As promised, here we are tackling the stealth release latest Warriors spin-off, Warriors Abyss, which is Omega Force trying to apply the ever-so-popular-still roguelike spin to the musou gameplay.
Digital only even in Japan, played on a PS4 Pro because i still haven’t got a PS5… and since i’m getting a Switch 2 on launch (as i mentioned before= i don’t see it happening anytime soon.
The story is pure fluff, just a pretense to have a narrative (and reuse various assets from decades old games) to the roguelike X Warriors idea, which can really be boiled down to “the gang goes to hell”, as in the king of hell/makai/the underworld summons back fallen heroes from the Sengoku and Three Kingdoms eras to fight on his side, as the demon known as Gohma/Gouma
is rising in power in Hell and is seeking to become the new ruler of hell and escape it.
Good to see the Yu Yu Hakusho style (but it could be an even older trend) representation of Enma, the king of hell, as a child, still being a thing, as here Enma is basically a very otome style shota-twink that would be catcalled out immediatly by Neco Arc. No pacifier this time around, and honestly i’m glad for it, i’ve had enough of seeing those fucking things, especially after Tutor Hitman Reborn.
He is very tsun tsun, also.
That about covers it, there are some lore text chronicle/diary entries to unlock as you play, and while there is an ending… it feels like its telling you more than they will add in the actual “true ending” at a later date, according to their own roadmap of roster and mode updates.
For the gameplay side of things, it’s basically a Warriors Orochi spin-off, the roster basically being a tacit omission of the last mainline DW and SW entries mattering, as they picked the characters from the last good games on each series, as in DW 8 and SW 4, which are now decades old, including a selection of the better ones introduced in the various spin-offs or Empires version, so there is Xun Yu from DW8 Empires, Naomasa Li from SW 4-2, Sasuke from Spirit Of Sanada, for example,
but no Zhou Chang even though he was in Warriors All Stars, but still, even as of now, the roster is like 110+ characters, and i assume the Warriors Orochi original characters are eventually coming as part of one of the planned future free updates.
Not much to say about graphics as it uses a lot of old assetts from a lot of previous Warriors games (including music tracks), with some unique new ones and some new locales made for the new hell theme and location, but nothing spectacular, it looks decent enough and performance wise i didn’t encounter any real big slowdowns, at least on my PS4 Pro.
This time around there are no “Sacred Treasures” or magical transformations like in Warriors Orochi 4, nor they fiddled with the combo strings, instead they did add “Summon Attacks” from the heroes in your formation by holding the Charge Attack button at the end of a combo, depending on the order up to 6 allies are lined up in your party, with the extended/advanced combo strings needing to be unlocked each run in the same way you get most buffs, abilities and boosts: by stacking emblems you collect from enemies or pick from a selection of loot every floor.
though as always for these spin-offs that recycle playable characters from all the Warriors sub-series made from 2014 on, the Samurai Warriors 4 characters have a notable advantage over the DW ones, since they have the Hyper attacks that let them cover a lot of ground and mow down enemies speedily (also a pseudo extra dodge of sorts, useful due to the fuckin stamina meter)… but the SW roster on the other hand has lenghty charge attacks that will most likely interrupted before you can chain the Summon Attacks new feature, which is classic Omega Force bullshit of duct-taping shit to the Warriors formula (the Hades roguelite one, in this case) without any regard for balancing them, unless a series of “band aid” things that let you combat these… instead of them having to actually balance the mechanics of a roguelike like Hades with a Warriors style combat.
it’s indicative that here they let you dash cancel a combo then continue it by pressing the attack button (instead of the dash cancel resetting the combo as usual), a thing that i remember maybe you could do in the very first Pirate Warriors game and almost no other Warriors game, glad its here because the density of shit on screen that the game requires you to constantly dodge is absurd, a thing that will be also hard to adapt into since it goes against every instinct you would have developed by playing musou games for a while (no Warriors games lets you do this, i’m not joking).
As is having to contend with the dodge manouver having a stamina meter of sorts.
I’m not joking. It sounds so stupid that no one would believe it’s actually a thing, especially in a Warriors spin-off that ups the number of enemies and shit on screen you’ll need to dodge constantly, but it’s true. And yes, it’s plain comedical how stupid this design choice is.
I was gonna say that’s an issue especially during the boss fights…but it implies it’s kinda tolerable out fo those. It’s not, since, you’re asked constantly dodge, and unlike the games where it comes from, where it was a bit broken since it had no limits and worked as a guard break move too… here where one would need it to be like that is put on a cool down/stamina system.
And holy shits if the game doesn’t get carried away with telegraphed AoE attacks from the enemy, i’ve seen some reviews joking about the “ribespocalypse”, but the screen especially during boss fights the ground can and will become ENTIRELY covered in purple telegraphs of attacks, making for visual messes hard to decipher at times, even more so as some characters you can play as have purple coded special attacks. XD
Which would be tolerable if the dodge wasn’t on a cooldown, i mean, it still would be a mess with the “purple carpet hell” and not well balanced, but its a Warriors game, i expect/want some imbalance… one that isn’t due to some shit so stupid it’s borderline comical genius.
This is almost as stupid as the weapons overheating from use in Contra Rogue Corps, and btw, forget about medium tier generals using the “purple carpeting” moves, even the mooks have telegraphed purple displays of their AoE shit, its absurd.
especially during the boss fights…heck, fuck it, you’re asked constantly to use it, but unlike the games where it comes from, where it was a bit broken since it had no limits since the dash worked as a guard break move too… here where one would need it to be like that, it’s put on a cooldown/stamina system.
And holy shit if the game doesn’t get carried away with telegraphed AoE attacks from the enemies, the screen especially during boss fights the ground can and will become ENTIRELY covered in purple telegraphs of attacks, making for visual messes hard to decipher at times, even more so as some characters you can play as just happen to have purple coded special attacks XD
Which would be tolerable if the dodge wasn’t on a cooldown, i mean, it still would be a mess with the “purple carpet hell” and not well balanced, but its a Warriors game, i expect/want some imbalance… one that isn’t due to some shit so stupid it’s borderline comical genius.
There are some new systems made for the roguelike shizzle, with the idea of characters having various synergies when added to your “stack”, depending on factors like the faction, relationships, and so on, and while there are some attributes and abilities given by having officers and upgrading a certain general stat, it’s all made boil down to which character/s you can add to the party that increas e the so obviously Destiny inspired “battle rating”, aka a big number that indicates how strong overall your build currently is, and how it would make those numbers even bigger to add this guy instead of this guy,
There are formations to unlock in the “skill tree/spherography” and then buy during a run at a King’s Cauldron, and these look more complicated than they are, as they’re basically multipliers for the Battle Rating and can have some effects on the Assembly Summon super attack, but are mostly built for late game to make the battle rating numbers even more number, and you can have the game choose the optimal one for you automatically, useful, but also makes more obvious how thing boil down to upping those numbers more than anything else…
But then there are some more questionable decisions, like giving the dodge move a stamina bar, which is kinda stupid when you ask me to dodge even more than usual, with the bosses being the culmination of the purple parade and other bullshit mechanics that might not be annoying if Omega Force even bothered to check if they play nice with each other.., they don’t.
Exhibit A: the bosses have barrier gauges that have to be chipped away before you can whittle down their main health bar. So far, fine, normal, nothing unusual or stupid.
Problem is, they usually let you inflict very minimal chip damage despite the barrier gauges (even in other Warriors games)… here no, forcing you to unleash the special summon combo super special attack when the barrier gauge breaks because you have not many seconds to actually damage the main HP bar of the boss, after that his armor gauge will keep eating the attacks as before.
So yes, you will die at the first boss many times because there’s no fuckin balancing, and you will repeat this frustrating war of cheap attrition until you can easily overcome the fuckin boss,
the first time i did manage to overcome the first boss i almost reached Gouma himself, the final boss, so yeah, because ultimately there’s not many worlds/realms, just 4 and then the final boss.
This was such an issue that one of the patches (the one that also added the Atelier guest characters) did make the first boss barrier gauge decrease faster, and to chip it a bit when you attack it with a Charge Attack during the “weakened yellow phases”, they noticed it was just so stupid of “roadblock” meant to waste your time and falsify a sense of challenge.
It’s also curiously devoid of the stuff that surrounded Hades outside of its gameplay, the “side dish” content there being arguably more intriguing and tying it up all together, here’s its just the basic core of a roguelike experience with a Warriors combat.
There’s no hub or characters to talk to, you get the aforementioned underworld records, meaning some lore text dumps and various records about Hell, its kings and music you can’t play outside of the “music” section (yet), but it’s not even that deep of a roguelite experience to justify it relying entirely on just the barebones gameplay loop, even if it can be fun when it plays like a Warriors game and you’ve assembled a build that lets you smear on the pavement most of the opposition.
Sure, the gameplay loop can be fun, but due to it being not balanced it often can be annoying to have a run stopped at a boss because of the stupid ass design choices they made for them expecially, on top of the “dodge with cooldown/stamina”
It’s not even a very difficult game, it really isn’t, even with the patch addressing the first boss, it’s just grating, frustrating, and beyond unbalanced, because it implies someone tried to balance difficulty… it’s clear nobody did. They just added bandaids like stacking some types of emblems can unlock the ability to interrupt the enemy charging telegraphed attacks with your own charge attacks, make you invincible during dash (which should be the default) or enable multiple dashes in a row.
because you get overall stats improvements the more characters you unlock (with one of the few currencies you retained upon death, the Karma Embers), you also will eventually increase the barrier damage you can inflict, as paradoxically the first boss is the hardest one (aside from the final one) until you’ve improved stats and stacked the formations and useful emblems/allies enough to kill him, making the other ones in between the first and last boss a downward slide.
Shame because the idea of getting stronger by unlocking more characters IS nice and incentivates replaying it with more characters, that it gets right without any big caveat.
Honestly i find it funny that Koei is selling only costumes DLCs that they already sold and resold decades ago, for a game with a camera that goes for the isometric roguelike style, so why bother with costumes i will barely see on my character, in hellish planes full of peons and a barrage of purple telegraphs of incoming AoE attacks and bombardments.
It’s still shit that TK is still doing this, but if the upside is them adding overtime more characters for free in patches… i’ll take it, since the base game has a 25 bucks MSRP.
On the upside, they did release more playable characters for free (alongside paid DLC costumes bundles/pack) with each update, almost 100 as of now, the last one adding a new super high difficulty tier that also lets you confront a new form/variant of the final boss (by also doing some specific objectives), and a new mode, Depths Of Torment.
The latter one requires a finished run (that you can load as “Soul Record”) and is basically an even harder mode, since you keep all the upgrades and party you accrued in that saved run, BUT you can’t get new characters, at every plane/level you have a timed objective and both exits that do add more difficulty, like, reducing the time limit, increasing the target number of enemies to defeat, ALONGSIDE reducing or removing some of your health. A pick your poison kinda deal.
Once you finish a run, you can obtain Records Of Sin, depending on your performance, but the catch is that you can keep only 5 of the obtained Records Of Sin, and you need to spend a lot of Karma Embers to “buy” them for keeps.
I get why they would cost Embers, since this is meant to be a mode you tackle when you have already beat the game multiple times in the various difficulty tiers (here called “Traversal Levels”), hence when you have already maxed out/upgraded out all the branches in the Hall Of Souls, so by then you would otherwise have no use for Karma Embers anymore.
But honestly it feels frustrating and rewards feel… underwhelming, since the Records Of Sin are just extra equipabble items that grant stat boosts. That’s it, and the mode itself doesn’t really mix things up enough, as there’s no real new content to it, besides the game slowly ripping away your upgrades level by level.
I get it’s a survival mode, and maybe they can improve it in later updates, but it also shares the same issue the game had before this mode was included, as the appeal of it doesn’t last long anyway, even more so with the barebones story that really could be summed up in a single line or screenshot, they could have done have a proper narration to it, but clearly didn’t care for any of that.
It took me 10 hours to first beat it, spent 5/6 more when i picked it up after the May update, but still, it’s too reliant on its gameplay loop that doesn’t have enough depth to keep you intrigued in it for long, it doesn’t have any story or new worthwhile content to keep you hooked, it just expects you to beat it over and over, because it’s a rogue-like, indicating the very barebones approach to this format/style of game, and the overall feeling like they are using the premise as an excuse to sell an incomplete story and maybe add some actual resolution in a later update.
It’s not bad, it’s at least not a full priced release, Warriors fan most likely will have an okay time with it, and have fun playing with the classic/reused roster from the last mainline Warriors games that were actually good, but it’s a shame that Omega Force didn’t fully try to combine the musou gameplay to the roguelike format, instead of just ducktaping them together and calling it a day.
Alongside adding some truly baffling design choices that borderline break the game… or would if they did try to actually balance the darn thing, they clearly never did, and fundamentally never will.
Still, not the worst Warriors release or spin-off, it will do as a fix if you want the older style Warriors gameplay and did the idea of giving it a rogue-like spin, but maybe get it on sale.
Wise Cafe (International) 