Orochi Musou: Dyansty Warriors Vs. Samurai Warriors!

[bork]

Got the game today; here's some quick thoughts:

-You only start out with a few characters available.  Some characters can be earned just for finishing a stage (they are locked in cages and must be freed), so earning new characters looks to be faster this time.

-Four main storylines paths are available, and look to be comprised of 15 stages each.  You get two stages opened up for beating the first level, and can play them in any order.

-There are no selectable bodyguards from what I can tell.  You'll just get whoever happens to be with you on that particular level or part of the level.

-Three armies on each stage...yours, those opposed, and the Orochi soldiers, who remind me of dark elves in samurai armor.

-Stages feel like a fusion of Dynasty and Samurai Warriors levels.  You can encounter footsoldiers and generals from both games.

-There are three character types: Speed, Power, and Technique.  This affects use of the R1 button.

-The game play has been changed to revolve around the R1 button attacks.  Gone are the individual techniques and rolls from Samurai Warriors 2, as are the arrow attacks from Dynasty Warriors.  Instead, depending on his or her character type, the R1 button used in different combinations with the combo system will produce NEW character specific attacks and abilities.

-You choose a team of three characters and can switch between them at any time, except when on horseback.  Each character has his or her own life and musou meter.  You can choose any character you want to play as after each level.

-You no longer get musou by killing enemies.  Instead, switching your character out will let him or her charge musou to max and heal completely.  This is likely because...

-...The difficulty is HARDER than all the previous games.  I was getting my ass handed to me on normal on the first stage for a good while before I cleared away all the enemies; there's more characters that show up on the screen at the same time (with no slowdown, amazingly enough), and they can really let you have it.  It's a welcome change.

-You gain character experience which can be individually used to help level up characters inbetween levels.  Characters also level up during game play as normal.  Weapons and abilities can still be found as well.

-The music is easily the best out of any Musou game, period.

-The speed feels a bit faster to me than previous games.

That's all for now.  So far, I am absolutely loving this.  The only thing this game needs (unless it's there and I haven't earned it yet) is a team-based musou attack.  This game is automatically awesome and is a must-buy for anyone who has ever liked a Musou game.

[Van Cruncheon]

sold!

[bork]

It's so good that I'm playing with tears in my eyes.  It's nice getting some characters unlocked after each stage, too, since this game has like 77 playable characters. 

[Junpei the Tracer!]

I seen the trailer and it looks good especially switching between 3 characters.

[bork]

So I made it to the last stage of the dragon campaign, and am getting my ass soundly handed to me.  The stage's look is like something out of The Lord Of The Rings, and the music is equally epic enough for a grade A ass whuppin'.  I was doing a good job with my level 60+ Tachibana clearing out everything, and then fucking LU BU comes out of nowhere and OWNS ME in like two seconds.  I hear Orochi himself is even worse. 

[bork]

My buddy just wrote a review for the game.

A Bunk Half-assed Review on Musou Orochi

by muckson

Final Word (for people that don't want to read the entire review):
My final word is that if you have medium interest in musou games this is a must buy.  Otherwise rent it first.

I'm not some kind of Japan-o-phile that loves manga, anime, and maid cafes.  I happen to live in Japan, be married to a Japanese girl, and love the country.  It's all a coincidence.  Sure I like video games, but who doesn't? However, I do have one weakness that is predominant in this country, and that is musou games.  These musou games, such as the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors series, sell like crazy no matter how many sequels come out.  The gamer populace goes bananas for these games.

And so do I. 

I love them.  I've bought a couple of the games twice I love them so much.  I'm currently playing through Dynasty Warriors 5 Special - a mix of DW5 and DW: Extreme Legends only on Asian Xbox360s - though I had already passed it with all the characters once before.  For one it looks beautiful on the 360 compared to the PS2, but truth be told I'm not bored with it yet.  I borrowed Samurai Warriors 2 from our very own lyte edge and loved it.  It really is an improvement on the other game especially when I played as much as I did.  I've played so many Musou games that if someone called me at 3:00 in the morning, woke me up, and randomly asked "What's the best way to catch Guan Yu in the Thousand Li Journey Stage but still get the most bonuses?"

I'd have to ask, "From Dynasty Warriors 3, 4, or 5?"

I've even begun learning some of the Kanji of the characters for these games because I have been playing Japanese versions of them over the last couple years.  It's a good thing that I did because just a week ago the newest release in Koei's Musou series was just put out only in Japan.  The name of this masterpiece is Musou Orochi.  It is a wonderful Ode for fans of these games.  This game is a mix of both the Dynasty Warriors characters and Samurai Warriors characters all in one game.  It's nothing less than a musou lover's wet dream.  I was never expecting it so for me it was more like waking up to a surprise hand job from Jennifer Love Hewitt (and if you don't like her put someone else's name there and smile). 

The game is a fantasy meet up between both worlds.  The devil Orochi brought them together to fight.  He captured and beat up a lot of people bringing them to his side locking others away.  Some have escaped though. 

In this game there are DW enemies, SW enemies, and Orochi army enemies.  They are mixed randomly so that any general could be leading all the forces together.  For example Orochi bowmen will shoot at you whilst chinese soldiers attack from the flank and the Japanese general and bodyguards charge headlong into you and your soldiers.  This can be in any combination.  As far as I am concerned this adds a great deal to the charm since they all mix so seamlessly.  (On an unrelated note the only thing that would make this game any cooler would be the addition of some of the Gundam characters from Gundam Musou, but that's just silly even in a fantasy Orochi/ancient China/Warring states period Dream Meet up).  In this game you choose three characters and rotate them.  You can choose any characters available at the start, and there are only a few - hence the reason I used a pro-action replay to get them all unlocked.  I had expected all characters to be available at the start since this was a dream match game, and was disappointed when they weren't all available.  Thank you lyte edge for helping me realize my dream.  And thanks code cracker guy.  It's easy enough to find new characters though so there is little to worry about if you don't want to cheat.

The game plays like Samurai Warriors rather than Dynasty Warriors.  Those of you that don't care much for these games won't know the difference, but for those of us that do we can tell.  It's a great deal like fighting game connoseurs (sp) being able to tell the difference between SNK and Capcom games while others just call them fighting games, unable to tell the difference.

The move styles from each character - the ones that I have played so far that is - remain the same from the game they originally came from.  Guan Yu's moves are the same as they were in the latest DW game, and Musashi's are the same as his from the SW game.  The moves are added by the experience level of the character as well as the amount of usage the character gets rather than the weapon.  The system for increasing the strength of the character is also the same as the last SW game in that you collect experience and this raises attack, defense, speed, etc.  Personally I liked the DW method better of collecting attack-ups and defense-ups ranging from +2 to +8, but this method works better for the game.  You can level up the characters outside of the battlefield by taking the experience you earned and giving it to them in the "Barracks" screen.  You can also use those same points to blend weapons, power them up, add elements (more than one at a time although don't expect fire and ice to blend as well as death and wind), or add element slots.  This is all necessary too because the game is

HARD.

I think since you can use 3 characters at once and they can be leveled relatively easy this makes sense.  Furthmore if the character is rotated out his or her life and musou slowly climb back to max so you can rotate them in at full.  It doesn't matter since it is likely that you will rarely be able to keep your character out long enough to do so unless you take the time to carefully level them to be strong enough for each successive stage. 

Of course there is a good hard and a bad hard.  The good hard about this game is that the enemies block, even the common soldiers, and thier defense is high so you can't just swipe three times and kill 40 of them.  If they team up on you, which may happen if you rush in rather than moving slowly, they will attack as a swarming team and murder you in seconds.  Sometimes they swarm you because you are doing badly and the enemy general sends them off for an attack.  I thought this was innovative and a vast improvement over the other musou games.  No it's not perfect but if you wanted a perfect opponent you wouldn't be playing video games you would be out doing martial arts. 

The bad hard about this game is that from time to time a character that is powerful enough to kill you in three hits will show up.  It can be a random no name Orochi general (Orochi generals are one of the more awesome designs) or Fuuma as a back-up general in the middle of the stage.  I hated this.  You can save in the middle of the stage which take care of this problem, but it doesn't change the fact that on normal difficulty this is a cheap way to increase challenge.  I have yet to get far on the hard difficulty in which the soldiers are powerful enough to kill you in 3 hits, and I won't be going near the chaos difficulty unless I want a good laugh at how easy I die.

It should be said that the AI of your allies has also increased so if you stay with them and fight along the stage you will be less likely to suddenly die.  This of course does not apply to when you have to rescue a character on your side or if you have to chase someone down in a stage.  In those particular scenarios the characters still will not fight unless you are there and none of your allies will actually persue the fleeing enemy, which means these stages are still very annoying.  Also be careful that your ally generals you are progressing with don't get the sweet shot on the enemy generals - as they tend to do - because you won't get the experience for it.

The story is interesting.  However, I've only played through Shu so far so I won't pretend that I know the whole outline of all stories, but the plot of trying to free Liu Bei from the clutches of Orochi was intriguing.  Along the way you will meet with other generals, releasing them to add to your army along the way.  The interactions and conversations are fairly clever but I wonder how they will translate them into English.  For instance the conversation between Sun Ce and Ranmaru Mori (the Wu scenario) in which Mori discusses the fact that he cannot understand what type of man Sun is was funny.  Then Sun tells him that he can choose his own path and Mori of course joins in a rush since he is of course childish and lost.  Similar conversations between Zhao Yun and Magoichi Saika were also amusing especially since Saika seems interested in little more than girls and Zhao won't stop going on about finding Lui Bei.  If you are a fan of all these games this is one of the best parts.  You get to see which of your favorite characters got caught and which were able to escape Orochi as you build an army and eventually take him on.  Also the interactions are a nice touch.  I am a huge sucker for "What if" scenerios.

The music, which lyte edge insists is the best, is no more than pretty good.  I like traditional music for these kind of games and while there are definitely traditional instruments in the songs, they are drowned by the electronic-techno sound to the game music.  I will speak in favor of the music by pointing out that the songs are in general dark and very urgent which adds to the sense of emergency and forboding throughout the game.  I think that the mood is fairly scary since it's set in a demon world and the ally forces are small and weak from the start.  A good job was done to highlight this mood. 

Some of the stages are reused while (I believe) some are original.  The Nanman stage from DW5 is in there, music and all, and you attack Sima Yi who is working for Orochi.  The secret paths are also there so those that know where to find them get a special little treat.  Cao Cao's escape is also in there too but used in a different way.  You will also notice some SW2 stages as well, but I can't remember the names of them off-hand.

The graphics are good but they are PS2.  This will likely hit the 360 but not for a while.  If you're having fun you won't notice anyhow so it's a moot point.  There are other bells and whistles like the gallery and free modes, but this game seems to have used all of the PS2's memory and disc space to hold the story mode and character roster.  There are 4 story modes in which you are NOT allowed to use any character, so don't expect a Lu Bu, Miyamoto Musashi, Maeda Keiji team to beat every story line.  I think this was done on purpose.  There are all sorts of abilities rather than items, lots of weapons to pick up, lots of experience to gain, new use of musou attacks, and on and on.  This is more of a new game than any installment of the Musou Series' games even though it is no more than a mix of what seems the best of the DW and SW games. 

If you like musou games you need to get it.  If you don't then I say you ought to wait because the Japanese version will kill you from trying to comprehend what's happening or why you died.  The North America and PAL versions have been announced but I don't know when they will come.  Honestly I think this was nothing more than a "Thank you" to the fans that have pushed Koei to one of the top positions in the gaming industry.  I'm happy it came out, and although the story modes are long and there are lots of characters and abilities to collect, it might not catch new players but rather confuse them.  It's a terrible reason to not send people to the store but this game has so much going on that it might frustrate the typical Devil May Cry/Lost Planet player and while there is an rpg element to it, rpg lovers might not take to it as well.  This is a musou game and it's for us musou lovers. 

My final word is that if you have medium interest in musou games this is a must buy.  Otherwise rent it first.

I hope you like my review and it was at least a little informative.

Good review, but he left out his thoughts on multiplayer. (He's not a big fan of the game in 2P)  Also that in multiplayer, you have to use the same characters for both players' teams, due to technical limitations.

What I would like to see in a sequel (or upgrade of the game on the 360 and/or PS3) are more new characters (Musou Orochi only has two new entries, both villains) and online co-op play or system link at the very least.  I like multiplayer in Musou games, but found some stages just too dark or foggy to see where I was going when playing split screen,

Also as much as I love Musou Orochi...Sengoku Basara 2 is still the champ in my book.  Capcom nailed it with that game.

[MrAngryFace]

whens it out here and for what systems

[bork]

There hasn't been an announcement of an English release yet, but we all know it's going to happen for sure...just have to wait for Gundam Musou to come out first, I think.  Musou Orochi is a PS2-only game, but since Koei released Shin Sangoku Musou 4 Special (A version of DW5 that only came out in Japan), DW5 Empires, SW2, and SW2 Empires (which only came out in English on 360) for the 360, a port to either the 360 or PS3 seems pretty likely later on down the line, I think.

I really would have preferred to have seen Orochi Musou on the PS3 instead of Gundam Musou.  I'm a much bigger fan of those characters than I am of giant robots, but I need to get over it already and get into Gundam Musou since I keep hearing good things about it.

[MrAngryFace]

I love Sam War 2 Empires so far. I didnt like it at first but its really grown on me.

[bork]

I really feel like Musou Orochi is getting overlooked by people elsewhere...it's kinda sad I think.  Yet the game is selling well, so clearly Japanese players are all over it.

[bork]

Xbox 360 version just came out here today, and Warriors Orochi hits the U.S. next week.  Time for a thread revival!

The game looks fantastic on 360...so colorful.  Models and environments look better than SW2 360 too, but they're not up to Gundam Musou standards.