Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the series' most successful attempt at reinvention yet, and that's saying a lot for a franchise that's been growing and expanding since 1997 – often quite radically. More grounded, yet with the same larger-than-life "one versus one thousand" flashy action, Dynasty Warriors: Origins returns to the series' best ideas while using its single-player focus to give a fresh spin on the story, introducing a slew of features that make these large-scale battles throughout the Three Kingdoms period more visceral than ever.
Developer Omega Force is no stranger to shaking things up. After all, the original Dynasty Warriors was a one-on-one 3D fighting game similar to Battle Arena Toshinden. Yet, with Dynasty Warriors 2 in 2000 the leap to PS2 retooled the setting to be a flashy beat 'em up set in large-scale battlefields, birthing the Warriors genre itself (also known as 'musou'). From there it's been reinvented time and time again, adapting other time periods (Samurai Warriors), at others applying the formula to licensed IP (Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Persona 5 Strikers, One Piece Pirate Warriors 4), or even inspiring numerous musou-likes (Fate/Extella). But it's not always worked out. Dynasty Warriors 9, the last game in the series, retooled it to be a huge open world – and it ended up being extremely dull with abysmal technical issues.
