Exploring what could have been
Following its successful run last year, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is finally getting some more story content, this time focusing on characters whose dreams remained unfulfilled. For those who need a refresher, Origins expands upon Omega Force’s previous experiments with original characters, allowing players to journey through the aftermath of the Yellow Turban Rebellion as Ziluan, a powerful guardian of peace whose choices can alter the very course of history.
In the main story, Ziluan has to make a choice between Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Jian, the leaders of the Shu, Wei, and Wu factions, but Visions of Four Heroes allows us to peek into alternate scenarios where Ziluan chooses different heroes (or villains, depending on your interpretation) to fight for.
MSRP: $34.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), Xbox, PlayStation, Switch
Visions of Four Heroes is first accessible when reaching chapter 2 of the main story, allowing you to take a detour from the base game to experience ” what-if” campaigns where a simple change in allegiance brings dramatic changes to the fates of certain characters. One nice quality of life feature is that the entire DLC scales with your level, making it accessible for both newcomers and players who already beat the game. If you haven’t finished DWO yet, I personally recommend weaving the DLC chapters between each main story one, although playing it in one go after finishing the base game is acceptable as well; there’s really no wrong way to tackle it.
The DLC is divided between four chapters, allowing us to side with Zhang Jiao, Dong Zhuo, Yuan Shao, and Lu Bu. Despite siding with some questionable figures, this isn’t necessarily a heel turn for the guardian of peace, as all four scenarios still have you trying to do what’s best for the Three Kingdoms, even attempting to redeem some of these bloodthirsty figures in the process.
When it comes to its gameplay, Visions of Four Heroes still features the same large-scale Musou encounters found in the story campaign, but as a small nod to fans of the Empire spin-off series, each scenario includes a series of strategic battles where turn-based tactics are used to turn the tides of war. The unfortunate part is that, while novel, the turn-based portion of these strategic encounters don’t feel like they involve much strategy at all, only serving as a glorified way of choosing the order of skirmishes you’ll embark on before tackling the bigger fights. The hidden tactics, however, feel like a great expansion of the base game’s tactic system, allowing you to perform very powerful maneuvers without relying on your troops.
Alongside a new talent tree and new companions, the DLC also introduces two new weapons to master and acquire battle arts for, those being the bow and rope dart. The bow is possibly one of the strongest weapons in the game, doing absurd amounts of damage with its explosive shots and excelling in both single target and crowd control, while the rope dart aims to provide combo extensions and mobility but fails to deliver when it comes to damage, making it a somewhat underwhelming DLC addition.
Visions of Four Heroes brings a decent amount of new systems and story content to Dynasty Warriors: Origins, and the added screen time for characters like Lu Bu and Zhang Jiao, as well as finally getting Zhuhe as a companion, help sweeten the deal. There’s a good bit of novelty in the way each stage gets repackaged, feeling like more than just a mirrored version of a fight you’ve done in the past. The final confrontations found in each chapter are especially exciting to play through, delivering satisfying and exciting conclusions to each chapter.
At the end of the day, Dynasty Warriors thrives when it comes to offering fanservice in the form of large-scale confrontations, and Visions of Four Heroes does that very well, be it through brutally dominating the battlefield alongside Dong Zhuo or by challenging the whole world alongside Lu Bu. It’s also refreshing to see a game in the series flesh out its characters this much, partly because it allows itself a different perspective, anchoring the player as a single protagonist rather than a whole faction, and the fact that the DLC chooses to focus even more on this specific aspect of storytelling is quite satisfying.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.