep of a weapon. Those are small complaints that don't affect gameplay and most of the time it looks fine in motion. The shorter draw distances of the backgrounds lead to some very noticeable pop-in on the PS3 version.

Enemies on the map don't visually materialize until you get fairly close to them. When a large number of enemies and effects are on the screen, the frame rate can slow down to a crawl. I particularly noticed this in gauntlet mode. The game features English subtitles, but no dub. The soundtrack features songs from Dynasty and Samurai Warriors, as well as remixes and original music, but for the most part blends into the background while you hack and slash your way through the stages. Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate provides a lot of content and replayability for fans of the Musou-style games.

Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate - The Verdict

The gameplay is simple and accessible, and how much you like it depends on your tolerance for level grinding, especially at lower levels. Musou games are a niche genre, and this is a content-packed and satisfying entry for fans of that niche. Unfortunately, it's probably not a good entry point for newbies since it throws so many unfamiliar names and characters at the player without much context.

TechRaptor reviewed Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate on PS3 with a code provided by the developers. It is also available on PS3, PS Vita, PS4, and Xbox One. This review was originally published on 09-30-2014. While care has been taken to update the piece to reflect our modern style guidelines, some of the information may be out of date. We've left pieces like this as they were to reflect the original authors' opinions, and for historical context.