Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition review - Worthwhile trip back through time

I remember fondly playing the original Warriors Orochi 3, so seeing it come back as Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition filled me with hope.

I’ve had very poor experiences with Koei Tecmo ports in the past, so while I was hopeful, there was also great fear. Dynasty Warriors 8: Extreme Legends only had two display options, and Samurai Warriors 4-2 was filled with frame rate drops and disappointing performance on PC.

Thankfully, that was not the case here! Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition came with all of the characters, music, and action I remember, and in a huge move for Koei Tecmo, more than 500 points of DLC items to experience.

This title had entirely too much DLC, from costumes to stages, but it all comes in one package, making this a deal based on that, if nothing else.

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The real question is, who is Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition for, and is it worth purchasing?

Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition, a port of classic Musou game

The original Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate was a massive title by Koei Tecmo and Omega Force, bringing together the characters of Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. It also has a wealth of fascinating guest characters from other Koei Tecmo properties.

Sophitia, Ryu Hayabusa, Joan of Arc, Achilles, and others join the crew.

At the start of the story, a ferocious Hydra that has slain many of the most powerful heroes is caught up in this time-space vortex. It is up to Hanbei Takenaka, Ma Chao, and Sima Zhao to try and stave off the Hydra, to no avail.

The mysterious then Kaguya shows up and thus begins a vast number of time-travel-related battles. The forces of Orochi kill many characters, and players will have the option to go back to these stages later and alter the course of this timeline.

Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition frankly comes with a wealth of story-based content. It’s a massive game with 131 story missions, not counting the various one-shot DLC stages.

There are also 145 playable characters, so users have so many different ways to play as they unlock more and more of these characters.

Story is over-the-top, but Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition delivers nonetheless

At first, I wasn’t sold on time travel as the game’s focal point, but I quickly realized it was one of the only easy ways to put together the Late Han-era China and Sengoku Jidai-era of Japan in one title.

The real joy in playing Warriors Orochi is seeing the baddest, toughest, and most clever heroes of different eras coming together for a common cause. Seeing Nobunaga Oda and Cao Cao on the same side is brilliant.

I’m grateful that it’s one long story and not broken up into different factions. I would not have enjoyed that quite as much.

The game starts at the end, where Hydra defeats the heroes. However, thanks to time travel, they go back to the beginning and try to set things right once and for all.

What gameplay does Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition feature?

You’ll be ready to go if you have played Dynasty Warriors 7 or Samurai Warriors 3. Sadly, the gameplay has improved since then, but that doesn’t mean the game is terrible at all.

In battle, you control three characters and can tap a button to swap between them at will. This is so much fun because you can switch between them mid-combo and pull off some incredibly satisfying explosions of damage.

I also loved bringing all three party members on screen at once and watching as they assisted me in battle. They aren’t as helpful as the character I was controlling, but anything helps.

The stages are massive, though; there will be no shortage of generals to battle, groups of soldiers to knock into the sky, and demons to slay.

It’s satisfying to play as virtually everyone, and many characters have unique movesets. I’m glad characters have separate movesets instead of tying attacks to weapons, a change made in later games.

This means the characters don’t all feel like generic, bland copies of each other, but in my estimation, some characters are better than others. Many are great at cleaving through enemy packs, while others focus more on deleting enemy generals.

The gameplay, while not ground-breaking, was quite good and felt satisfying.

While PC port is not perfect, it is satisfying

I admit I was disappointed that the cutscenes are in 30 FPS instead of the 60 FPS the rest of the game plays at. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but the cutscenes don’t look as good as the rest of the game.

On the other hand, there’s a lot to love. The load times are incredible, and the gameplay suffered far fewer framerate drops than previous Koei Tecmo PC releases.

I did see some framerate drops while streaming, in both cutscenes, and during Musou attacks in particular.

Glitches and bugs persist, but they were few and infrequent in my personal experience. It would be very frustrating to knock Da Ji off a bridge, for example, and then have to swim after her for several agonizing minutes, chase her up a hill, and back to the bridge I found her on, just to resume the fight.

I played this on an Nvidia 1080, and it played near flawlessly the entire time. It looked brilliant on my 4k monitor as well.

While this isn’t a 4k remaster that fixes every single issue with the title, I found myself genuinely enjoying my time and suffered only a few minor drops in framerate.

What does Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition come with?

While I adore the Musou franchise, this game had too much DLC, like Dead or Alive levels of DLC. However, I’m grateful that this game, for the retail price, contained every ounce of the DLC that I could remember.

Over 500 pieces of DLC are featured in this collection, and much of it comes in the form of costumes for the characters. They are all cosmetic, and while many fit the era, there are also some hilarious, ridiculous ones.

The baseball, high school uniforms, and classic film crossovers are all fantastic.

Some DLC costumes are recolors, while others in Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition are wild and outrageous (Image via Koei Tecmo)

Some costumes reference other Koei Tecmo franchises in Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition, such as Dead or Alive 5, so there’s much to love about these. The Gauntlet Mode has six more dungeons, and there are 54 DLC stages for the main story.

Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition also has more music, which is never bad.

Is any of this important or even useful? Not especially, but it’s nice to see it in the game when it could have easily been left out or put as an additional cost. Some DLC items are missing, but that is DLC that never came to America in the first place.

In conclusion

Who is this for at the end of the day? Primarily for fans of the Musou franchise. They are going to find a lot to love here.

There’s tons of content, plenty of DLC that fans may have missed out on the first time, and it’s priced fairly.

It’s a shame it took so long to get another version of Warriors Orochi 3, in Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition, but I’m glad it’s here. It plays great, still looks good after a decade, and even newcomers to the series have something to gain from playing it.

The visuals are still solid, and the familiar guitar riffs of the Dynasty Warriors franchise really took me back in time. While it isn’t as pretty as a more modern Musou game, the visuals and music indeed hold up.

You don’t need to have played both Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors to have fun smashing through historical battlefields, slaughtering thousands of foes. It’s just a joy to play.