It feels like the Warriors series is constantly looking for a way to act smarter than its fans actually want it to be. The release of any given Dynasty, Samurai, or spin-off Warriors game will come with the promise of some new idea or other. We’ve had flexible combo systems, skill-based special gauges, weapon classes, squad controls. The last ‘innovation’ was the most sweeping of all, as Dynasty Warriors 9 swapped the series’ compact, enemy-packed battlefields for an astonishingly empty open world that, somehow, still wouldn’t run properly. The less said about that the better.
The thing is, I’d imagine the majority of Warriors fans are in the same boat as me. Perversely, this is a series beautiful entirely because of its mindlessness. Sweeping bright red enemy armies from the mini-map feels closer to the pleasure of a Tetris or an emptied pool table than the stresses of the hardcore action games Omega Force has seemed keen to copy in the past.
I’m happy to say that, with Warriors Orochi 4, the developers may have come around to my way of thinking. After a couple of hours with the latest iteration of the Warriors cross-universe spin-off, it’s clear this isn’t just a return to the classic format, but doubles down on its dumbest excesses in an absolutely delightful way.
I’ve long held that the best idea Omega Force ever had was to counteract the simplicity of its characters’ movesets by just making dozens of characters to try, so you never actually get a chance to get bored of them. Well, Warriors Orochi 4 has 170 of them, drawn from Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, previous Orochi games and, amazingly, Greek mythology. It’s a roster so big I’m told Koei Tecmo’s getting in touch with the Guinness Book of Records to see if it qualifies for a certificate. So that’s a plus.
Better, Orochi 4’s new combat system is a way to make things consistently more spectacular, rather than more skill-based. Every character now comes with a ‘Sacred Treasure’ weapon alongside their standard murder tool of choice. Tied to an always-building meter and activated simply by holding R1 (or equivalent shoulder button) when activating a weak, heavy or Musou attack, this lets you pull off a series of magic moves that are, almost universally, hilariously dumb.
Tadakatsu Honda summons a tiny tidal wave that he can skateboard around the battlefield, Liu Bei conjures up strange electric globes that just fall on people’s heads, and Fa Zheng, whose ‘normal’ weapon is a tiny magic carpet, somehow outdoes even that by having the ability to turn into a flaming boar and just run around for a while. There’s explosive rainbow dust, a kamehameha beam, and the ability to just make your horse appear out of thin air under your legs. It’s absolutely ludicrous - I love it.
Those who don’t care for Warriors’ dunderheaded charms aren’t likely to be swayed by any of this, of course, but after the muddy disaster of Dynasty Warriors 9, this feels like the perfect tonic for longtime fans. This promises to be the Warriors you remember, but moreso. I’m in.
Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and nothing about his love for Warriors games is ironic. Follow him on Twitter.
The Koei branch of Koei Tecmo has been known predominantly for one thing: the Warriors games. True, they did release management simulation titles such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga’s Ambition, but when someone says Koei, the immediate response is usually: “Oh Dynasty/Samurai/Hyrule/Fire Emblem Warriors (Orochi)“. They’ve built up a reputation as one of the leaders in the hack-and-slash/beat-em-up genre. That’s why Dynasty Warriors 9, their flagship franchise’s first foray into an open-world setting got such a bad rap; it was one of the most poorly optimized PC ports in recent memory. That being said, Warriors Orochi 4 presents a new opportunity. How will its graphics fare? Will performance be better compared to the mess from previous titles? Let’s find out in our PC benchmark and technical review.
Warriors Orochi 4 – System Requirements And Specs
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Win 7/8.1/10(64bit required)
- Processor: Core I5 2400 or over
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or over
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 20 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 11 or over
- Additional Notes: 640×480 pixel over, High Color
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Win 7/8.1/10(64bit required)
- Processor: Core i7 3770 or over
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or over
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 20 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 11 or over
- Additional Notes: 1920×1080 pixel, True Color
Author’s:
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Core i7 7700 @ 4.2 GHz
- Video: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 Ti (MSI Gaming)
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics Preset: High/Maxed out
- Network: 20 MBPS Unlimited Fiber-optic
- Display: Sony TV 1080p @60 Hz
Warriors Orochi 4 Review Ign
Graphics Settings
First things first, navigate to your Steam interface and go to Settings -> In-Game -> In-game FPS counter. Activate that just so you could see your FPS and performance in real-time while playing Warriors Orochi 4.
As for the graphics settings, here’s what you’ll see in the game’s options:
As mentioned, I’m using the “High” preset, which means everything’s enabled or maxed out. I do have the game running at a consistent 60 FPS.
Coincidentally, Warriors Orochi 4 has V-Sync enabled by default, and the only options you have are to lock it at 60 FPS or 30 FPS. This is actually good news. Ideally, you’d want uncapped framerates, but Koei’s Warriors franchise has never been known for dazzling everyone visually. And so limiting us to 60 FPS might be a better idea so as to avoid any screen tearing. Again, not ideal, especially for those with higher-end displays and rigs, but it is what it is for those looking for consistent performance.
You can tweak all of the graphics settings to find out what suits you best. Mix and match certain options to improve performance. Shadows, particles, ambient occlusion, and level of detail (LOD) tend to be the usual suspects when it comes to performance drops, so you can change those up if you need to.
Finally, if you’re still having FPS or performance issues and you have an Nvidia graphics card, go to your Nvidia Control Panel. Add Warriors Orochi 4 to the list of programs and change Power Management Mode from “Adaptive” to “Prefer Maximum Performance.” It’s the same thing we did in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 to optimize the game to run at very high framerates. Hopefully, this will allow you to get a slight boost in Warriors Orochi 4 as well.
Graphics Comparisons
Next, let’s take a look at some screenshot comparisons based on the various presets. These ones are for the High preset which I’m using:
All right, the game does look gorgeous. At a consistent 60 FPS, I haven’t experienced any stuttering or slowdowns at all after several hours of playing; no performance hits. Animations were crisp and fluid, and the cuts to show Combined Magic supers were flawless. You will, however, notice that Yukimura Sanada’s feet are passing through that bridge there. Texture overlap tends to be a problem with these games. While you won’t normally recognize them, once you do it does become glaring.
Medium preset:
For the medium preset, Warriors Orochi 4 still looks decent. It could help with your framerate if you have a lower-end machine. At the same time, no one’s going to barge in your room and ask why you’re playing an iPhone game.
Low Preset:
Ouch! While the background may look decent for low graphics settings, one look at the character and face models will tell you that something’s definitely off. Take a look at those peasant soldiers surrounding Yukimura and you’ll swear that they looked like discount mannequins. Pes 2018. Hell, even mannequins today have a more human-like expression than those guys.
You might think this is just relegated to Mock Battles. After all, these are the cannon fodder the game throws your way in this mode. Well, prepare to meet them in actual missions as well! So yes, unless you want to have nightmares about faceless spear-wielding troopers chasing you around, better avoid using the low preset if you can help it.
Special Effects Graphics Comparisons
Of course, the main selling point of Warriors Orochi 4 is the special effects that you can spam all over the battlefield. How would they look? Well, let’s check. I’ve arranged the images from low to high presets this time around so you can see how the special effects have improved based on the settings. I used the Gullinbursti Boar as an example.
Display, Audio, Controls, And Network
One more important setting you’ll want to change is in the Display options. If you want to lessen the screen clutter, just change the health gauges option to only show the ones for officers. We don’t really need to know how much health peasant soldiers and cannon fodder have, now do we?
For audio, keep subtitles on since the game is fully voice-acted in Japanese. This is actually much better than having an English dub (something that has plagued Koei Tecmo games for a long time).
For controls, well, given that Warriors Orochi 4 is a Koei Tecmo game, don’t expect to find decent use from a mouse and keyboard setup. As always, use a controller.
Lastly, while network options aren’t available in-game, it does have to be mentioned in a technical review. I have a 20 MBPS uncapped/unlimited fiber-optic connection. I am not 100 percent certain if there’s a problem with the netcode or matchmaking of Warriors Orochi 4, but I could not join a single game in progress. This means forgoing the game’s online aspect for regular Story Mode missions and Battle Arena. The only way you could probably get it to work was making your own lobby, getting the lobby code, and letting your friends know so they could join. Thankfully, local or couch co-op is possible, so you won’t have to face enemy hordes alone.
Final Thoughts
Warriors Orochi 4 has exceeded my expectations performance-wise. Unlike Dynasty Warriors 9, which has become a laughingstock due to not being optimized for PCs — and woefully, other systems as well — it seems that Koei Tecmo has learned from past lessons when it comes to Warriors Orochi 4. The animations are fluid, and there’s barely any slowdown. Barring a few caveats, Warriors Orochi 4 runs smooth as silk at 60 FPS.
Don’t forget to check out our official review of Warriors Orochi 4 for PC later this weekend.
I’m a small business owner who’s also writing on the side, contributing in various websites under the Enthusiast Gaming umbrella — Destructoid, Flixist, Daily Esports, PlayStation Enthusiast, and PC Invasion.
My Steam library has 1,131 games at the moment so we definitely have a lot of things to talk about.
The Warriors series is one I have very little experience with. Like cheap romance novels, I was turned aside by the majority of them in my youth because to me, who believed Batman: Arkham City was the crème de la crème of video games, they just didn’t have much to offer. Hack and slash? That’s what I already do with my RPG characters, what more could there be to the genre? True I loved the spinoff take of Hyrule Warriors several years ago but why should I take a game like this with such a lack of seriousness so seriously? I find that with Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and now Warriors Orochi 4, you simply just cannot take them seriously. And that’s where the fun takes root.
When Worlds Collide
Warriors Orochi in and of itself is not an original series and is instead a spinoff, bringing the wide casts of both Dynasty and Samurai Warriors together in the Orochi world: a mysterious land inside time and space that forcefully blends the two together. Whereas in the past our legion of warriors and scholars have banded together to destroy god-like creatures in this installment the Gods (yes, all of the gods of EVERY pantheon) simply decide to make a new world and our heroes stumble into it. Zeus, intent on creating his new existence, intends to use a powerful set of serpent bracelets to bind this reality together until they mysteriously go missing under the watchful eyes of the gods. As universes collide it falls upon our familiar heroes to band together and ensure these titanic relics do not fall into the wrong hands.
This is certainly not the best point for a new player jumping into the series, though the game does its best to compensate; as a gamer who relishes strong narratives and bridging between different stories it was a relief to have summaries of the past Warrior Orochi games both in the loading menus and the character menu between games. Leading villains of both series do reappear as powerful forces to be reckoned with, but unless you are already invested in the franchise there really isn’t much effort to hook new players on why these characters are evil. One too many times dialogue took the turn of, “The peasants are being attacked,” as a signature of villainy. While some of that simply falls onto pushing the narrative in wider directions and trying to make room for the 170 playable characters that this game touts, it doesn’t help in establishing these ne’er-do-wells from a face in the crowd.
All Out War!
And crowds you will certainly be facing! For newcomers to the series, Warriors Orochi, like its pre-existing franchises, focuses on slaying your way across the battlefield. Forming a team of 3 officers from the vast army of playable characters, you’ll end up swapping between them as you charge the battlefield, enemy officers and more while slaying the hapless mooks who dare stand in your way and claiming enemy territory as your own. Each of the maps bled together for me, and it disappointed me even further to discover that these maps were often simply redressed versions of those found in Dynasty and Samurai Warriors, which occasionally featured two of them mishmashed together. It certainly didn’t help that repetition is found throughout the level design; from enemy soldiers looking the same (down to the facial design) to enemy officers quickly repeating the same defeat lines on the battlefield.
Each of the playable cast, however, does feel incredibly (and sometimes overwhelmingly) unique! After getting hands on with almost 60 characters, each separate combatant truly possess their own skill-set and engaging battle techniques. With the almost pushed requirement for character switching, the right combination of warriors makes combat flow fantastically while capitalizing wonderfully with each warrior’s style. Even in sharing Mystic Items, weapons given to the warriors by the Gods themselves, each character has a unique finishing move. Later, as you play the game, several characters will achieve god-like forms with their weapons, gaining new attacks and abilities to use on the battlefield. Even with all this variety, most matches I played often simply degraded to a slew of explosions and screams on the field in dazzling displays of power and magic.
Combat, however, feels incredibly limited in some respects. Attacks are directly tied to character animations, requiring your Warrior to resume their combat stance from their previous attack before chaining into another combo. While this can be negated by rapidly switching between characters on the fly (something that is so easy it feels almost forced), or engaging in magical combat, the first level practically drags through its simplistic tutorial system. This was only aggravated and magnified by my particular console; its clear from the start that Warriors Orochi 4 was designed for Xbox One first before the PC build was completed. Despite having keybind menus, other menus are incredibly limited and playing with a keyboard and mouse seems to only increase combat delay. In attempting to remap my keybinds, I could not map any keys to my mouse, meaning that I had to abandon my trusty Razer keys and take up a PS4 controller before I could finish the first level. Despite the tutorials teaching abilities with Xbox commands, Warriors Orochi 4 truly feels as if its still living in the early PS2 era.
Love Is A Battlefield, Too!
The main story, however, more than makes up for some of the clunkier aspects of an otherwise competent combat system. Much like the spin-kicking-knife-shoed warriors on horseback, the narrative doesn’t ever take itself too seriously even if it lasts longer than it has a right to. Instead it decides to have a ton of fun with itself throughout the campaign, often poking fun at some character’s one-note personalities. While the middle can be an absolute slog to get through, often spending repeated series of missions simply to recruit characters, the beginning and the end of the main story are some of the most entertaining parts. Every skirmish ends with some high-melodrama about the god’s bickering, more than once drawing a laugh or a groan. That’s certainly not to say that you can’t see the ending coming from a kingdom away, but the path the story takes to it and the dialogue that paves the road makes it worthwhile to enjoy.
Character interactions, however, are the absolute prime content of the story. Drawing on a long history in both Warriors series, there is a great amount of interaction and interjection between characters reminiscent of relationships in the Fire Emblem series. Those who share the battlefield together develop a stronger bond and may share more than some tea at a later time. These are told in visual novel style sections between battles and are a great distraction from some of the over-the-top melodrama, though even these are not impervious to such ridiculousness. Interactions are often lighthearted and revealing as characters mesh, growing together as they progress onward in their journey.
Despite a great narrative, as a newcomer to the series there isn’t much to hold me with Warriors Orochi 4. Outside of replaying major story missions, there is only one other additional online mode: a 3v3 focused battle arena that does feature some separated character progression from the campaign. However, with so much of the 170 strong roster sharing similar progression schemes there wasn’t much of a draw in the online play. While it’s certainly fine, I can’t help but feeling it stands as a tack-on rather than a full-fledged mode of play. You can also play the game in co-op online, with split screen support for the console releases.
Warriors Orochi 4 also contains a large slew of DLC with a wide host of costumes for the games 170 characters, with more to be released over the next few weeks. In looking at the system, however, the Season Pass does not cover the entirety of the released DLC to this date, meaning that if you want every collectable, mount and costume you’ll be paying for almost a second copy of the base game. While DLC has become a begrudgingly accepted part of the gaming industry, this is perhaps one of the more convoluted and backhanded systems I’ve seen in the last few years, dodging the season pass to slip in an extra high-value costume pack for the same price.
Gameplay – 7/10
While Warriors Orochi 4 does have its drawbacks, the sheer number of possibilities sets it apart from other games in the genre. You can fight any way you’d like, but the building blocks of the system are so simple that anyone can easily pick up and play their way through the battlefield. Because of that most games can suffer from a lack of depth, but Warriors Orochi 4 manages to stay afloat through sheer volume.
Graphics/Sound – 6/10
The graphics are hardly something to write home about. Maps in many cases feel muddy and blend together, even with literal glowing objects dotting the landscape. Enemy mooks are often the exact same person throughout maps, and nothing pops to the eye or tickles the fancy. While I had no problems playing it on a mid-range PC, the console versions have reportedly faced graphical hiccups with some of the more intense magical attacks. The music is perhaps the one saving grace, always injecting energetic rock or electronic riffs to keep the tempo of combat high and pumping. Even these fade into the background, however, as I cannot remember a single melody or theme in the entire OST.
Innovation – 5/10
Depending on where you’re entering this game from, its hard to see where this line shifts. For those who played Dynasty Warriors 9, this game can feel like a refreshing regression to the series, but sheer volume and backpedaling do not a greater game make. Players who skipped the latest Dynasty installment may find some of the systems stale, but the Bonds system is certainly a narrative breath of fresh air.
Learning Curve – 5/10
Like any Warriors game, Orochi 4 is easy to pick up and play, and focuses more on simplicity and humor than charming people with a deep system. I was quickly hammering out masterful combos within my first two hours, leaving the other chunk of my playtime sadly dull as I waited for the next bite of story.
Value – 9/10
The sheer volume of playable content cannot be understated. While the bulk of the story does indeed chug, its still an incredible slice of content to tear through. With every character having weapon combinations to unlock, skills, magic, fusions, abilities, weapons and dialogue, you’ll easily find yourself hours past the traditional finish time with plenty still to do
Overall – 6.5/10
Warriors Orochi 4 is a solid addition to the long history of the Warriors franchises, with more punch than you can shake a bo staff at. Fans of the series will find a lot to sink their teeth into and more than just a little bit to enjoy, but newcomers may have a hard time investing into the series especially after repeated recruitment missions kill the flow of the narrative. Even considering that, it’s hard not to feel that a lot of corners have been cut with even some of the most simplistic bugs (such as looping sound at a held button) still making their presence apparent repeatedly in the final version. While flashy animations feel like the newest generation of gaming, the entire system still feels as if it were built on a console from the early 2000s. Fun comes first in this installment of the Warriors franchise titan, but it still feels as if the series is recovering from the blows laden at the feet of Dynasty Warriors 9.
Pros
- Fun, melodramatic narrative
- Diverse and deep pool of playable characters
- Enjoyable and flashy combat mechanics
Cons
- Clearly built on a system too old to develop new methods on
- Middle of the Narrative can drag
- Rife with bugs and glitches throughout
- Contains a convoluted and startling amount of DLC, worth the same MSRP for the game.