Warriors Orochi 4

Overview

Warriors Orochi 4 is a 2018 hack and slash video game developed by Koei Tecmo and Omega Force for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. First announced on March 2018, it is the fifth installment of the crossover series Warriors Orochi, a combination of the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series.

The game was released in Japan on September 27, 2018, in North America on October 16, 2018, and in Europe on October 19, 2018.

An updated version, titled Warriors Orochi 4 Ultimate, was released in Japan on December 19, 2019, and is set to be released in North America and Europe on February 14, 2020.

Plot

Having forgotten the events of the previous installment, the heroes of the Three Kingdoms and Sengoku Period are suddenly brought back to Orochi's world by Zeus, one of the Twelve Olympians. To return to their respective eras once more, they seek to find eight mysterious bangles with aid from the Mystics who remembered the past conflict.

Perseus, weary of his father Zeus' constant meddling of mortal affairs, decides to steal his eight Ouroboros bracelets, made from the hair of Medusa and each containing a godly power, and contact the mortals, only to end up causing them to be scattered across the world.

Subsequently, the heroes are divided into four factions, each with a bracelet wielder.

Perseus leads the first one, which includes Naotora Ii, Guan Yinping, and Yukimura Sanada.

The second is led by the Mystic Nuwa and includes Nobunaga Oda.

The third is led by Zeus' children, Ares and Athena, and includes Zhao Yun, Mitsunari Ishida, and Cao Pi.

The final faction includes Da Ji and Lu Bu.

The first two factions link up, as Nobunaga and Nuwa had only wanted to test the mantle of their adversary. Yukimura forms a bond with Perseus, while Ares is revealed to have earned the loyalty of Cao Pi and Hideyoshi Toyotomi, whom he mistakenly thinks is a bracelet wielder, by promising them worldly power, but they realize that he has no intention of keeping it.

Perseus eventually unmasks himself as Loki, a servant of Odin, the king of Asgard, who secretly leads Da Ji's faction. He deliberately scattered the bracelets so the heroes could channel their godly power, therefore stabilizing the world enough for Odin to enact his plan: summoning the God of Destruction, the world's will taking the form of Orochi, so he can grow Yggdrasil and create a weapon powerful enough to destroy the universe and start it with a clean slate. Odin offers Ares, frustrated by Zeus' inaction, a chance to depose of his father. When the heroes finally defeat Zeus, who admits that he only wanted to spar with them, Ares snaps and kills him, absorbing his power and declaring himself the new king of Olympus.

A distraught Athena joins the heroes to prevent Odin from completing his plan. After a series of battles, Odin becomes impatient of Ares' failure to contain the coalition and steals Zeus' power from him. To atone for his actions, Ares chooses to sacrifice a part of his life force to resurrect his father. Meanwhile, the God of Destruction's arrival unexpectedly resurrects the real Orochi, who assists the heroes to kill him before being killed himself. However, the heroes are too late to stop Odin from growing Yggdrasil. At the last minute, Loki turns on Odin and causes Yggdrasil to weaken, having had a change of heart and wanting to avenge his fallen friends, who were killed by Odin during Ragnarok. An enraged Odin kills Loki, only to perish at the hands of the heroes.

The victory is shortlived, however, as the toll of Orochi's and the God of Destruction's deaths have split apart the balance of the world. The Olympians and the Mystics band together to send the heroes back to their time. The heroes once again lose the memories of their exploits, though they retain a sense that there are beings watching them from above.

Gameplay

• Gameplay mechanics like class types and three-man teams are kept; however, the Wonder type is removed, putting it back to a total of three types (Power, Speed, and Technique).
• The switch combo system from the previous installment now activates a tornado to pop enemies upwards, to make subsequent attacks easier to execute.
• The base camp feature used in Warriors Orochi 3 returns. However, the camp is entirely menu-based, so there's no hub world to walk around in.
• Players can send unused characters to Training for additional experience. They may even collect gems and weapons to bring back to the player.
• Sacred Treasures allow the player to perform Magic, which replaces the prior Type Action mechanic from previous installments. Each one belongs to a different category separate from class type. R1 is used as the base button modifier for various magic commands.
  • R1 + X : Instantly summons a mount and has the player automatically mount it.
  • R1 + Square : Uses a Sacred Treasure's Normal Magic. Requires/consumes a small portion of the magic gauge.
  • R1 + Triangle: Triggers a Sacred Treasure's charge magic. Requires/consumes a full magic gauge to execute.
  • R1 + Circle: Executes Unique Magic, which is a magic unique to each character. Requires/consumes the player's entire magic gauge and half of their Musou gauge.
• The triple attack function has been replaced by Unity Magic, which can be used if the Unity Gauge is filled up through repeated usage of Charge or Unique Magic. It is triggered by pressing R2 and L2 simultaneously, and causes affected enemies to drop more rewards than usual.
• The combo counter now functions differently; it now retains the count for a long time until the player gets hit, or unless charge and unique magic spells are executed, which will reset the combo counter.
• An online competitive mode called the Battle Arena is implemented.
• Collaboration characters from the previous installment are omitted to further emphasize interactions between the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors cast.
• Characters central to the story receive "deification" forms based on the number of bracelets found. These enable the use of enhanced actions that do more damage than normal and change the characters' appearance.
• Downloadable content includes weapons, costumes, and other bonuses.

Characters

The original game features 170 playable characters. All playable characters from Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate return. Characters are based on their appearances from Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires and Samurai Warriors 4-II; as a consequence, the game also marks the debut of characters introduced in those games into the Warriors Orochi series. The game introduces six new original characters:

• Zeus (Power): The Greek god of the sky and thunder, he takes an interest in Orochi's dimensional world and brings the heroes back to realize his ambitions. Zeus wields a scepter, Keraunos, as his weapon.
• Athena (Technique): The Greek goddess of wisdom and Zeus' daughter. Loyal to her father, she escorts him in the dimensional world while they are searching for a traitor of their kind. Athena wields a mechanical shield, Aegis, as her weapon.
• Loki (Technique): The Norse god of mischief and shapeshifting. Throughout the game, he disguises himself as Perseus, a Greek hero, intending to mislead the warriors into helping Odin; as such, he is solely referred to as Perseus in all promotional material. He is the person Athena is looking for in the dimensional world. Loki wields a tree spear, Mistilteinn, as his weapon.
• Ares (Speed): The Greek god of war and Zeus' son. Prideful and arrogant, he loathes humans and detests his father's tendency to live among them. He wields Typhon spears as his weapon.
• Odin (Power): The Norse god of wisdom and magic. Following his survival at Ragnarok, Odin is eager to search for and accumulate power. He wields Gungnir as his weapon.
• Diamondback (Power): A general in Orochi's army, he is the series' third playable generic officer, after Dodomeki and Gyuki. He wields Orochi's scythe as his weapon.

The Ultimate update sees the return of guests and also adds new characters for a total of 177 playable characters:

• Joan of Arc (Technique)
• Ryu Hayabusa (Speed)
• Achilles (Power)
• Gaia (Technique): The Greek personification of the earth. She wields Hecatoncheires as her weapon.
• Hades (Power): The Greek god of death. He wields a scythe as his weapon.
• Yang Jian (Speed): A Chinese mystic. He wields a three-pointed double-edged glaive as his weapon.
• Perseus (Power): A demigod son of Zeus and Greek hero. He was the figure whom Loki impersonated in the original game. Like Loki, he wields the tree spear, Mistilteinn, as his weapon.