Dynasty Warriors: Origins review: Peacemaker

In 1873, Samuel Colt’s Colt Patent Firearms, looking to reinvent the way it produced revolvers, made a gun: the Colt Single-Action Army. It would go on to become the standard-issue sidearm for the US Army for nearly two decades, and one of the most important handguns ever made. If you’ve ever watched a Western, you’ve seen one. The Single-Action Army was a massive success, staying in active service until 1945; it remains in production today. Over 457,000 have been built. For its role in settling the American West, it was dubbed the Peacemaker. Remember this. This is important.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins comes to us on a similar wave of reinvention. It is the tenth game loosely, and I do mean loosely, based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth-century Chinese historical novel. This is, after all, a Musou series where your hero routinely wipes out dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers with a single blow. But Omega Force has done something interesting with Origins in attempting to reinvent the wheel: they’ve made it more of an action RPG meets character action game, with a more overt focus on story. 

Instead of taking control of various characters from history, you’re slotted into (let’s make this a drinking game, shall we? Take a shot every time you’ve seen this before) the role of a nameless Wanderer (take a shot), a uniquely powerful (take a shot), stunningly beautiful (take a shot), strong, silent type (take a shot) twink (take a shot) warrior with a special destiny (take a shot) who stumbles into the Yellow Turban Rebellion when he stops to help a group of citizens being oppressed by government forces (take a shot), which leads to him becoming something of a legend (take a shot), meeting several characters from history (take a shot), and becoming friends with all of them (take a shot) because they just can’t accomplish their goals without his brooding visage (take a shot) and martial prowess (take a shot).

Still alive? It’s a pretty boilerplate, “this-is-a-video-game” setup where your character is simultaneously The Most Important Person Ever, an audience stand-in, and someone who, because you are not a real person in a historical setting, doesn’t have a whole lot of say in how much of this actually plays out. More on that in a bit.

There are benefits to this style of storytelling. First, you’re closer to the action and get to know the characters a little better, and secondly, the story is front and center and easier to get involved in, and Origins takes itself far more seriously and puts far more effort into the story than Dynasty Warriors has in a long time. The issue is that mindset clashes with the kind of game Dynasty Warriors is.

Because functionally, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is still Dynasty Warriors. Yeah, sure, the camera’s a little closer to your character and battles are more intimate as a result, but this is still a Warriors game. You’ll run or ride across the battlefield with your weapon of choice (Origins has nine different kinds of weapons to make up for the fact that you largely only play one dude), capture bases, clear out the enemy army, defeat enemy officers, and defend your allies.

What makes it fun is how it feels to play. Each weapon has its own unique moveset — the longsword is your standard Dynasty Warriors weapon that mixes light and heavy attacks for basic combos; the spear is an easy-to-use all-rounder that excels at wiping out large groups; the gauntlets have multiple stances that you can switch between, opening up different moves, and so on — but the real appeal is the moment-to-moment decision-making against a slew of very aggressive enemies who, unlike many action games, are not just sitting there waiting for you to kill them; they actively want you dead.

In its best moments, Dynasty Warriors forces you to pay attention, make snap judgments, and execute. An ally is under attack, so you mount your horse, gallop over to their location, and start clearing out the enemy soldiers, combining combos with well-timed dodges, cleaving a path to where your ally and the enemy officer are locked in combat. The officer turns his attention to you; you land a small combo before he interrupts you, but you cancel a hit into a well-timed parry, opening him up for further punishment. He staggers, and you unleash a Battle Art, fueled by limited Bravery you build in combat, to really dish out the hurt as he shakes himself, gets to his feet. A squad of soldiers with high Courage slams into you, sending you flying. Your health is low. They charge up another unblockable while you’re down. You stand, spend the last bit of your Bravery to use a Special Battle Art that interrupts them, breaks their formation, and you land a powerful, context-sensitive Assault attack that wipes them out. Then you parry another attack from that officer, land the finishing blow, and increase your army’s morale, turning the tide across the battlefield. And when the enemy ambushes you from behind, that’s when you activate your all-powerful, metered Musou attack to wipe them out in a single swing.

You move across Origins’ battlefields as a god made flesh, a machine that turns enemy soldiers into corpses, appearing only long enough to solve a problem before screaming toward the next objective, a god of war who doesn’t know how to lose, who can decide a battle in a single engagement. You are uniquely suited to do this, with the Eyes of the Sacred Bird, which allows you to soar above the battlefield, take in the status of every commander and their forces, see through the deceptions of the enemy, a God of War-style War God Rage that makes you invincible and supercharges your attacks. You can even team up with other commanders to lead charges and watch as massive armies slam into each other, yourself in the thick of it. This is engaging, even fun, though some missions essentially require you to know where things are ahead of time if you want to do them quickly enough to get to them in time and it is strange there is no co-op play, a staple of the series. But even the parts that work clash with Origins’ narrative ambitions, with the role you’re told you play.

Between missions you’ll travel across a classic, old-school Final Fantasy-style overworld where your stature in combat is mirrored in the physical realm, a giant striding across the world full of tiny towns and insignificant people and historical characters who are eager to get to know you because a man who can redefine a battlefield by virtue of being there is a man you want to know. You will sell your weapons and buy new ones, and complete small, side battles, and receive training from the historical figures whose story you have been inserted into, and earn skill points that can be spent in very basic, formulaic skill trees that offer no meaningful choice and nevertheless make your character more of a terror. You will make small dialogue choices, few of which ultimately matter, and all of which contributes to Origins’ fatal narrative flaw.

Throughout Origins’ story, you are constantly told you are a Guardian of Peace, that you will help guide China to a better future. Origins’ opening supports this; at the outset, your character is walking through a village being looted by government officials when a child, desperate to help his ailing father, tries to steal from a cart of food the officials are wheeling out of the village. You intervene to keep a government official from cutting him down. The people, tired of a corrupt government that does nothing to help them, rise up in what becomes the Yellow Turban Rebellion. It’s easy to sympathize with them. But then time passes, and the Yellow Turbans become the thing they’re fighting to destroy, oppressing the populace for reasons that are never really explained, and you join up with the government forces that are out to put them down.

It’s Origins’ greatest narrative failing, and one that cleaves the Guardian of Peace conceit in two. Throughout the game’s opening, one thought careened around my skull, insistent: “The Yellow Turbans are right, even if some of them have lost their way.” Given the choice, I would have sided with them. I wasn’t given that choice; this story has to play out a certain way, the War of the Three Kingdoms has to happen, and later, I have to choose between Wu, Wei, and Shu. But even though I do choose, my character has little agency. At best, I am pledging my power to one of three factions with loosely defined visions of a better China. I am a weapon to be wielded in another man’s war. My choices only make things worse, but I must make it, because I am a Guardian of Peace and it is my duty.

Near the end of the game’s Yellow Turban arc, the boy I save at the game’s beginning sends me a letter. I am his hero. Because of me, he was able to join the Yellow Turbans and fight for a better future. He knows we will meet on the battlefield, but he’s not afraid. I am his hero. Because of me, he is able to live by his own convictions. He is writing to thank me, and has no regrets. And I know, in this moment, that in the coming battle, I will probably kill him, if I haven’t already, for a cause I don’t believe in, so other men can remake a nation in their image.

At every point, Dynasty Warriors: Origins tells me how important I am, how crucial my role is, how the battles would have been lost without me. It is hollow, all of it. I am the most important man there is in a story that I cannot change because this is the way the story goes. I am a peacemaker who brings peace through slaughter. A weapon to be wielded to tame a violent nation. I am a gun. And God help me, in the moment, as I land the attack that I know may be killing the kid I made my name saving, fighting for men who go against everything I believe, it feels good. And that is Origins’ greatest failing.

A PC copy of Dynasty Warriors: Origins was provided by the publisher for this review. Dynasty Warriors: Origins releases on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on January 17th, 2025.

Will Borger

Contributing Editor

Will Borger is a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer and essayist who has been covering games since 2013. His fiction and essays have appeared in YourTango, Veteran Life, Marathon Literary Review, Purple Wall Stories, and Abergavenny Small Press. His games writing has also appeared at IGN, TechRadar, Into the Spine, Lifebar, PCGamesN, The Loadout, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his wife and dreams of owning a dog. You can find him on X @bywillborger.