How ‘Dynasty Warriors’ Created the One of Gaming’s Best Action Subgenres
For anyone who loves gratuitous, over-the-top action games, it doesn’t get any bigger than the Dynasty Warriors franchise. With the release of Dynasty Warriors: Origins (out today), Koei Tecmo has brought back the hack-and-slash historical fiction series and reinvented it for a new generation. And although it isn’t for everyone (our own review was somewhat mixed), to a certain kind of player, the Dynasty Warriors series represents a stalwart slice of virtual comfort food that always demands attention.
Dating back to 1997, it’s likely that most players have seen some version of Dynasty Warriors, either by playing one of the franchise’s many entries or spin-offs or just catching glimpses in passing during a periodic binge of shows like teen drama The O.C. (Seth and Ryan played a lot of it in that show’s first season).
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Defined by large-scale battles where the player controls a single combatant capable of wiping out hoards of foes at a clip with just a few button presses, the Warriors games (which include the parent series, multiple spin-offs, and those inspired by them) are pure power fantasy. They’re the kinds of games that strictly adhere to the “turn off your brain” ethos of entertainment.
The appeal of a Dynasty Warriors game, or any number of sibling series or spin-offs in a similar vein, is the outsized empowerment of being an army of one; using a staff or sword, players can rush head-first into an entire battalion, juggling an ever-increasing number of foes haplessly mid-air before blasting their rag-dolled bodies into oblivion. Depending on the specific iteration, there may be more or less strategy to it, with some entries providing deeper layers of tactics across the battlefield, but the key ingredient is the grin-inducing pleasure of living out a wuxia-styled jaunt again and again.
And although they’re broadly part of the action genre, Warriors games have a very specific core design that essentially makes them their own unofficial subgenre, dubbed “Musou,” taken from the series’ official title in Japan. Like other subgenres that have cropped up over the years, Musou games have a more singular, cult-like following, one that’s kept growing over the course of the last two decades — and for good reason. They’re easy to pick up and understand, and feature a design template that can be applied to just about any blend with other video concepts or pop culture IP.
So, if you’re the type of player looking for a new genre to break into, here’s why Musou games might be worth checking out.
What are “Musou” Games?
Officially, “Musou” games are just action hack-and-slash games like Dynasty Warriors, produced under publisher Koei Tecmo. Originally created as a spin-off of Koei’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms series of turn-based strategy games, the first Dynasty Warriors (Sangokumusō in Japan) game was released in 1997 for PlayStation. The inaugural entry in the series was actually a one-on-one fighting game like Samurai Shodown or Soulcalibur, bearing little resemblance to the free-for-all style the franchise is now known for.
It was with that game’s sequel, 2000’s Dynasty Warriors 2 for the PlayStation 2, that the series would adopt the one versus all gameplay mentality. To differentiate the shift in design, the sophomore release was called Shin Sangokumusou in Japan, with the “shin” meaning “new” or “true,” which would become the official moniker moving forward.
Like the strategy series they’re derived from, the mainline Dynasty Warriors are based on the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong and are works of fiction set in ancient China. Following a mix of historical figures, like generals Lü Bu or Dong Zhuo, and original characters, the games’ stories often retread the same ground, cherry-picking different battles and sequences from the text and remixing the details with some creative license.
Over the course of the series’ 10 main releases (the most recent being Origins), each installment essentially retells a version of the same story, leaving the narrative to become less of a focus over time and more of a framework for the gameplay. Even Origins, which lets players take on the role of a third-party character called the “Guardian of Peace,” who can choose how the fictional history plays out, does little to advance the franchise’s storytelling capabilities. But, then again, it’s really beside the point; it’s all about action.
Some more recent iterations aside, most games are generally structured with straightforward levels that need to be completed, each consisting of a certain battlefield with its own requirements. Some missions require taking control of numerous enemy strongholds before making a final push for the opposition’s home base; Others are centered on escorting important NPCs to an escape point, fending off besieging waves of foes or surviving especially fraught encounters with legendary warriors like Lu Bu, who is often depicted as a godlike entity that becomes a recurring boogeyman.
As the series evolved, different features like cooperative multiplayer and skill trees were introduced to provide added depth and incentive to replay levels. Some, like Dynasty Warriors 7 (2011) emphasized the differences between the various warring clans by breaking encounters up into smaller chunks where players bounce between opposing perspectives rather than focusing on any one heroic faction. But moment-to-moment, the crux of the experience mostly boils down to playing as a cool character doing cool moves. Rinse, repeat.
Given the sheer amount of combat in each game, there can be a feeling of sameness that pervades over time. Waves of faceless enemies are thrown at the player to be defeated, occasionally punctuating in a higher-stakes showdown with a more dangerous foe. Yet the repetition ultimately becomes part of the appeal; combing through each map to systematically clear out patches of troops at chokepoints and strongholds provides a sense of OCD-assuaging satisfaction that mirrors the organizational busywork of farming simulators and cozy games, albeit with much more violence. Think of it like the odd pleasure of power washing or neatly filling out an adult coloring book. There’s a calming vibe to cleaning house, even if the means of doing so happens to be carving through a sea of people in bloodlust.
What are other Musou-type games?
After the success of the Dynasty Warriors series, Koei Tecmo went on to create tons of other games that follow the same formula in different settings, the most notable of which is the Samurai Warriors franchise (Sengoku Musou), which began in 2004 and includes five main entries, plus its own spinoff series, Samurai Warriors Chronicles. The two franchises eventually crossed over with the Warriors Orochi games, which mashes up characters from both titles alongside original ones for an outrageous kitchen sink approach with a fantasy bend.
As a concept, Musou games are pretty straightforward (strong character fights hundreds of weak ones), which makes the framework an easy fit for licensed adaptations with other franchises. Koei Tecmo has capitalized on the premise many times over, producing Musou-type releases that feature famous IP from across the pop culture spectrum. For anime fans, there’s Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, One Piece: Pirate Warriors, and Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage, all of which marry their respective lore and characters to the Koei’s templated design.
Possibly the best use of the Musou formula comes from crossovers with other video game series. In 2020, Atlus published Persona 5 Strikers, an action-roleplaying game that blends features from both the beloved Persona RPG franchise and Dynasty Warriors. Even Nintendo — a company somewhat leery of letting third-party developers play in its sandbox — has co-published not one, but two Musou-type series with Fire Emblem Warriors (2017), Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (2022), and a pair of Zelda offerings, Hyrule Warriors (2014) and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (2020). Giving anyone the keys to Nintendo’s crown jewels is a huge vote of confidence in the concept’s potential.
Although purists would argue that games produced by anyone other than Koei Tecmo aren’t “Musou” games — which, fair enough, is literally the name of a franchise they own — the basic formula of the series has taken on a life of its own beyond being simply a hack-and-slash game. While series like God of War fall into the hack-and-slash action game category, they play very differently on a core level, focusing on smaller groups of unique foes, and require a totally different mindset to play than a Warriors-like.
While it might be a stretch to say that Musou-type games are as established of a subgenre as “Metroidvanias” or “Soulslikes,” which are portmanteaus for titles designed to play like Metroid, Castlevania, and Dark Souls, it’s clear that the legacy of Koei Tecmo’s many Warriors games created a blueprint that other developers can follow. Xseed Games’ Fate/Extella franchise and Microsoft’s Ninety-Nine Nights (2006) are a few examples of games developed in the Musou mold without being directly tied to the format’s progenitor.
As indie game development continues to make an increasingly significant impact on the industry, it’s entirely possible that smaller studios may pick up on the Musou archetype and reshape it into something that takes off as a new trend down the line. It’s an idea that’s just there for the taking.
Which Musou games should you play?
Given the many flavors of Musou-type games that have been released, the easiest way to find which one to pick up first is simply deciding what setting appeals to you most. Love pop cultural portrayals of samurai? There’s a series for that. Hooked on One Piece? There’s one for that, too. But for anyone looking to see where the heart of the subgenre lies, the best bet is with the OG, Dynasty Warriors.
With that, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a solid bet, and with its narrative device of having a nameless player-insert character as its lead, it’s helpful for getting an overall understanding of the long-running franchise’s most essential narrative beats and idiosyncrasies. As the most recent entry in the pantheon, it harnesses the power of modern consoles and PCs to fulfill the promise of the genre to its visual and mechanical peak. It isn’t perfect, but no game better shows the potential of the overall Musou premise than Origins.
The best alternative for anyone looking for a more engaging story or diversity in gameplay and settings would be Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity for the Nintendo Switch. Designed as a pseudo-prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Age of Calamity lets players take on the role of Link, Zelda, and all the Champions in the fight against Ganon prior to the events of the original game. Despite taking some creative liberties with the overall Zelda canon, there’s a surprisingly powerful plot in the game that manages to add to the already poignant story behind Nintendo’s opus.
With tons of playable characters, all of whom control very differently, and a plethora of unique-feeling locations that help break up monotony, Age of Calamity isn’t just a great reimagining of what a Zelda game can be, it’s one of the best examples of the Musou subgenre. With the newly announced Nintendo Switch 2 on the horizon, fully capable of playing its predecessors library, it might even run better than ever before.
Either way, it’s hard to go wrong with any Musou game. With so many options available, there’s bound to be one that fits most players’ tastes. If Dynasty Warriors: Origins manages to help reignite the fervor around the subgenre, there’s likely to be many more to play in the years to come.
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