Warriors Orochi 4 impressions after playing for a bit:
-Got this on the Switch. For the most part, it looks and runs really well (docked). Appears to be running at 1080P and runs at 30 FPS with dips here and there. Looks on par with Samurai Warriors 4 on PS3, I.E. has some pretty nice character models. Some stages may have more dips than others. IIRC it's 60 FPS on Steam, Xbone, and on PS4. Have already seen some complaints about the PC port so would recommend checking this out on the consoles to be on the safe side.
-There's two game modes- Story and Battle Arena. Battle Arena is a 2P vs. (or 1P vs. the CPU) game where you run around a small battlefield trying to conquer and hold onto points throughout. For whatever reason, this mode runs noticeably worse than the Story mode does, even though there's way less going on and the map is much smaller. Weird.
-Saw some complaints on Steam that the game seems lower budget than WO3, that it's missing cut scenes and the like, and has no connection to the previous games. This is 100% bullshit. It still has movie cut scenes, mentions the events of the previous game right in the beginning, and it's easily on par with WO3 so far from a quality standpoint.
-There's no more camp area where you walk around. Instead it's menu-based and works much faster because of it. You can also do mock battles inbetween levels to test out character moves and new abilities.
-The game plays in the 'old school' musou style, I.E. just like WO3 and on set maps. No Dynasty Warriors 9 type open-world or completely changed up gameplay going on here. Initially it feels just like WO3, although the Samurai Warriors cast play like their SW4 versions.
-After you clear the intro stage and start playing the first "real" level, however, the characters get magic items, which give you three unique special attacks to use for each character (and an additional magic gauge, which autofills pretty quickly and drains a bit for weak attacks, takes a whole gauge for strong attacks, and takes the whole gauge plus the musou gauge for the strongest attacks), basically giving the game a kind of Sengoku Basara play style (or DW9...in a good way!) and giving you even more attacks to use for combos. Combine this with switching characters in the middle of combos and you can go nuts!
-Was wondering where mounts were initially. They're now part of the magic system and can be summoned!
Back to it!