Warriors Orochi 4

Warriors Orochi 4, released as Musō Orochi 3 (無双オロチ 3, Musō Orochi Surī) in Japan, is a 2018 hack and slash video game developed by Koei Tecmo and Omega Force for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. First announced on March 2018, it is the fifth installment of the crossover series Warriors Orochi, a combination of the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series. The game was released in Japan in September 2018 and will be released in North America and Europe in October 2018.^[1][2]

Gameplay

As with the previous iterations, the player is given control of a three-man team consisting of characters from the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series. Each character has a class type that determines their ability: Power, Speed, and Technique; the Wonder type introduced in Warriors Orochi 3 has been removed.^[3] New to the series is the concept of magic and Sacred Treasures, techniques that allow characters to perform special feats to overcome enemies. These depend on a specific category that is separate from the class system, and are performed by holding down the right shoulder button and pressing either the normal, charge, or musou attack buttons, the latter two requiring a special magic gauge, and the last also requiring half of a player's musou gauge. As such, these replace the type actions from the previous games. Because of this, characters from the Dynasty Warriors series lack their second musou attack, but retain the ability to perform an aerial musou attack, and characters from the Samurai Warriors series lack their special attacks, but retain the ability to perform hyper attacks. The ability to mount a horse remains in Warriors Orochi 4, and is performed by holding down the right shoulder button and pressing the jump button.

The Awakening mechanic from Dynasty Warriors 8 and Musou Gokui mechanic from Samurai Warriors 4 are unified in Warriors Orochi 4, and may only be activated by obtaining a rare powerup during gameplay and pressing the left analog stick; when playing with only a single Joy-Con on the Nintendo Switch, this is instead activated by pressing both SL and SR, as the left analog stick alone is normally mapped to the character switch functionality. Only one character from a team may use this at a given time, though the character activating it need not be the character that obtained the powerup, and players may still switch characters while the mode is active. Once activated, the character may perform their Rage attack, consistent with both Dynasty Warriors 8 and Samurai Warriors 4. Characters central to the story are, once the relevant portions of the story are cleared, be given a "deification" form based on figures from Greek or Norse mythology, which will be in effect while Awakening or Musou Gokui is in effect, strengthening their various other actions in the process.^[3][4].

As with previous games, most stages in Warriors Orochi 4 are taken from either earlier installments of the Warriors Orochi series, or the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors source games, with a minimal amount of original stages, reskinned to suit the theme of Warriors Orochi 4. However, new to this game are mashup stages where one part of a stage is taken from Dynasty Warriors and another part is taken from Samurai Warriors; for example, the Baidi Castle stage from Dynasty Warriors 8 has the upper portion taken from the Oshu Castle stage from Samurai Warriors 4.

The game features several multiplayer options, including a three-versus-three competitive multiplayer mode.^[5]

Plot

The story of Warriors Orochi 4 is depicted in a set of 70 missions, spread out over 5 chapters. Players with a demo version of the game (only available for PlayStation 4) may play the first 10 missions (encompassing the entirety of the first chapter and four missions of the second), and have access to 30 characters. As in Samurai Warriors 4, each mission has optional objectives that may be completed for greater rewards, with the highest rewards being given to those who complete all of the objectives on the highest difficulty level.

Picking up from the ending of Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate, the heroes of the Three Kingdoms and Sengoku periods go about their lives after their return to their respective time periods, having forgotten all of their exploits in Orochi's dimensional world. However, Zeus, the Greek god of thunder, has a goal in mind and decides to bring all of them back into the dimensional world.

Characters

The game features 170 playable characters.^[6] With the exception of the collaboration characters from other franchises, all playable characters from Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate return. Characters are based on their appearances from Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires and Samurai Warriors 4-II; as a consequence, the game also marks the debut of characters introduced in those games into the Warriors Orochi series.^[3] The game adds five new original characters:

• Zeus (Power): The Greek god of the sky and thunder, he takes an interest in Orochi's dimensional world and brings the heroes back to realize his ambitions. Zeus wields a scepter, Keraunos, as his weapon. His voice actor is Takashi Matsuyama.
• Athena (Technique): The Greek goddess of wisdom and Zeus' daughter. Loyal to her father, she escorts him in the dimensional world while they are searching for a traitor of their kind. Athena wields a mechanical shield, Aegis, as her weapon. Her voice actor is Suzuko Mimori.
• Loki (Technique): The Norse god of mischief and shapeshifting. Throughout the game, he disguises himself as Perseus, a Greek hero, intending to mislead the warriors into helping Odin; as such, he is solely referred to as Perseus in all promotional material. He is the person Athena is looking for in the dimensional world. Loki wields a tree spear, Mistilteinn, as his weapon. His voice actor is Hiro Shimono.
• Ares (Speed): The Greek god of war and Zeus' son. Prideful and arrogant, he loathes humans and detests his father's tendency to live among them. He wields Typhon spears as his weapon. His voice actor is Makoto Furukawa.
• Odin (Power): The Norse god of wisdom and magic. Following his survival at Ragnarok, Odin is eager to search for and accumulate power. He wields Gungnir as his weapon. His voice actor is Sohta Arai.

Additionally, Diamondback, the generic Orochi army officer from previous Warriors Orochi games, makes his first playable appearance, and is counted as a returning character from Warriors Orochi 3 in promotional material. His moves is identical to that by series antagonist Orochi, excepting a selection of attacks that depict him as a joke character. He is voiced by Kohei Fukuhara.

All remaining characters are voiced by their voice actors from their last playable appearance, with the exception of Ujiyasu Hōjō, who is now voiced by Masashi Ebara after the passing of previous voice actor Unsho Ishizuka.

• Asterisk (*) denotes new characters to the series.
• Bold denotes default characters. Additionally, players who pre-ordered the game also have Tamamo (Nintendo Switch), Kyubi (PlayStation 4), or Yinglong (Xbox One X) unlocked from the start of the game, in addition to those denoted.

Music

The theme song is "Kakumei No Masquarade Musou OROCHI ver." (革命のマスカレード 無双 OROCHI ver., lit. "Masquarade of Revolution Warriors Orochi ver.") by Suzuko Mimori^[7], a remixed version of a track from her fourth album "tone.", made specifically for this game.

Reception

The PlayStation 4 and Switch ports of the game sold 124,836 and 30,682 physical retail copies, respectively, within their first two weeks of release in Japan.^[8] The game received a score of 35 out of 40 from the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu.^[9]

References

External links

• Official Japanese site (in Japanese)
• Official North American site