Warriors Orochi - Review

Warriors Orochi revolves around the idea that Orochi, the Serpent King, has used his vast powers to merge the Three Kingdoms era of China together with the Warring States period of Japan. These two historical times are, conveniently, the homes of Koei's well-known Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises. So in the grand scheme of things, Warriors Orochi collects a huge number of characters from both series together in a big fight against Orochi and his demonic legions.

Thus begins the biggest, most unapologetic fan service crossover since Kingdom Hearts. There are four story campaigns to play through, each of which starts you off with a different group of characters that have a different ultimate goal, but unless you're well versed in the interpersonal relationships between the various characters as previously established (or to a much lesser extent, the actual history behind them), these stories will likely be incomprehensible to you. But that's OK, because they're all simply excuses to justify sending you wading hip-deep through hundreds upon hundreds of useless, nameless goons anyway.

The special addition to Warriors Orochi is the tag-team system, which lets you cycle between three different warriors at any time and create diversified teams to suit your tastes. Although there are no tag-team attacks (which I found extremely disappointing), you can chain together each character's Musou attack for added damage, which is a nice touch.

Ultimately though, this is a game you've played before. If you've spent even five minutes with a previous Warriors game, you'll be relatively familiar with the happenings in Warriors Orochi. This might not be a bad thing for some because a lot of gamers really love their hacking and slashing, but I would have preferred a more robust combat system.

But the PSP version does a number of things that I find quite commendable, including the fact that it's taking the entire console experience and putting it into portable form, with only a few minor sacrifices (the graphics have been toned down and cutscenes have been removed in favor of comic book style segments). While previous portable Warriors games segmented the battle environments to lessen the demands on the hardware, Warriors Orochi offers the full maps without any real alteration, which fans will certainly appreciate.

And if Warriors Orochi has just one thing going for it, it's the massive cast of characters -- a cast that can be leveled up and customized to ridiculous proportions. The PSP version also runs fairly well, though pop-in and jerky animations are still commonplace. Ad hoc multiplayer is a welcome feature, though you'll definitely encounter more slowdown there than in the single-player experience.

In a way, I feel as though Warriors Orochi is more at home on the PSP. A portable environment seems infinitely more conducive to a button-mashing experience than a home console setup, if only for the fact that portable games shouldn't require as much focus and can pass the time with quick bursts of play. Obviously some gamers on the go prefer a immersive experience, but there will always be gamers that want to power up, kill a few hundred soldiers and then power off without thinking too hard.

Warriors Orochi's graphics are uneven. The main characters are reasonably well detailed and animated, especially in their overly dramatic attacks, but the peons that make up the overwhelming majority of your enemies are not--the fact that there are only about five different types of enemies throughout the game is also a bit disconcerting. The environments are similarly drab and overused, and every swamp, grassland, and building looks nearly identical to every other swamp, grassland, and building. The few cutscenes that do appear are nicely animated, but the comic-book-style scenes peppered throughout are hilariously awful and goofy. Voice acting is as terrible as you might expect, and the game is accompanied by a ridiculous techno soundtrack.

When it's all said and done, if the thought of battling both Lu Bu and Keiji Maeda in the same game makes you squeal with delight, Warriors Orochi was definitely made for you. But everyone else is well advised to keep their distance from this pointless and frequently unfun button masher.