I was thinking about a video game-related question I saw while lazily browsing the internet. What is a video game or video game series that is not necessarily well-received or highly-regarded, but provided you hours upon hours of joy and entertainment while playing? My immediate answer to this question were the Dynasty Warriors games. I do not believe there is a Dynasty Warriors game that is genuinely amazing, but these were some of the most satisfying video games I have ever played in my life. I have referenced Dynasty Warriors in a few of my game reviews, but I have never talked about the video game series directly. In this post, I will give my long-awaited flowers to the Dynasty Warriors video games.
For those who are not familiar with Dynasty Warriors games, they are hack-and-slash action games where you would choose (or create) a playable character and you play a series of levels where you are in a large battlefield in a large-scale battle. You will need to complete the level by winning the battle, usually by killing the enemy commander. You will face wave after wave of enemy soldiers and you will have to cut your way through hundreds, even thousands of these soldiers to get to the major enemy generals. For me, the satisfaction with playing the Dynasty Warriors games comes from slicing through all these soldiers with my normal combos and musou attacks (which are special attacks you can use once you fill up your musou meter). Dynasty Warriors gave me that feeling of being this unstoppable warlord where I can slice through a group of enemies like butter, and there has not been a game where I have truly had that feeling since.
The first Dynasty Warriors games I remember playing for an extended period were Dynasty Warriors 3 and 4. I particularly want to highlight DW3 because the voice acting in this game is in the “it is so bad, that it is so good” category. Many of the Dynasty Warriors memes that I am familiar with and I am sure the DW community is also familiar with come from this game, including “Feel the power of my magic!” and “Do not pursue Lu Bu.” I watched some old YouTube clips of old DW3 cutscenes and the voice acting is as hilariously amateur as I remember it. I played DW4 even more than DW3 and that game had some impressive-looking cutscenes when compared to DW3, and for a PS2/Xbox title. I did not play another Dynasty Warriors game for a while until I picked up Dynasty Warriors 8 for the PS3, and I had a great time playing this game as well. It was still the same satisfying gameplay loop but with improvements in all aspects, including graphics, voice-acting, and more gameplay modes.
The setting of the Dynasty Warriors games take place in Ancient China during the Han Dynasty and profiles the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, which was basically a period of chaos as warlords battle for control of China. These skirmishes provide the settings for which the battles take place that you experience in the games. For a set of games that were so satisfying to play, I also did not realize that I was learning so much about ancient Chinese history.
There were also several licensed games which used the trademark Dynasty Warriors style of gameplay. I want to recognize two of these licensed games which I have played extensively that deserve great praise for successfully integrating their franchises with the Dynasty Warriors gameplay. These games are Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and Persona 5 Strikers, both from The Legend of Zelda and Persona franchises respectively. I also remember playing a demo of another Dynasty Warriors licensed game featuring the world of GUNDAM, appropriately named Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM.
There is a new Dynasty Warriors game coming out in 2025 titled Dynasty Warriors: Origins (rather than a DW10) but there have not been many details about the game. I just hope the game is good enough so I can sink some hours into killing hundreds of soldiers on the battlefield and being a general badass. I remember the Dynasty Warriors rather fondly because it does one thing well, even if the other aspects of the games are not up to standard, and that is to give your character a blade, and let them go to work.
Thank you, Omega Force and Koei, for your contribution to video game history.
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