In many ways, I couldn’t be happier with Dynasty Warriors Origins. The revitalization of what had become a very tired franchise is mostly a successful one, modernizing its gameplay elements while retaining what made it so special in the first place. You just can’t get that immense ‘1 vs. 1,000’ power fantasy anywhere else, and Dynasty Warriors Origins does it better than ever.

Rest assured that for the most part, this is still a Dynasty Warriors game through and through. You’ll rampage across massive battlefields, taking out key positions and removing enemy officers from play to gain the advantage - often laying waste to thousands of soldiers unlucky enough to be on your path from A to B.

But the gameplay loop has evolved in so many ways. For one, weapon types aren’t just different ways to hit the same normal / strong attack combos in sequence, instead offering unique mechanics that set them apart from each other. New elements like grand tactics and ambush charges also add a wonderfully cinematic feeling to battles when they happen, ensuring that something monumentally exciting happens on almost every map.

Then there’s the story, which has also seen a pretty major shift, and it’s one I have mixed feelings about. The move to a sole playable protagonist is a pretty bold change on developer Omega Force’s part, and while other officers are playable (and extremely powerful) in a limited capacity, this’ll probably be a letdown for long-time series fans hoping to get stuck in with a returning favorite.

Return to the Three Kingdoms

As ever, Dynasty Warriors Origins’ narrative is based on that of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Three distinct factions are locked in a power struggle as each attempts to unify China under one banner as the influence of the Han dynasty begins to wane.

Origins’ story presents things a little differently. While still featuring the era’s major events such as the Yellow Turban Rebellion, Dong Zhuo’s tyrannical reign, and the pivotal Battle of Red Cliffs, we do it all through the eyes of an original protagonist.

This approach comes with its own set of successes and drawbacks. You’re given a lot of agency in the officers you wish to get to know better via bonding events and optional battles, especially later in the game where you need to decide on which of the three factions you’ll join. This, in turn, can change the latter half of Origins greatly, with you fighting different battles and armies based on your choices. That naturally makes for a healthy amount of replay value as you can go back and explore other routes via New Game Plus.

On the other hand, the shift to a single playable protagonist has plenty of faults. For one, the hero is aggressively bland. He barely registers any kind of expression during cutscenes and has no voice lines of his own outside of flavor text in battle. Plus, his story just isn’t very interesting with an amnesiac narrative that culminates in a pretty predictable payoff.

It just ultimately doesn’t add much value to the timeless and still very engaging Three Kingdoms plot. I do feel that having the option to create your own character - like in other Koei Tecmo games such as Nioh 2, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and Rise of the Ronin - could’ve remedied this problem to a degree. At least then, we’d be able to apply some kind of identity to our protagonist especially as you won’t have much opportunity to play as other iconic officers - but more on that later.

Army of one

So while Dynasty Warriors Origins’ narrative changes end up feeling a little flat for me, I won’t be saying the same for its gameplay. Origins is the best-feeling Warriors game ever made, even when accounting for some of the excellent spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors and Dragon Quest Heroes 2. Origins boasts a level of AAA quality that the series has simply never had before, and it brings plenty of changes and additions that help keep the experience from feeling stale.

For starters, each of the game’s nine weapon types all feel distinct and are a far cry from the usual normal-to-strong attack combos we typically get from the series. That style is retained on the basic sword weapon type, but I found pretty much every other weapon to be vastly more interesting.

The twin pikes, for example, dish out more damaging blows when your strong attack inputs are hit at the right time. Meanwhile, the lance lets you absorb blows by holding down the strong attack button leading to a devastating attack at full strength. A favorite of mine is the gauntlets which let you adopt various stances for a wide variety of different attacks suited to both crowd control and single-target damage.

Weapon types will also rank up the more you use them, unlocking even more moves and abilities for each. Higher ranks will in turn unlock new sets of nodes on your skill tree, further bolstering your power when you redeem skill points earned through battle and by ticking off optional training objectives assigned to you by other officers. Furthermore, Bravery skills and Tactics offer an even wider pool of abilities, including powerful guard-breaking attacks and volleys of arrows to reign down on the opposing army.

There may be fewer weapon types overall when compared to older Warriors entries, then, but this has allowed Omega Force to really flesh out their move sets for a more fulfilling experience overall. It’s great that the game incentivizes you to try out all weapon types, too, via those aforementioned training objectives and evolving move sets as they rank up.

It’s not just the protagonist that can be controlled during battle, though. You also have the ability to partner up with another iconic officer as a companion. When their meter is full, you’re able to temporarily switch to them. These officers, including series favorites like Xiahou Dun, Guan Yu, and Sun Shangxiang, are deliberately overpowered and are able to turn the tides of a battle in an instant.

Companion officers do feel superb to play as, with their own abilities and Bravery arts to make use of. I am pretty mixed on the mechanic as a whole, though, as I definitely would’ve preferred an option to just play as them outright in addition to the protagonist. It probably won’t be such a huge deal if Origins is your first Warriors game, but, as a long-time fan, I can’t help but miss being able to play as a wider variety of Three Kingdoms heroes freely.

A truly modern Musou

I think it’s fair to say that Dynasty Warriors Origins absolutely achieves what it sets out to do in revitalizing the Musou experience for a modern audience. It gave me that same “there is simply nothing else like this” feeling that I had with Dynasty Warriors 5 back in my teens. Nowhere is this more apparent than with Origins’ electrifying large-scale battles.

The general gameplay loop largely remains unchanged if you’re familiar with the Musou format. Most maps will have you eliminating enemy officers, taking over key bases, or escorting units to a particular location. With the power of current-generation gaming systems, however, Omega Force is finally able to make these battles feel truly large and cinematic.

That’s driven home by one major new feature: charges. When prompted to do so, you can head to a location on the map where your army has gathered to initiate a forward charge. This, for me, is the high point of any battle, as the camera pans back to give a wide view of the battlefield as you charge head-on towards the opposing army. A subtle screen shake and the courageous screams of your infantry further sell the moment as hundreds of troops clash into each other for an ultimate confrontation. It’s a moment that feels immensely rewarding and satisfying, and again, is unlike anything I’ve seen in any other action game, let alone any other Warriors title.

This incredible presentation is backed up by some pretty impressive visuals and yes, that trademark Dynasty Warriors brand of hard rock for the soundtrack. Perhaps most surprising of all, though, Origins is able to maintain a steady 60 frames per second (fps) in the default performance mode. There are also options for 30fps and 120fps modes, but the trade-offs here are either choppier performance or too big of a loss in visual clarity, respectively. The 60fps mode provides a pretty nice sweet spot and is the mode I would recommend for players without a high-end PC or PS5 Pro.

Should I play Dynasty Warriors Origins?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Dynasty Warriors Origins has a handful of helpful accessibility options, led by three ‘color perception’ settings aimed at colorblind players These are unhelpfully labeled as settings ‘1, 2 and 3’ so you’ll need to switch between each to find which one best suits your needs. You can also adjust subtitle size, and choose to have a boxed backdrop for subtitles for easier reading.

Beyond this, there’s not much to speak of beyond the usual camera sensitivity and rumble adjustment settings. It is worth noting, though, that the three difficulty levels can be swapped between during the campaign itself, so there’s no need to commit if things are getting too easy or too hard as you progress.

How I reviewed Dynasty Warriors Origins

I played Dynasty Warriors Origins for 30 hours on PS5, taking me to the end of the main campaign. This playtime is expected to increase, though, as I head back into New Game Plus to try out other routes on the way to unlocking the game’s ‘true’ ending.

I played the game on a 4K LG CX OLED TV, primarily using the DualSense Wireless Controller to experience Origins’ fairly light usage of its haptic feedback. I often paired this with a JBL Quantum 910P gaming headset for a rich audio experience.

First reviewed January 2025

Marvel Rivals has successfully landed, following a launch that’d make any live service game jealous. Positioning itself among the crowded free-to-play market, Marvel Rivals is a shockingly complete package, with a whopping 33 Heroes to choose from at launch. Narrowly avoiding the danger of spreading itself too thin, developer NetEase Games has somehow managed to offer up a mostly-balanced, quality experience that’s much more than a simple Overwatch clone.

To get this out of the way, I don’t play Overwatch. I’d wager that over the years, I’ve probably put five hours total into it, and most of that was in Overwatch 2. For me, the second people start telling me roles I should fill, tactics that I must focus on in an online game, my eyes glaze over. With limited time to sink into a live service game every night, I frankly couldn’t care less about what meta I need to be running in order to emerge victorious against an opposing team. Before loading up Marvel Rivals then, I was already fairly sure that it wouldn’t grab me completely.

The first night of play did nothing to dispel this feeling, with Marvel Rivals’ particular visual style being extremely difficult to read at times. But during night two, something clicked, and it’s largely down to the game’s wide range of playable Heroes. Split into three classes: Vanguard, Specialist, and Duelist, each of the 33 Heroes is entirely distinct from one another.

Any frustrations I was having with a particular Hero could quickly be remedied by trying someone else. New characters and play styles didn’t always click, but after a while, I had at least five go-tos that were all an absolute blast to play as.

From page to play

Visually, Marvel Rivals looks extremely high-budget and meticulously stylish. Somewhere between an anime and a comic book come to life, the game’s design language does a great job at distinguishing between each Hero in the roster. Broadly, everything from Most Valuable Player animations to pre-match loading screens pop with a confident flair. In motion, things are less successful, though characters do look great once the action kicks off.

The problem, for me at least, is how busy the screen can get once you have 10 characters, each with their own abilities and color schemes clashing together all at once. You do get used to it, but for a while I genuinely struggled to know exactly who I was being attacked by. Kill markers aren’t quite as punchy as they need to be, and the way abilities are labeled on screen can be difficult to parse during the heat of battle.

Likely, this is just a natural consequence of having the game play out largely in third-person, and in trying to do every single character justice, while balancing how all of the disparate elements come together. On PS5 Pro, performance has been flawless, and the high degree of visual sharpness certainly does help keep things clearer and more readable, at least.

There aren’t too many maps in rotation at present in Marvel Rivals’ main modes, though each does have enough character of their own to stand out and make matches feel distinct from one another. Destructible objects are littered throughout maps, with towering stone columns crumbling after being hit by a stray Iron-Man rocket, and walkways falling away under the weight of an incoming Venom air-slam attack.

These objects do regenerate over the course of a match, but their placements make them interesting tactical propositions, with plenty of possibilities to remove cover from your enemy team.

Hero shooter

Marvel Rivals starts off on much more advantageous footing than other games of its ilk thanks to the familiarity of its roster. Even the most casual gamer out there has some knowledge of Heroes like Spider-Man, Wolverine and Captain America, with some more out-there choices like Jeff the Land Shark being welcome surprises littered throughout the bunch.

It helps that, for the most part, each Hero plays exactly how you’d expect them to, though there are some neat subversions like Adam Warlock playing a healer focused on instant revivals of team members being the exception. Of the 33 Heroes I’ve now tried out, only a few have been complete non-starters, as I’ve been able to find the fun in the others almost instantly, even if their playstyles may not quite be my cup of tea.

Some Heroes specialize in managing character-specific gauges and effects, while others are much more straightforward, like The Punisher, whose move set revolves around a more standard third-person shooter design.

To spice things up, and I think, set its Heroes apart from being just clones of Overwatch characters, Marvel Rivals does feature a neat team-up system. Heroes like Rocket can ride on others like Groot, buffing shields and damage output. Other team ups are less direct, like how Adam Warlock will give Star-Lord and Mantis the option to revive themselves after dying via a rebirth mechanic.

So far, not all Heroes can team up with others, and not every Hero benefits from having others on the field. Venom is an example of this, though to compensate he does earn a massive max health boost thanks to an ongoing Seasonal Bonus. At their best, team-ups can sway the tide of battle. At their worst, they’re still fun passive effects to consider when picking a character.

So far, this has encouraged me to try out Heroes that I wouldn’t have done otherwise, and I’m interested to see how future Heroes will shake up Team Up abilities in the future. This isn’t to say that team-ups distract completely from the very obvious fact that characters like Black Widow are straight copies of Overwatch Heroes like Widowmaker, but it goes a long way to give Marvel Rivals a bit more of a USP.

Pick me

So why pick up Marvel Rivals, instead of a much more established series like Overwatch? Well, put simply, Marvel Rivals is newer, more engaging when in action, and takes itself much less seriously than its peers. Though some of the more niche corners of online gaming have already been crying out for balancing, nerfs to characters like Hela, and the addition of role queue, it’s hard to drown out what I believe to be the attitude of the main audience.

Many characters in Marvel Rivals could be considered overpowered, sometimes you join a team with no healers and get your butt handed to you, but ultimately, it simply doesn’t kill the fun. As the game continues to grow, I have no doubt that competitive modes will become more important, but for now, Marvel Rivals is a great thing to just pick up and play. Whether you choose a ‘broken’ character like Iron Fist, or someone less meta-focused like Wolverine, it’s possible to pull off some truly thrilling plays.

There’s an argument to be made that Marvel Rivals didn’t need to launch with so many Heroes, that 20 would have resulted in a better balanced product, but it’s difficult to say that the scrappy but exhilarating state of gameplay at the moment isn’t right where things should be. There are absolutely some issues with match balancing however, with some maps feeling unfairly weighted depending on which side your team starts at.

Similarly, some maps have choke points right from the first spawn point, leading to the feeling of throwing yourself into a meat grinder from the very moment a match begins. None of these issues are deal breakers, and this is Season 0 after all, so hopefully the first proper balancing patch will help smooth over some of the rougher edges present in the launch version.

Clearly, Marvel Rivals is striking the right chord with players, given the ever-growing player counts and social media dominance it is enjoying post-launch. For me, there’s plenty of room for Marvel Rivals to grow, hopefully with the addition of more modes, maps and Heroes, but for a free-to-play title launching during such a difficult time for live service games, it sure has come out of the gate swinging.

Should I play Marvel Rivals?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Marvel Rivals has a fairly standard suite of accessibility options, though they are limited when compared to other online shooters.

There’s a color blind mode, as well as the option to assign custom colors to elements like allies, shield HP bars, and other parts of the in-game UI.

In terms of controls, there’s very few accessibility options, besides button mapping, and the ability to assign specific control schemes to selected Heroes.

How I reviewed Marvel Rivals

I played Marvel Rivals for 25 hours on the PS5 Pro.

During that time I spent at least three matches with every Hero, but focused on maining Captain America, Iron Fist, Mantis, Venom and Punisher. In terms of modes, there aren’t many, so I tried them all. I purchased Season 0’s Battle Pass, and have worked through it while completing Daily, Weekly and Seasonal challenges.

I played the game using a 4K LG TV. I used a standard DualSense Wireless Controller, with the Razer Blackshark V2 headphones connected via the controller port.

First reviewed December 2024.