Having shed the ignominious skin of Dynasty Warriors 9 and been reborn with the much more popularly received Dynasty Warriors: Origins, Koei Tecmo had rescued the series from infamy. Visions of Four Heroes is a major expansion that builds more of the same, while implementing a couple of new weapons into its armoury. Does it forge its own path amongst the chaos or simply fall in line with what’s come before?

You Can’t Bu Me

Visions of Four Heroes introduces new storylines for (you guessed it) four significant figures during the Three Kingdoms period: Zhang Jiao, Dong Zhuo, Yuan Shao and Lu Bu. In each of these mini-campaigns, you’ll be treated to a condensed version of a story chapter seen in the main game, only with no “what if” scenarios and far fewer interactions, briefings and exposition cutscenes. These are still here, but it’s been stripped down to the bare minimum.

Much like the main game, the story and characters are the weakest aspect. Most of the dialogue is still fairly trite and unengaging, boiling down to everyone still expressing their undying love for Ziluan within 5 seconds of meeting him. The idea of following these four figures in particular had potential for some fun and creative licence to be had with the history, but sadly that doesn’t really happen. It’s fairly basic and Visions of Four Heroes doesn’t have as much fun with the concept as I would have liked.

Having said that, for many fans, the idea of teaming up with Lu Bu to oxymoronically restore peace to the realm through sheer force of might and war is still enjoyable. I do think not having a “what if” scenario for each character’s story is a big miss though, as they were the highlights of Origins’ offering. Even so, there’s a decent premise here that’s just not realised. Perhaps all of that is being saved for the next entry.

Jiao For Now

Much like vanilla Origins too however, Visions of Four Kingdoms still boasts the same addicting gameplay I came to love. Parries are still wonderful, Rage Musou’s are awesome, and the setups for missions, while familiar (no new maps), are still very satisfying. Each campaign has three main battles, with a new strategic battle taking place in-between. What are these strategy orientated encounters you query? Glad you asked.

They are, in short, a tactical-lite snack of turn-based interaction. You select which small scale encounters to engage with each turn, picking off enemy squads and ensuring your armies’ squads survive. Instead of full-blown warfare, they’re often smaller objectives, like capturing six bases, or eliminating four officers. They speed up the pace nicely, while offering new “Secret Tactics” which are effectively massive buffs or attacks you can unleash.

Strategy battles then culminate in a final standoff, which will be ridiculously easy if you wiped out all enemy squads en-route, or will be tougher if you failed. While the concept is a nice change of pace from more hacking and slashing, it’s very rudimentary. At no point was I asked to really strategise, and even on higher difficulties, Visions of Four Heroes is still pretty easy to get through. It invokes the sense of being an early prototype for an Empires type of entry, with the developers perhaps experimenting to see what works.

Dong Mess With Me

As well as the new story and battle system, Visions of Four Heroes introduces two new weapons in the Bow and Rope Dart. Additionally, the level cap is raised (the DLC scales to your level), new upgrades exclusive to the DLC are added, and a whole set of training gauntlets get involved to test your mettle. We’ll start with the new weapons first. I was a fan of the Bow, less so the Rope Dart. Each comes with a wealth of Battle Arts and they’re fun additions, with the Bow feeling very powerful after tinkering with the right build.

While the Rope Dart is a fun variant, I never quite got the moveset down to feel natural, but that’s more of a personal preference than a fault of the expansion. Having a higher level cap also means encounters can be scaled up and the difficulty maintained, which is good to see. Though, as mentioned earlier, Origins is still an easy-ish Dynasty Warriors game if you’re properly levelled. Barring the final encounter of Dong Zhou’s campaign, the steroid-ridden slug fest that that is.

Lastly, the training missions give the developers an opportunity to properly test your skills. Ranging from defeating tough officers with a select weapon in a time limit, to literally fighting every officer in the game in one go. Again, while they’re not especially unique, they increase the skill ceiling for a game that needed something more demanding, especially given how good Origins is mechanically. Visions of Four Heroes succeeds here, as with most aspects of its gameplay in general.

Vision of My Own Making

Visions of Four Heroes therefore falls into the familiar territory of being great at what the vanilla package was good at, while still suffering from all of the same faults. Gameplay and mechanically wise, it has a couple of crafty additions that compliment the best of the action. As soon as someone starts talking or the controller isn’t required, however, it falters. Albeit it’s more concise this time, which is a blessing.

It’s a shame that more time wasn’t invested into taking some more risk with the strategy battles or having alternative “what if” scenarios again. If those had been present, I could envision this being a stellar expansion for an already generous amount of content. Instead, it left me feeling as almost every Dynasty Warriors game does, feeling familiar and right at home.

Clocking in at anywhere between 10-14 hours, Visions of Four Heroes does have a solid amount of new material. Whether you get the most out of that time will largely depend on what you liked (or didn’t) from the base game. At £28.99, the price point may be steep given the lack of fresh mission variety or maps, but this is a decent to good expansion that delivers more of what Origins does well.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins Visions of Four Heroes is available now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC via Steam.

Developer: Koei Tecmo
Publisher: Koei Tecmo

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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