Review: Warriors Orochi

Gameplay: 5
Sound: 5
Graphics: 5
Value: 6
Overall: 5.8

The Good:
· Total of 79 characters to play as
· Three characters deployed on the battlefield gives some variation
· No more Yellow Turban Rebellion!


The Bad:
· Same repetitive gameplay still hasn’t changed
· No major graphical tweaks
· Still inconsistent frame rate
· Absolutely lame voice acting

Warriors Orochi is... well put it this way, you know Dynasty Warriors? And you know Samurai Warriors? Well it’s those two games’ characters put together into one game. Sounds interesting? Kinda. Is it? Not really. Warriors Orochi delivers the same hack and slash action you’d expect from any Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors game, period.

What makes Warriors Orochi kind of unique from its counterparts is the ability to deploy three characters from the faction you’re playing with on the battlefield. This can offer some fairly interesting gameplay but with the ability to level up your character during battle you’ll probably end up using one character only, rarely switching to the other two officers you have. Probably the main feature in Orochi is the crossover of Samurai and Dynasty Warriors characters which the fans will undoubtedly love, but as these eras are 1,200 years apart it’s not too likely that these people would actually be able to fight in the same battles, but guess what? It’s a videogame, you can!

The gameplay is just like any other Warriors game, you smash the hell out the X button, maybe vary it a little with the Y button and if you can, press RB to unleash a special attack. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? Oh and if that doesn’t sound interesting you can still even press the B button to unleash your Musou attack, which is basically a repeated attack that is primarily used when you’re taking down a crowd of enemies or a tough officer such as the infamous Lu Bu. You will probably end up sticking to an X, X, Y combo of some sort, which usually ends up making the unit you’re fighting stunned, which you can use to give your thumb a brake. That, or you could use a wide spread attack for lower ranked units.

If you plan on playing this game as a visual showcase for the system then you’d be better off being blind and in a dark room, like most KOEI games, this game puts standard current gen graphics to shame, it would be understandable if the leading art director was a baby using Photoshop but it’s just not, the textures are appalling, playing this game on a large HDTV will not do this game justice, play it on your sister’s 15” TV that she keeps in her room and it would probably look better, providing you sit at the other side of the room. The character models on the leading officers still look half decent, but the costumes look like something you would find at a homosexual fancy dress party. The people on the battlefield are still disgraceful, the AI is still bad and the models have been copied and pasted into this game with no effort. One thing that long-time fans of the series will be ashamed of is the lack of corny cutscenes that these games usually have to offer which are usually the only attempt that KOEI/Omega Force use to make the game seem immersive. In Orochi there are the odd few, but they just don’t keep up to the standard which Dynasty Warriors 3 set, upon the reviewing process a cutscene with the same three people in it occurred, the lack of programming in this game is atrocious.

Sound is abysmal as usual. KOEI/Omega Force have apparently ditched the idea of having a power guitar for the opening sequence, something you usually see, but this time it’s some kind of dance/techno hybrid, you may find yourself humming along with it, if you do, then you know you’ve been playing this game too long and you should abandon it immediately. Music isn’t necessarily the worst part about the sound, we’ll give that dubious honour to the voice acting. A lot can be said about the voice acting on this game, first of all the dialogue in Warriors Orochi is pitiful. Whoever wrote this should be fired from their job then be forced to play something like Oblivion, just to see what they have been putting the world through. There is one certain character that sounds extremely annoying, some Samurai Warriors fans can guess this already, yes the most annoying voice award in this game, no, in all games, goes to Hideyoshi Toyotomi. He is probably one of the best characters to play as in the game; his technique and special abilities on the battlefield make others seem obsolete but his voice is so unbelievably annoying, he sounds like Bugs Bunny with a blocked nose to be quite honest, but things need to be balanced, so it’s only fair.

You can get a fair amount of play time out of this game compared to some of the other games out there, and if you one of those quantity over quality people then Warriors Orochi will be right up your street. There are four separate campaigns all following the paths of the main officers; the basic outline is that the faction you choose to play will follow 8 or so battles on your quest to kill Orochi.
Fans of the series will not appreciate Orochi opposed to the single Warriors titles, offering less cutscenes which result in a more bland narrative, but with some intriguing game play Warriors Orochi can offer something to newcomers, introducing all of the characters from both the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises.

--Josh Pollard, 360Stage Editor--