Calling All Warriors!
HIGH Unlocking Lu Bu.
LOW The second-to-last boss is a nightmare.
WTF There can’t really be this many playable characters, can there?
When I first got a look at the web of unlockable characters from which Abyss‘ roster is drawn, I was stunned. These couldn’t possibly all be playable, could they? Some of them had to be support characters merely there to boost stats when combined with others, right? But no, apparently the developers at Omega Force have gathered every fighter who ever appeared in a Samurai or Dynasty Warriors game and crammed them all into the most epic crossover they’ve ever attempted – and their last effort was Warriors All-Stars, a title that saw a cat version of Nobunaga Oda battling alongside the serial killers of Tecmo’s Deception.
The hook is that this time players aren’t engaging in a standard Musou, with missions to complete and bases to control and a plot to experience. No, Warriors Abyss is a roguelike arena battler, with the player controlling heroes summoned by the king of hell to aid him in pacifying an even more terrifying demon before it destroys the world. This is accomplished by picking any character from the two main musou franchises out there and taking the fight to endless hordes of angry ghosts.
The biggest change that Warriors Abyss makes to the third-person realtime action musou formula is camera positioning. While a standard musou has the player cleaving their way through hordes of generic soldiers to build up their stats before the officer battles that make up the real challenge, in Abyss players are under constant threat from powerful spirits with a wide variety of deadly ranged attacks.
Enemies announce those attacks by dropping purple fields on the ground to let the player know where they’re going to hit, and the player has just a second to get out of the way or interrupt the attack. This kind of reaction time wouldn’t be possible if the camera was right in the thick of the action like it was in Dynasty Warriors Origins, so the decision has been made to pull the camera back and show off the whole playfield, allowing for tactical decisions to be made as threats swarm all around.
Abyss also offers a fairly unique system for levelling characters up during their trip through the four layers of hell. There are experience points to gather and raw levelling will increase their stats, but the player can only succeed by recruiting other heroes onto their team, at a usual rate of one per stage. Every character has between one and three badges representing stats like strength, wisdom, speed, and the five videogame combat elements — wind, electricity, fire, ice, and murder. As players unlock partners, they stack up badges, and the more badges of a certain type they have, the more powerful the effect.
As is generally the case, it’s important to pick a upgrade path towards the start of a run and stick to it, but Warriors Abyss is so well-balanced that almost any build is a valid way to make it to the deepest corners of hell. A power build might offer huge amounts of raw damage, but a player who focuses entirely on wisdom will find themselves able to pull off a super attack every ten seconds or so, absolutely dominating everything but the final bosses.
The recruitable characters aren’t just there to pump stats, either, as up to six can join the player in combat. Fighting is handled in the standard musou fashion — the player has basic and strong attacks, and the number of basic attacks they perform in sequence before hitting the strong attack button determines which power technique they’ll use. There’s also an additional step in Abyss. Now, an additional button press will summon the a support hero bound to that attack to hop in and perform a special move. These moves have cooldowns, so the player can’t just spam screen-clearing team-ups to cheese their way through levels, but there’s such a wide variety of moves on offer that finding the right mix of partners becomes a minigame in itself.
Honestly, the sheer volume of things to consider when building a team is staggering. Each support character brings not only a badge and special move, they all have unique tactical abilities that activate when they’re combined with other characters. Recruiting three generals might massively lower certain cooldowns, while having five legendary archers can increase ranged damage by an enormous amount. Lu Bu, as the strongest character (he has 4 badges, one above the maximum for almost anyone else) naturally also has the best special ability — team him up with his iconic partners Dong Zhou and Diochan and his already extreme strength is doubled, rendering every opponent powerless to stop him.
While the lack of any meaningful narrative might hold Warriors Abyss from reaching the insane heights of Warriors All-Stars, the sheer volume of characters on offer gives it a huge amount of replayability. It doesn’t matter which character the player is fond of because they’re all here and ready to fight the armies of the dead. This is as charming a celebration of the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors franchises as I’ve seen, and fans should absolutely make it their business to get into it as soon as possible.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Omega Force and published by Tecmo Koei It is currently available on PC, XBS/X, and PS5. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. The game contains no Multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and it contains Violence, Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Alcohol Reference. The violence is meted out almost entirely against ghosts, and the suggestive themes warning seems to refer largely to costumes. Alcohol is used as a power-up to increase the player’s super meter, as is a tradition in the series. As far as brawler games go, this is one of the least objectionable, even for younger teens.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which cannot be resized. There are no important audio cues, and the game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.
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