Warriors of Orochi 4 Ultimate – PS4 Review

by The King

Game Intro.

When starting Warriors of Orochi 4 Ultimate I was thrown in to a world of nostalgia as I hadn’t played one of these awesome slashers since the Dynasty Warriors 2 from way back in the PlayStation 2 days.

Instantly I felt connected to the game and got straight in to the game play and was then given a new direction with the story line as we were introduced to the Greek gods, they seem to want to manipulate the course of humanity, sending rings of power down from on high to steer the course of events to their own ends. 

If you are a fan of the old school Dynasty Warriors, Samurai warriors or the over powered hack and slashers then this game will be right up your street.

If you are new to the franchise, then imagine being the protagonist of your own playable Anime . 
You are a leader of an army, one of great renown, willing, ready and able to take on entire armies on your own with ease and grace.

You smash through the infantry and bow men with little to no effort, the Generals put up much more of a fight and need to be dispatched in order to win ground push the tides of battle in to your favour.

The fact there are 177 playable characters is just amazing and with each character having their own style and weapons plus move sets which makes this part of the game is very impressive.

I began my journey into the lore and the game play, thrusting myself at enemies, defeating wave after wave, earning new characters and watching the story unfold before me.

Gameplay

So I played Warriors of Orochi 4 Ultimate whilst streaming over 2 occasions, and off stream for a number of hours, in this time I unlocked around 50 characters including some I remembered from the Dynasty Warrior’s era of games which I’m pretty sure I played back in the good ol’ PlayStation 2 days.

The game was filled with nostalgia and moved fluidly. 

The customisation is fairly open, with the selection of available characters each having their own dynamic fighting style, having the ability to change between 3 core characters mid battle as well as the fact you can change and modify the weapons that your chosen characters can use.

You negotiate your way through battalions of enemies using your weapon as a way to clear through them and working towards your objective, whether that be to clear an escape or to meet an enemy general on the battlefield.

A little tip, make sure to work out the map system and get to know how to navigate it well , otherwise you will get lost, I may have got lost a few times and at one point I may have, may have, failed a mission due to getting lost. Haha.

The story was intriguing as there was a clash of Japanese / Chinese cultures mixed with some western cultures and Greek mythology chucked in for good measure which all amalgamated and  although it would seem that this should be quite jarring it worked out, it  didn’t leave you confused or feeling as though the attempt had failed, the story still felt cohesive and didn’t take away from the game at all.

Upsides

Playing Warriors of Orochi 4 Ultimate and having the original Japanese audio on, I felt added to the depth and feel of the game, plus it made me remember a lot of the Japanese I had long since forgot.

Graphically and design wise the game looks great with the many differing characters all looking wonderful and adding a personal touch to your party choice, the scenery you pass through is well put together and the special moves are great to watch.

Figuring the combos out takes a bit of time and effort but some of them are very visually pleasing

The special moves and magic moves are like something straight out of an Anime, to the point where I initiated the super tag team move whilst mimicking the moves to and shouting KamehameHa in time to the small cinematic.

Even though the missions are somewhat repetitive the game itself keeps you entertained and wanting to come back for more.

Weapon customisation and the multiple costume add ons extend the changeability and customisation of your game making the whole experience more personal, as mentioned before being able to make a party of 3 people and a support team from 177 playable characters means that you , 1. Have a lot of personalisation in your team, but also , 2. Means you got a lot of playability from testing all the characters out in order to figure which of them suit your gaming style and or go well with your favourite party members.

Downsides

I found the camera to be a bit of a pain, whilst running through the map it would at times feel strained as though it was fighting against the movement of my character, if the camera hit a wall or if you got too near a wall you could barely see anything at all , the camera would also sometimes get stuck at certain angles meaning you had to completely reposition your character and move the camera from there.

Whilst I understand what could be a possible reasoning behind this, I still found it a bit disappointing that at the start we were introduced to magic and our characters were given new special moves, but as I unlocked new characters I noticed that certain magic moves were replicated amongst multiple characters instead of each character having a completely unique move set.

As mentioned in the above comment I completely understand there are 177 characters and I do see how extensive the level of work that would be, buuuuut, even though there is an amazing number of characters in a single game, I feel that time should have been taken to make sure every one of them were fully individual and unique in their experience.

There was a lot of written dialogue, I was able to get a lot of the story without having to sit through the level of text that was handed out to us, plus on stream we ended up skipping through a fair chunk of the written sections in order to keep the flow going and not to bog down the audience.

Overall Thoughts

Warriors of Orochi 4 Ultimate was enjoyable on the whole and one I will definitely be going back to, I look forward to working my way through  and unlocking all of the staggering 177 playable characters. And yes I know I’ve said that many many times, but I think it’s was over stating as that in itself is quite the feat!

I would score this game a 7/10