Warriors Orochi 4 - Review

What happens when you take two massive musou games and throw in a little Greek mythology, well, you get this one, but is the combination of multiple series, enough to entice players into this action hack and slash?

The story begins, with the Greek gods watching over the characters from both games, discussing who would be gifted with some unique powers and those characters are thrown into an alternate dimension. If this does sound familiar it is because it's almost the same premise from the previous game which may explain why the characters don't freak out. But none of the characters remember the last jaunt, so when they inevitably meet up with other people, they decide to fight but as the fight comes to an end, they realise they can work together it's a basic idea does provide a reason the characters to get together but the story overall doesn't get any deeper than that.

If you played any of the Warriors series over the years, either from the mainline games or one of the many spin offs then you will know exactly what you're getting here. Each mission has you running around a giant map defeating powerful enemies. stopping reinforcements, And other forms of missions in order to help your side win the battle there is nothing new to the core gameplay. Where things do get interesting is with the gifts bestowed on the characters each character has their own unique powers the taken call upon with some powers having an effect on some enemies, more so than others, discovering what powers work for who does provide a reason to keep trying new characters. The problem is the game sports over 140 playable characters and for the life of me I couldn't begin to tell you their names by the time I hit the second dozen characters, I lost track who is who which characters had what powers I'm which characters work best with others.

While it is incredibly cool do you have such a large roster it just becomes too many to even contemplate dealing with when you consider that you unlock weapons and abilities quite frequently, plus each character has others that they work better with and unlock more powers because of, you will find yourself being overwhelmed. Taking the time to invest in even one single mechanic with the number of characters the game offers is a full-time job if you want to make sure each character has the best weapons possible along with teaming them up with the most appropriate character then you best be prepared to spend a lot of time in menus. After a while I gave up on that in fact, I gave up on everything by the missions even the ones not contained within a story with far more enjoyable than anything regarding character progression.

Jumping into battle as you take 3 characters with you controlling one and then swap between the other to at will again this comes into play with the powers and abilities they have as a bonus you can also bring in a whole level of extra characters as support class if you bring in characters that don't work well with the ones you're fighting as to game will become quite a bit more challenging because of it. The game controls very well a lot of the attacks at assigned to face buttons but it's when you're starting to get into the magic and skills that you need to start learning in memorizing button combinations holding down a trigger and pressing a face button will result in a different outcome then if you had pressed the other trigger and a different face button. Having a character kickoff, a massive attack, launching an enemy into the air and then swapping to another character to complete the devastating combo is visually incredible but it does wear thin quickly.

Thankfully the game does take that into consideration as each mission will have a series of sub objectives to aim for from defeating a set officer, Or defeating a set number of enemies within a time limit completing these objectives will grant you gems and orbs which you can use in the menus to level up weapons and characters if you're not into that then doing the side missions is not going to provide you with a lot of incentive but at least it still breaks up the monotonous gameplay.

I play the game through on Nintendo Switch and I regret doing it now because it was on Switch, I love my switches great platform but it's more because the game was clearly not designed for it and in their rush to get the game on the system, they clearly overestimated their ability to optimize it. The load times are incredibly long getting into a mission results in some stuttering here in there at the start cutscenes are flat and characters look just as bad. The worst however comes from the enemies you're fighting I would run up to a crowd of enemies only completely changed her look now games loading up elements as you get closer to them is nothing new they've been doing that for a decade and a half now however when I run up into a crowd of enemies in there all dressed in white with white hats and then they change to Brown and purple that changes for to noticeable too even think about ignoring.

The other issue comes from the sheer variety of characters as I said after about the first 20 or so you tend to have them blend together problem is you keep meeting new characters continuously and even with how outlandish some of them are, they still blend into the background meaning that they don't make an impression. The games music is exactly what you would expect from a Warriors game and a lot of high energy continuous beat driven melodies that when in action really fit what's happening on screen the problem is you hear a lot of the same music or style of in the menus and again if you're spending hours customizing weapon loadout characters hearing the same guitar riffs and piano tones you're gonna want to turn the music off.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a fan of the musou type of game, while they are fun and serve as a great distraction ultimately the much the same regardless of the skin. I had hoped that Orochi 4 Would change things up for me the combination of different series and Greek mythology would make me want supply but the game is so overloaded with pointless and frustrating elements that it was a struggle to do so and given how I can't see the developers ending the series anytime soon unless something drastic happens in the next one this is my last game in the genre.

Review copy provided by Koei Tecmo