6.9.2012

I am a long-time fan of the Dynasty Warriors series and as such was much looking forward to the new instalment in the Warriors Orochi saga. I was surprised to find all the voices in Japanese with English subtitles. Koei hasn't released a version dubbed in English for some reason I cannot fathom. My friend thinks its brilliant and it certainly does help you get into the culture of the game, but it is really annoying when you are trying to slaughter your way across the battlefield and you hear a character shout something you need to look at the message bar at the bottom in order to work out what the hell your supposed to be doing.Anyway, if you are unfamiliar with the Dynasty Warriors series,Warriors Orochi is a hack-and-slash where all the characters from all the time periods in all the games made by Koei are brought together in a dimension ruled by snake people and their king Orochi. The main theme is to batter your way through literally thousands of enemy troops and officers to complete objectives on the massive battlefields while working around ambushes, mazes, surprise fire attacks and other changing situations. It uses a 3-man tag team system where you can use one character while the rest of your party rests and recuperates.Warriors Orochi 3 is a sequel to its previous game. The serpent king Orochi has been defeated and the land once again lives in harmony. However a new threat appears in the form of a giant hydra which ravages the land and kills off all the heroes except for three survivors: Ma Chao, Sima Zhao (Dynasty Warriors) and Hanbei Takenaka (Samurai Warriors). They, with a handful of troops, lead a valiant, last effort push to destroy the hydra in its pit of lava. They are forced to retreat, however, after loosing what little forces they had left. They are saved from total annihilation by Kaguya, a powerful mystic come to try and save the world. She transports them to a time before the battle started and reveals that the only way to beat the hydra is to save their fallen comrades in their final battles. Thus begins a journey through time as past mistakes are corrected and an army of legends is forged.The maps should be very familiar to you if you have played the recent instalments of Koei games, but they have been given a makeover with hellish scorched ground and fiery pillars of stone. I was quite amused by the way I was playing as an honourable 2nd century Chinese general massacring his way through an army on the beach of a tropical 21st century hotel or in a Japanese park in the middle of a city.There are many parts in the game that have genuine laugh out loud moments which is unusual for a dynasty warriors game. The cut scenes and dialogue in between have moments of hilarity, although it may not be immediately obvious until you understand the character's personality. The interactions between Da Ji, one of the main antagonists of the game, and Achilles, the Greek warrior of myth, are particularly laughably depressing. Most characters also have a special weapon that is just plain funny. Nothing beets riding around on a horse as a minotaur (which probably weighs ten times more than the horse) whacking your enemies with a giant ice cream, or a ninja charging at his enemies with baseball bat in hand!The bonds system from Dynasty Warriors 7 has been brought back with new ideas. Improving bonds with certain characters will open new dialogues and unlock new stages to complete. Having a friend in your 3-man team means they will occasionally help you in battle, even when they are recuperating.I think part of what makes a good game is a good and fitting soundtrack. The music featured uses metal and electronic mixes infused with traditional Asian instruments to make something uniquely suiting to Warriors Orochi. The songs are catchy and I really enjoy mowing down enemies to a kick-ass track.A major selling point for the game was the promise of a map editor to create your own stages with. I must say that I am thoroughly disappointed. There is barely anything worth editing with the tools they have provided. You have no control over where people spawn or what events take place during the battle which I would have thought would have been key features in this type of game. You can change the characters around so a completely different cast take part in the battle but the original character's names will be used instead of the new ones which I think is a bit pointless. You can also put certain types of troops on the battlefield; however this changes every troop type to the new type. For instance, you could be accompanying a group of sumo wrestlers in to a deadly hail provided by an army of enemy archers. This just takes the variety away for me. I think you should be able to assign a different troop type to each officer on the battlefield.You can choose a number of battlefield buffs which I think are quite a good idea. It means the enemy can start with high or low morale, make troops attack more aggressively, increase officer attack or speed, etc. You can pick more than one of these unlike the troops which is a positive step in the right direction. There is also a feature where you can change the sounds of weapons hitting your enemies. That can be a laugh! However, these are all overshadowed by a points system limiting the amount of game mechanics you can change. Effectively, this means that if you were to ignore changing any of the game mechanics you would be able to change just five officers in the whole stage! What a complete letdown. The only other two features it offers is the option to change the background music and what the officers say at important points during the battle which is quite a nice touch. Of course, you can play the campaign or even download more depressingly useless battlefield elements if you want but I just don't see the point.If hack-and-slashes are your thing, I would greatly recommend this game to you, especially if you plan on playing with friends. However, don't get it for its map editor. It really isn't worth it.

10.4.2012

If you're a big fan of the Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warrior or even the previous Warriors Orochi games, you'll love this one, it has all the good elements of the massive series, or if you've even never played any of these games, it will be an excellent starting point.Koei normally loosely base these games on historical events (Three Kingdoms era for Dynasty Warriors and Senkogu period for Samurai Warriors) but they have really let loose with this game, introducing characters from other titles, such as Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden titles), Achilles (from Legends of Troy), Joan of Arc (from Bladestorm), Ayane (Dead or Alive 4?) and Nemea (Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll) as well as a host of others,meaning there are a whopping 132 playable characters to choose from!The story of the game puts you right in the thick of it to start off, by everyone being killed by the Hydra, and you needing to travel back in time to help save all of your friends to even have a hope of defeating it.Koei introduced a new feature in this game, being able to customize and share your own "Mosou Battlefield", as you complete stages you'll be able to customize them in your own way, as you play that level, you'll unlock "edit points" to add in more soldiers, or different sound effects and such. I personally never checked out this feature because I had no interest in sharing or replaying any battles it hadn't already made me replay.The "town" feature from Dynasty Warriors 7 and Strike force has been kept, where you can purchase new weapons for your characters, host a tea-party to increase "bond" with other warriors (Which can be insanely confusing at first, if you switch characters)The way the level select is laid out is all over the place, you must build up bonds between certain officers to unlock certain bonus stages, which will change a certain battle to "redux" and there will be a different outcome. This feature, in my opinion, by the third chapter becomes increasingly annoying, having to re-do certain levels, it begins to feel extremely tedious.Graphically, the game as changed quite a bit over the years, it's not quite a beautiful looking game, but I think that is part of it's charm, it doesn't need graphics to carry it. Each character now has 2 new costumes added, at first I was confused seeing some characters as they had changed quite significantly, but for the most part they characters look excellent as always.In Dynasty Warriors 7, they added a feature where any warrior could wield any weapon, and at first I found this to be an excellent idea, but then realized there would be no reason to swap officers, and I think Koei realized this as well, the characters are back to wielding their traditional weapons (Ma Chao; a spear, Lu Bu; a halberd)The Achievements for this game aren't exactly easy, but I wouldn't say they were difficult, if you're buying this game for the hope of an easy 1000Gs I think you'd be best to look elsewhere.In closing:I absolutely LOVE Dynasty Warriors, Warriors Orochi and Samurai Warriors, I own every single one of them (Minus DW1, and SW3) and I find this game to be amazing, probably the best that the entire "Warriors" series has to offer, I enjoyed the story, I liked the characters, I even liked how the integrated other game characters into it, but even for all the love I have with this series, I found after a few hours of solid X button (Xbox) bashing and adding in a few presses of Y during an officer battle, even I got bored of this monotonous labor.It is an excellent game and well worth checking out, despite it's hindrance in graphics toward most modern games, and somewhat monotonous button bashing, you will enjoy it if you're a fan of the series. I hope you found this helpful.

14.3.2013

I strongly recommend buying this game if you liked 'Ninety-Nine Nights', it is definitely worth the price it is being offered at. This game has a high level of longevity, it feels a bit like a sandbox game; at first I thought this to be a negative as the game can feel 'copy and pasted' in some respects, however, this is to your advantage. After playing a mission the game allows complete customisation of the mission including enemy types and the numbers of enemies that spawn. During the first mission I thought the game was terrible and was about to give up and cut my loses, I thought that the boss was too hard to possibly beat and the game would be one that forces you to fight a boss for half an hour,

30.8.2014

So I haven't played it yet but since this site isn't the gaming version of rotten tomatoes I will stick with just the facts, I ordered this on bank holiday Monday and chose super save delivery because I couldn't care less about speed of dispatch and I work so a note saying 'we tried to deliver' would have been a pain. Still the information stated dispatch about 30th (today by posting this), with delivery time in September.Not only was the item dispatched on Tuesday but I walked through the door on Thursday to see it on the floor.Checked it out, let see came in the usual green xbox case as usual, factory sealed as per the 'new' fast delivery, checked it on my computer (just to make sure I didn't need to return it faulty)

7.9.2014

As with all Warriors titles you know exactly what you are going to get as nothing much changes from title to title. Having said that why change what clearly works? If you haven't played a warriors title before then this is your typical hack n slash, nothing innovative at all here and to the average person it may seem a little old fashioned however to fans of the Sengoku era of Japan or fans of the excellent novel Romance of the 3 kingdoms this is incredible to see the characters mixed together in a fantasy world. There are also characters from lots of other games such as Ryu Hayabusa and Achilles. It makes for a really enjoyable experience.

3.2.2014

obviously any fan of the series is likely to buy this anyway.But since i hadn't played the second in the orochi series i was concerned I wouldn't understand. I was happily surprised it even comes with a written summary of the previous stories.it brings ALL of the warriors from the dynasty and samurai warriors series and a few more just for fun! the story was great and i was impressed by its detail. its also nice and long.the weapon system encourages collecting loot and there are all the different difficulties for the experts who need a challenge (i never recommend the easiest, since i feel with many story-based games the first time can be the best). There are also 'redux'

29.1.2013

This is by far the best hack n slash in a while, the cross over between the 2 kingdoms is simply amazing.From playing Wo 1 & 2 this game is a HUGE improvement.Even though the voice over is japanese if your a true hack n slash fan and have been playing Dynasty warriors and samurai warriors over the year you'll find the game amazing, besides there are subtitles where you can understand whats going on from playing the other games i sort of imagined the voices, aha.I like how they used some original weapons mixed with the ones from the newer games, the special attack is awesome.You can easily get your moneys worth from this game.*Spoiler*There are multiple endings the true ending was amazing!

11.4.2012

I think that this game is a very effective game in making it fun for everyone. Unlike the other Warriors Orochi, Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games which seemed all quite similar i think this game is very unique. It has expanded on all areas and even though it is a button mashing game there is alot of strategy required. The story mode is very exciting and isn't too short and the amount of new characters also provide a very different type of gameplay when in a battle. The new musou battlefield mode is absolutely brilliant! You can basically make your own section of a story if you put in enough effort. Overall i think the game has changed for the best and i would highly recommend anyone to buy it or try it.

21.3.2013

Dynasty warriors has always been my favourite game. I own all of the games on multiple consoles (I'm aware how sad that makes me sound) But I just cant help it.If you are familiar when you know what to expect from this kind of title, and being an "orochi" game it is entirely fictional with historical characters.Normally I put up with the orochi games and I do not really like them as much as the normal series as they normal lack in combat, story, or just bore me. But this one is different. Its my favourite of the entire series so far.For those not familiar with this game series it is Historical fiction about ancient warlords in china in the latter Han period and the warring states period in Japan.

15.4.2012

Ok assuming most who buy this game will have played a warriors title before. Its the same gameplay as before as you would hope and expect. The main selling point for this game is the amazing roster of characters, you can not possibly get bored with the selection there are so many think around 136? The story leaves a lot to be desired but for the type of game this it doesnt ruin the enjoyment. You are basically travelling back in time to save the lives of warriors to help you fight a gigantic beast the hydra. I think a good thing to do with this game is do not look up the character roster as there will be some great suprises when playing the game with many characters you will not expect to see in this game.

29.11.2014

This was a thoroughly excellent game to play if your a fan of the Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors Franchises. I am a fan of both now as a result of this game where I was only a fan of Dynasty Warriors before. This game also brings in new characters from other games such as Dead or Alive 5 and the storyline is much more in depth than the previous warrior orochi games. With the Musou Battlefield and Gauntlet modes this adds much extra gameplay and fun to the game so this is definitely an improvement on the last game. Safe to say I will be playing this for a good while now! Would recommend this.

23.6.2012

I have always loved Dynasty, Samurai and Warriors Orochi Games and this is no different, there are over 120 unique characters and tons of stages. My only downside is that the voice overs are in Japanese which is a problem especially if you can't understand Japanese :D however there are subtitles in English and if you feel that the Japanese voices are annoying you, just turn the volume down on your TV :D

15.4.2016

Been a fan of Dynasty Warriors for years and always recommend them to my friends. Hadn't tried the Orochi or Samurai series but thought I'd try some thing different from Dynasty Warriors and I wasn't disappointed. Plenty of characters to unlock and battles to take them through. Definately a keeper and one to come back to between blockbusters like Halo or Dragon Age. You'll be playing it for years.

23.11.2012

Huge pannel of characters (DW7 XL + SW3 + Others), many maps and a pretty cool story mode with time travel notions in it (and time travel is always cool, right?). The gameplay is as always nervous and fun but there is some clipping and the graphics start to reallly get old. The Dynasty/Samurai Warriors fans will like it, but it might seem a little bit too repetitive for an outsider.

21.9.2014

Played ever since dynasty warriors 2, had every single one and all have matched my expectation, but this is hugely enthralling! best samurai/dynasty combination, a few surprises along the way but its what you have to expect with these hack and slash games! 5 stars! super.

Warriors Orochi 3 - Reviews

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