Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper

Genre: Action Brawler

Players: 1-2 Co-Op / Competitive (Local / Online)

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Review:

Warriors Orochi 3 is an Action Brawler in the Musou style, in a series that combines the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises, with other franchises like Dead or Alive making guest appearances as well. This game was originally released in 2012 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, ported to PlayStation Portable (only in Japan) later that same year with new characters and features and the word “Special” appended at the end to denote this, then brought to Wii U later that year when the console launched with this version of the game having even more features and characters and getting the word “Hyper” attached to the end, and then released again with more content as an “Ultimate” version on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One in 2014, with this version of the game also going to the Nintendo Switch in Japan… and just to make this paragraph even longer, the game was re-released one final time (probably) on PC in 2022 as Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition, containing everything from Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate plus most of the DLC released for the game.

So, surely, for a game releases and re-released so many times, it must be great, right?

Well, I can’t speak for other versions of the game, but at the very least the Wii U version just comes across as just another Musou game, and not an especially great one either. A part of the fault here lies with the graphics, which are pretty sub-par on the Wii U, suffering from massive pop-in to where enemies who are just a short distance away from you won’t come into view until you’re virtually right on top of them. The game otherwise looks fine, but there’s little here that’s impressive.

As for the gameplay, there’s nothing here to convince a non-Musou fan to pick this game up, and I suspect it never had any intention to try to appeal to that sort of audience anyway, what with a story that appears to pick up right where the prior Warriors Orochi game left off, seeing these characters (extremely loosely based on historical figures from Feudal Japan and Warring States-era China) threatened by a massive hydra and going on a time-traveling quest to gather allies to confront the beast with an army capable of taking it on.

As with most Musou games, the action here is repetitive and not especially compelling, though this release does bring a few things to the table, particularly in its multiplayer. Firstly, this is the game’s sole use of the Wii U gamepad’s unique features, letting a second player use this gamepad as their screen while the other player takes the TV screen. There’s also a new competitive mode called Duel Mode that lets two players fight it out with teams of three, though this mode is generally too chaotic thanks to the repeated use of “cards” that players can use to gain the advantage during battle with special moves. I suppose I should note that this game also allows for online play, though when I tested it the lobbies were completely deserted.

Maybe I’m being unfair to Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper, because I’ve had the benefit of playing later games like the Hyrule Warriors series and the Fire Emblem Warriors series, which all do more with the core Musou formula than this game does. However, be that as it may, I just can’t see this game as anything more than “just another Musou game”, and with the technical flaws it’s not even a particularly good one.

tl;dr – Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper is an Action Brawler in the Musou style that combines characters from the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises. As Musou games go, this one is pretty unexceptional, and it even suffers from some issues with pop-in that mar the experience. This is mostly a decent entry in the genre, but it’s far from a great one.

Grade: C

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