Another year, another Warriors game. Developed by Omega Force and published by Koei Tecmo, Warriors Orochi 4 is our latest venture into the Warriors crossover series and the first to be released on PC in an attempt to bring new life into the series and attract new fans. A huge change in Warriors Orochi 4 is the introduction of a Magic system which adds a whole new way to rack up those kills, along with a character pool of 170 warriors to choose from. Warriors Orochi 4 is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 as well. Spoilers beware.
Warriors Orochi 4 starts off with, wouldn’t you know it, a band of warriors plucked from their respective timelines and thrown into a battle against an opposing faction of other time plucked warriors. As Warriors Orochi 4 takes place after Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate every hero from the Three kingdoms and the Warring states were sent back to their respective time period with no recollection of what occurred in the “Orochi Dimension” as this feuding locale is called. 
Warriors Orochi 4 starts off by throwing you into a tutorial level where you are retaught everything you learned in every incarnation of the Warriors series and then introduces the previously mentioned magic system. The characters have some dialogue alluding to the fact that this has never happened to them before, HINT- It has, and you begin slaying thousands of flimsy little NPCs attempting to attack you. As you continue through the game you will unlock characters that you have either defeated or encountered on the field of battle which will join your camp and allow you to use them in either a fighting capacity or as support characters to buff your stats. As you progress through the story and learn more about the magic that has brought you here you will uncover that it was not Orochi as previously thought that brought the many warriors here but instead Zeus, Ares and Athena are to blame.
As with all Warriors games in the series, the story is divulged by completing mission after mission of hacking and slashing your way through a map held by the opposing faction, which you must kill their captains and take over the zone, all while making sure you do not die yourself or your zones taken. To spice things up sometimes you may have to protect a special character in the field from dying or make sure particular locations do not get taken over, but the formula is the same as all the others and has not changed. While you clear out missions, you’ll soon find out that some of your enemies from past series have of course been transported here and also have access to the earlier mentioned magic system, but you’ll encounter some, such as Nobunaga Oda, will have access to another new system called “deity mode” in which they use items called Ouroboros bracelets to take on the powers of certain gods. For example, Nobunaga oda uses the powers of “Hades” and gets black armor with purple energy emanating from him. These deity forms allow them to use special physical and magic attacks while in this powered state. These Ouroboros bracelets are necessary to fight against Zeus and will be collected as you progress through the story and recruit new heroes. 
With 170 characters you might think you will have an endless supply of squad variety to choose from, and while I did play around with most of them after I attained them, I pretty much kept to my same three for the whole game, as leveling them all up with the rewards from completing missions in a way to keep them all balanced was just too tedious and would mean spending a lot more time than I cared to. After every completed mission you not only get experience but gems you can use to level up your warriors by spending the gems called “Growth Points” into their talent trees and made them stronger. I got the idea that the gem system was more of a catch-up mechanic since the warriors you used in the mission got experience and leveled up that way, but it was far easier to just keep leveling the same three until I got them to max level and became ridiculously strong.
As each character has their architypes such as Power, Speed and Technique they also have different elemental damage that can be applied to their weapons. Weapons not only have a power stat and elemental damage but can also be enchanted with different attributes such as increased aerial damage, the ability to absorb health and many more. There isn’t much of an incentive to use other characters aside from some dialogue changes and access to the “Deity forms” that the 8 special characters got. 
Finally, the base camp mechanic returns from Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate that has its own talent tree and the points are unlocked by recruiting more and more characters. Technically you don’t have to spend a single talent point in the base camp, but they will make the game even easier to play with some talents improving damage, others health and some even just adding more units to a field.
With the Warriors series you have always had the ridiculous over-the-top attacks that killed hundreds at a time with careful usage, As I’ve mentioned a few times, there is the new Magic system that all characters have access to, and I wanted to expand on it just a bit. Each character has a close range and long-range magic attack, and each of these can be used repeatedly using your magic meter. This meter refills rapidly and lets you spam abilities nonstop. Both kinds of magic attacks can be charged up which will use your full magic meter but in exchange can wipe out a whole zone of enemies, so the tradeoff is worth it in some situations. These magic attacks are all based on the characters wielding one of eight sacred treasures, many characters share this sacred treasure, but all have different attacks. According to Koei Tecmo, there will be more weapons and treasures released with the post launch DLC they have planned; the first of which launched on November 28th adding an additional 8 sacred treasures, 5 new stages and an additional challenge mode. 
Warriors Orochi 4 is a nice welcome to the PC world, as it gives many people that might never have bothered with it due to being a console exclusive the chance to experience what others have been enjoying since the 90s. Koei Tecmo has done a great job of updating the game system with the introduction of the magic system and improving the flow of combat. It’s a great improvement over the previous incarnations but in the end, if you’ve ever played a Warriors game, you’ll understand its downfall. No matter what you change, you are still hacking and slashing for hours on end, and that can get repetitive.
