Dynasty Warriors: Origins breaks with the tradition of the long-running Musou series. Rather than an array of playable characters whose stories all combine to paint a full picture of the warring kingdoms of China, you play as a single character, the Wanderer. Since he has no memory at the start of the game, he has no loyalty, so he can forge his own path. But what he does have is a very large arsenal.
Variety comes less from the different stories you jump into and more from your own player choices. While previous games allowed you to inhabit a variety of characters and experiment with different styles, Drifter allows you to make your own choices. Narratively, this means whether to side with Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Jian. Mechanically, this means choosing a weapon and evolving it as you progress. But you can't get everything on the menu.
Your arsenal grows with Jindo Warriors: Origins
It all starts simple. You have a sword. You'll soon unlock a spear, which is like a small sword attached to the end of a long stick. I think you are familiar. Then things start to get interesting. You fight against enemies wielding bladed discs that you throw across the battlefield like deadly discs, and before long you'll be able to use these weapons (known in the game as 'wheels') yourself. As the chapter progresses, we hear similar stories about gauntlets, pikes, staves, podaos, lances, and crescent blades, which are all other versions of small swords on the end of long sticks.
These are all pretty cool, they each feel like they have different weights and there's absolutely nothing to play with when leveling them up. In the end, I chose Wheels and Pike as my favorite option, but there is something for everyone. Almost everyone. And I am an exception. The whole time I was waiting for the weapon to unlock, I had my eye on the prize, but it never came.
The first few generals you face (who have higher health due to death reversal compared to the hordes of soldiers) are armed with swords or spears. But soon you see something amazing. A man holding a huge cooking pot on a stick. Is this really like that? I don't know. We don't unlock it to use it ourselves, so we don't know its real name. It looks like a giant metal cooking pot on the end of a wooden stick that doubles as a club and a grounding rod for swinging with acrobatic kicks. I want that in my life. I need that in my life. But I can't have it.
You can't beat Morningstar
Sure it's not really a cooking pot on a stick, but I have no other way to describe it. It is a giant metal ball that is about the height of a person's torso and appears to be spherical, and can be swung by enemy generals as if it were nothing. The twin pike attack is cool and has you swinging your ax into danger, the wheel's musso attack has you breakdancing around your ankles capoeira-style, but I really, really, really want that cooking pot.
I guess it's because I always thought the Morningstar was an incredibly cool medieval weapon. And if you're wondering what a morning star is, it's similar to a mace, but with spines. And if you're thinking, 'I thought mace had spikes,' sometimes they do. Medieval weapons are strange and complex. Sometimes they have swinging chains, sometimes they have multiple heads, sometimes these types of weapons are separated by a flail, and sometimes they are not. Maybe it means something to someone somewhere.
As you may have guessed from the last stupid paragraph, the variety of weapons is an easy selling point for me. It's not because I'm a gaming expert who needs to master multiple move sets to progress through the game. If I am an ‘expert’, does that really make me a ‘journalist’? – But choosing a weapon is cool. The more you have to choose from, the more likely you are to find a choice that combines your business (the employees) with a really good relationship (the sword), creating the perfect combination of style and substance (the wheels).
Dynasty Warriors: Origins offers a wide selection of weapons, not to mention a variety of combos you can use together and a variety of combat arts to make each fight your own. Whatever your fighting style, you'll find something that suits you. Unless your fighting style involves hitting people with big metal pots, you're out of luck.

- released
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January 17, 2025
- developer
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Omega Force