A Shadow of former greatness
Warriors: Abyss takes the 1-v-100 style gameplay from the Dynasty and Samurai Warrior games and smashes it together with roguelite and level clearing of Hades. It’s an absurd mash-up that at times works really well and then at others not so much.
The story in Hades, the uber popular isometric roguelite that broke out into the scene some years ago saw the titular Greek deity’s son attempting to escape from the Underworld one level at a time; in Warriors: Abyss heroes will be doing the opposite and digging deeper into the bowels of the Underworld. Enma, the ruler of Hell has seemingly lost control of their kingdom to a demon called Gouma. Enter the many, many heroes from Samurai and Dynasty Warriors. All of them having no doubt murdered scores of people on the many battlefields, so it kind of seems fitting that they have all ended up in hell. Players will be able to unlock a whole collection of records that will further flesh out the story, but if I’m being honest (and I don’t know any other way to be) the story is mid and is just a reason to have the heroes’ slaying hordes of demons instead of Yellow Turbans.
MSRP: $24.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $14.99
Warriors: Abyss sports an impressive number of playable heroes; 100 fighters are available from characters across the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors series. Each one of them controls the same but they each have various perks that can change based on who else is on the player’s squad. Each of the playable characters have abilities like interrupting telegraphed attacks, adding elemental damage as well as huge flashy maneuvers capable of taking out whole swaths of demons at a time. As each run progress players get to recruit a hero to their squad from a random selection. There is a good deal of RNG involved with finding success in this game but if I can offer some advice, always choose whichever hero is going to increase your power score, the higher that number; the better your runs will be.
The satisfying gameplay from the Warriors games carries over to this roguelite thankfully. You might be wondering why I said ‘thankfully’, and it will become apparent as you get deeper into this review. Combat plays out just like any of the other Musou titles in the Warrior series, which means that areas will be filled with enemies to be mowed down. Each room that players enter will task them with slaying a certain number of demons, this scales in difficulty; so, while it will start with easy numbers like 30 or 40, later levels will have players needing to vanquish 700 or more demons to progress. Players will utilize the usual light and heavy attacks that are found in Musou titles to engage in combos, the twist here is that the enders can summon unlocked heroes who will perform a powerful attack before disappearing.
Thank God for that gameplay because without it, Warriors: Abyss feels lacking. Sure, it’s a budget title but from errors in the ability descriptions to character models that look like they are reused assets from the 360/PS3 era of Warriors games; this game just feels very thrown together. There are four biomes that players will fight across but they all just come down to some relics, snowy ground and fire textures. The game is not a looker by any means and the muddy textures just make it all blur together. But for this to be a roguelite there is very little in the way of mixing things up; boss fights are all the same, which is disappointing when this is supposed to be in the roguelite genre where randomized layouts are king.
Omega Force’s attempt to enter the roguelite space with Warriors: Abyss is sadly quite underwhelming. I had some fun battling the waves of demons with the plethora of playable characters. But with some ugly graphics, no real randomization in levels/layout or bosses and limited gameplay features, this one is better left to the uber fans, even at its discounted price.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
