In fear that my articles may be lacking in “educational value”, I thought I’d bring attention to a long-running franchise of games that use world history to its advantage! Of course, not every part of this franchise focuses on real world history and the ones that do embellish it QUITE A LOT. But regardless, I feel there’s a lot of value in what these games are and what the represent!
But before that, you may be asking: What’s a Warriors game?
It’s a third-person action game with slight RPG (Role-Playing Game) elements, where you take on hoards of peons and enemy officers in your quest to dominate the battlefield. That’s the general gist of the games, and while most of them play near identical to each other, each sub-franchise of the series is different in some ways. Let’s start off with the one that started it all:
Dynasty Warriors!
Based off the old Chinese novel, “Romance of The Three Kingdoms”, Dynasty Warriors combines the book’s events with real historical accounts. As a result, we have something that mixes both fiction and non-fiction together. The games revolve around the warring empires of “Wu”, “Wei”, and “Shu”.
Each army is led by a powerful warlord with dreams of conquest. An example of this is Wei, lead by the strong and enigmatic Cao Cao. Each game has you pick one of these factions and play through their storyline, each one trying to follow the events depicted in the Three Kingdoms book. Of course, Dynasty Warriors isn’t simply boring cut and dry historical events. There’s flashy anime moves, over the top designs and personalities, and a general sense of fun that you don’t get in many “educational games”.
The real fun of Dynasty Warriors comes from its combat, which has you as a lone officer going up against an army. There are other soldiers and officers on your team, but 90% of the time they’re useless and don’t help you in the slightest. As the games went on, they became easier as an attempt to better sell that “power fantasy” of you being the coolest guy on the battlefield. The game even features a kill count of how many peons and officers you’ve taken out. It’s pretty nutty but it works!
Now, Dynasty Warriors was a HUGE success. It was so big in fact that there are NINE mainline games in the series, all of which have their own expansion packs. There’s the “Xtreme Legends” expansions, which are just the base game with some extras like new characters and modes. There’s also the “Empires” expansions, which are essentially their own games with more of an emphasis on strategy and creating your own characters! There are also TONS of spinoff franchises, like…
Samurai Warriors!
The Samurai Warriors games are very similar to Dynasty Warriors, though set in the Sengoku period of Japan as opposed to ancient China. The games follows various officers from that period, like the hot-blooded warrior in red armor “Sanada Yukimura”, or the vicious demon king “Oda Nobunaga”. Samurai Warriors games started off very similar to Dynasty Warriors, but became more colorful and chaotic as they went along.
The combat got very fast and energetic as the series continued, ESPECIALLY during the fourth installment where dash attacks became a huge focus. While Dynasty Warriors was often condemned for telling the same story in EVERY game, Samurai Warriors usually set itself apart by focusing on different parts of Japanese history in each game. For example, Spirit of Sanada focused on the Sanada family throughout the ages. It showed these officers growing and changing as the battles they fought in went on, as well as aging them up as the years pass by.
Samurai Warriors 5 is vastly different from the others, choosing to focus primarily on a younger Oda Nobunaga. While 5 was pretty good, it’s focus on a couple of characters over the ensemble cast that these games usually focus on divided a lot of people. Regardless, I feel like Samurai Warriors has grown a lot as a series and has become something of a separate thing from the series that has inspired it. That’s not to say they’ve NEVER been interconnected before, such as in…
Warriors Orochi!
Picture this: The warriors of both Chinese and Japanese empires meeting each other, fighting each other, and having to contend with an army of ACTUAL invading demons all at the same time. Pretty nutty, huh? Warriors Orochi throws away any context of being based off historical fiction and changes things up by turning this into a MASSIVE crossover between not only the Warriors games, but pretty much any other game Koei-Tecmo owns. Even Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden and the Dead Or Alive ninja girls show up here!
Now, I’m mainly talking about the third game in the series. This is not just because it’s the cheapest one, but also the best one in the series. Orochi 4 is okay, but nothing beats that “collect ’em all” aspect that Orochi 3 had. Yeah, the Orochi games are known for having A LOT of characters. The third game had over 160, which is just nuts!
Warriors Orochi is also known for its namesake: The titular Orochi, who started off as the villain of the franchise. Over time, he became an anti-hero and then something of a protagonist. He was originally the boss of all these demons, but then it turns out things aren’t as cut and dry as they same. Now, let’s move onto one of my favorite Warriors games…
Hyrule Warriors!
The Legend of Zelda is one of the most prolific video-game franchises ever made. It has had TONS of games, merchandise, and even a short-lived animated series in the 80s! We… We don’t talk about that last one. It also had a “crossover” of sorts with Dynasty Warriors. And by crossover, I mean they just took the combat and general gameplay of a Warriors game and slapped Zelda characters over top of it and called it “Hyrule Warriors”.
Okay, that’s a bit unfair! Hyrule Warriors is actually a pretty good mixing of the two franchises. The third-person 1v100 combat really fits the Zelda setting, making you feel like a true warrior facing down armies of goons. The game revolves around the hero of time, Link, getting roped into an epic war against a team of classic Zelda villains. A new threat is attempting to resurrect the villainous Ganondorf, so Link and a TON of classic Zelda characters have to team up to take him down.
The game bolsters nearly 30 playable characters, including a TON of great of characters from across the series’ history! While not as substantial as other Warriors games, it’s still a good variety of characters from across such a massive franchise. You have mainstays like Link and Zelda, but also less seen characters like Midna and Tingle! I’ve only ever really played the first Hyrule Warriors game, due to it featuring characters from across the Zelda franchise. I never got into its followup, “Age of Calamity”, as I’m not a big fan of the game it spun off from. However, Hyrule Warriors isn’t the ONLY Nintendo franchise to get its own Warriors game…
Fire Emblem Warriors!
Fire Emblem Warriors is certainly one of the more interesting attempts at a Warriors spinoff. The Fire Emblem games are famous for their strategic combat and planning, something most modern Warriors games aren’t really the best at. The two Fire Emblem Warriors games (the original and Three Hopes) both focus more on strategy, making the player assign different party members to different parts of the map to accomplish goals.
While other Warriors games also do this, the AI in those games tend to be so awful that you STILL end up doing everything yourself. Fire Emblem Warriors thankfully has smarter AI teammates, along with more RPG elements than you can shake a stick at!
The second game, Three Hopes, is definitely one that has almost TOO MANY of these elements in it. You can spend hours wrapping your mind around every single mechanic and doing every last thing in camp, just to guarantee your party is ready for the battles ahead. It’s honestly kind of overkill, in my opinion. Three Hopes is still fantastic though, as is the first game. Speaking of playing Warriors games based off RPGs though…
Dragon Quest Heroes!
The Dragon Quest games are some of the finest RPGs Japan has ever created. They mixed the delightful art style of Akira Toriyama (who created the Dragon Ball series) with some classic JRPG turn-based combat for a truly unforgettable experience. Dragon Quest Heroes is yet another mixing of a classic game series with Warriors gameplay, but with a twist: It’s FAR more focused on RPG aspects than any other Warriors sub-franchise, apart from Fire Emblem Warriors.
The first Heroes game is a mix of RPG and tower defense, often requiring the player to place monsters on specific parts of the map in order to guard objectives while you’re off doing other things and fighting bosses. Honestly, the tower defense stuff can get a BIT annoying. That’s why I prefer the sequel, due to it breaking away from the repetitive formula of the first game and being a more traditional RPG.
The Heroes games (much like the first Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors games) has a crossover aspect to it, bringing in tons of guest party members from across the franchise. Unfortunately, for the first game it is quite selective and only brings in characters from a handful of games. It’s still pretty cool regardless, especially if you’re like me and grew up on the Dragon Quest VIII game for PS2!
With all that said, it’s time for the wrap up!
There are A LOT of Warriors games that I didn’t go over. I’m talking Fist of The North: Ken’s Rage, Touken Ranbu Warriors, One Piece: Pirate Warriors, etc. Thing is I’ve never played all the Warriors games, due solely to the fact that there are so many of them spread across multiple consoles. And honestly, I could write a book about how many of these games are out there. I won’t, but I definitely could!
Regardless, the Warriors games are pretty amazing. They’re simple third-person hack-and-slash games, but the general formula for them is so easy to copy and paste over other things that it comes off as a very flexible genre. The whole appeal of beating up armies with an overpowered officer or warrior is the kind of power fantasy only video-games can accurately provide.
To me, it all comes down to the fun aspect. While a lot of Warriors games are too similar to each other and mindless at times, they’re still quite a lot of fun. That’s why I recommend a person at least tries one of them, since they’re pretty much on any console under the sun and fairly easy to get a hold of.
- – James Thompson