Slim figure for long-term franchise fighter

Publisher Koei Tecmo has released their latest financial report revealing that, among many other numbers, that their flagship fighter Dead or Alive 6? sold approximately 350,000 copies in its first month of relea?se.

Now, of course, that's a six-figure digit, and nothing to be sniffed at, but it's likely less than the publisher was expecting. Given that Dead or Alive 5 launched with around 600,000 sales, (eventually rounding out at some 1.5 million following the release of Last Round), this latest entry in the 3D fighter has some ways to go in orde?r to catch up.

Dead or Alive 6 hit the PC and console platforms last month to mixed reviews. While it still fights a good fight, it was criticised for its expensive DLC plans, missing features and overall lack of ambition and progress over previous entries in the series. Dead or Alive 6 has? also not made the cut for the main stage at EVO 2019, which is no doubt disappointing for the game's competitive community.

Elsewhere in the report, it was announced that Warriors Orochi 4 currently stands at around 700,000 copies, which is over 300,000 copies more than the previous financial report. In the interim, the game has launched worldwide and on PC, so clearly releasing Warriors games in the west has a very positive impact on sales??, having boosted the figure by over 100%

Dead or Alive 6 is available now on PS4, PC and Xbox One. Warriors Orochi 4 is available ??now on PS4, PC, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

Dead or Alive 6 shipments top 350,000 [Gematsu]

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Hands-on with the Switch build

Very early in the life-cycle of the Nintendo Switch, Koei Tecmo made it clear it was going to bet big on the system. In Japan, the publisher has ported many of its games to the device with apparent success, including several of the older titles in the Warriors franchise. Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada, and Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires all saw release on the system exclusively in Japan, as well as the Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 and Fire Emblem Warriors titles we got in the west.

This pledge of support for the system continues this month with Warriors Orochi 4. After dabbling with an open-world concept in Dynasty Warriors 9, Orochi 4 carries on the tradi?tional, level-b?ased structure the series is best known for.

For those unfamiliar, the Orochi series takes characters from Dynasty and Samurai Warriors’ games and transports them to a twisted world of Orochi’s creation to have heroes from both series do battle with the Serpent King. In Orochi 4, it’s the Greek god Zeus who brings together the two franchises, giving the spin-off its first taste of non-Asian ?influence. Zeus is one a several new characters from Greek and Norse mythology making their debut in the series, bringing the total number of playable characters to 170, a Guinness World Record for the hack-and-slash genre.

Only a handful of characters were available during my hands-on session with the game at a recent Koei Tecmo event, and while none of the new characters were available for me to try out, I was able to see how the addition of magic will change the standard Warriors formula. In short, it takes what can be often mundane gameplay and makes it extraordinary.

The gift of magic is bestowed upon players during the second mission of the game. Characters in possession of Sacred Treasures have access to magic attacks that use a constantly-filling meter that's shared between the player's three party members. The attacks are all pretty ridiculous. Whether I'm catching enemies in the undertow of a massive wave I'm surfing, lobbing globs of water at opposing Generals ?prepping for their own magic attacks, or striking down a massive group of soldiers with a rainbow explosion, magic adds a? much-needed sense of silliness to an otherwise bone-dry narrative.

Magic can also be ?used to summon a mount that gets players across the battlefield much fast??er than on foot, while also negating any flimsy attacks from enemy grunts who can often, and annoyingly, bring you to a complete stop with one hit.

The whole system is incredibly fun to use and a wonderful addition to the time-tested gameplay, but it doesn't always look as spectacular as I'd hope it would. This could have more to do with the version I tested rather than an indictment of the product as a whole. On Switch, at least with the levels I was able to play, everything looks a bit dreary and drab. The game runs well, though there is some slowdown when activating certain unique magic attacks and enemy pop-in is persistent. Aesthetically, it's a step down from the wonderfully colorful worlds of Hyrule and Aytolis, but it's on par from what I've experienced with past Samurai Warriors games on Nintendo systems.

Warriors Orochi 4 releases for Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 16 in N?orth America and October 19 in Europe and Australia.

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OG of War

Koei Tecmo have released two new trailers featuring the recently revealed Ares and Odin, both of whom will be joining the enormous battalion of characters in the upcoming Warriors Orochi 4.

First up is God of War Ares, who is armed with twin lances that, amazingly, can morph into winged creatures and wreck platoons of enemies?? with reckless abandon, even reconstructing into a double-ended tornado for when situations ge?t particularly sticky.

Next up is Odin, last seen being played by a really bored-looking Anthony Hopkins in Thor: Ragnarok. This dapper iteration fights with an aloof, casual nonchalance, freezing time to hold his enemies in place, before brutally cutting them down with a mere swipe of his hand.

Warriors Orochi 4 - for PS4, PC, Xb?ox One and Nintendo Switch - will launch in North America on October 16, with Europe on October 19.

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Gnarly grinds, dude

Koei Tecmo’s love-it-or-hate-it Musou series has enjoyed and suffered both extremes of its reputation lately. Hyrule Warriors and Warriors Orochi 3 are some of the most celebrated games in the series, so it’s little wonder I’m excited about Warriors Orochi 4’s impending October release. But Warriors All-Stars and Dynasty Warriors 9 disappointed many fans, while Fire Emblem Warriors split its fans between more compelling mechanics and questionable roster decisions. It's left Warriors fans divided as to whether WO4 will fare as well as its predecessor.

All of these games use the same combo system. They have similar tactical elements of territory control and objective management. They’re all extremely repetitive hack-and-slash action games. All of their basic gameplay structures share the same aspects that appeal to their fans and annoy their detractors. And yet despite this similarity, their overlying structures are different enough for a lot of players to express doubt that the series's future will keep them entertained. I see a reason to remain optimistic about Warriors Orochi 4 specifically, but to explain why I want to pick apart where these games (or rather, the ones I've played) succeed and fail in keeping their repetitive gameplay fresh.

Warriors All-Stars's story is a repeatable, branching campaign where the story only lasts a dozen or so plot battles, then you replay with all of your previous levels and gear á la New Game+. It sounds like an intriguing new structure for a Warriors game until you realize it forces replaying battles often. Fighting through the exact same stages with different objectives and characters feels far less repetitive than fighti??ng through the exact same stages with the exact same objectives and characters. This New Game+ also re-locks your access to previously available characters.

Even All-Stars’ gene??ric grinding battles contain next to no randomness or variance compared against each other. While grinding Monster Dens for EXP, I noticed that my objectives were always in the exact same locations for any given map. This got old very quickly, especially given the wider recommended level gap between many story battles. The constant resetting of story progress to start over made me less enthusiastic to cycle again.

This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if I could just hop into another mode for a quick bout or five, but therein lies the elephant in All-Stars' room. There is no other mode. Not even? Free Play. There is no way to progress beyond story endings without repeatedly blocking off access to other characters and fighting the same battles. It’s a forced limitation that can wear one’s patience very quickly in a gameplay style already loaded with repetition.

Hyrule Warriors felt much less samey, even though it was still very much so. While it boasted a more typical campaign, it has an Adventure Mode to thank for its acclaim. Adventure Mode has you take a nostalgia trip through a repurposed classic Zelda world map, battling a new fight at each "screen." Even though these fights borrowed from common templates like “defuse the Bombchus by stabbing them” or “defeat X en?emies,” they are constantly rearranged into new combinations with more stipulations. Despite how similar everything technically was, every new battle felt like a new challenge or at least a meaningful remix of an older one. And it was so much more fun to plow through for hours and hours on end because of that v??ariance.

My only complaints with Adventure Mode are the steep late game grind walls. Some battles will require revisiting older stages to restock on key items. A-rank prizes instantly fall out of reach if you take a single hit on later stages. Thankfully, Definitive Edition smooths these walls out by adding a n?ew shop for key i??tems and replacing flat damage ranking thresholds with percentage-based ones. It’s also much easier to accept these walls given that they don’t rear until dozens of hours of play.

Warriors Orochi 3, on the other hand, has a much larger story mode. Its singular campaign was built around giving every character in its ridiculously massive roster a chance to shine (usually multiple). Thus, the story mode alone is stuffed with over a hundred encounters to progress through and constantly try out new characters. And Warriors story battles stick out more than individual battles in ot??her modes, thanks to thei?r narratives and objectives.

Even the later stages are balanced around the expectation of frequently switching to newer characters -- on easy and normal at least. So when I hit a wall, I could easily surmount it by switching to a character I’ve used more previously, though I also found it?? fun to constantly switch up? my team with new allies. When the difficulty ramped up and I faced a slew of game overs, I never had to grind to overcome the challenge. I just adjust my strategies or maybe break my piggy bank of bonus EXP.

Even after the story mode is exhausted, Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate’s Gauntlet Mode plays out much like a second but distinct campaign. Converting Warriors' semi-tactical army warfare into a dungeon crawler is an odd but pleasant choice, putting a twist on the series’s elements of area control and hack-and-slashing. It’s a similarly overwhelming torrent of repetitive content, and the pseudo-roguelike elements add enough spice for battles ?to feel varied and keep me guessing what will happen next.

Hyrule Warriors, Warriors Orochi 3, and Warriors All-Stars all have different overarching goals to grind toward, and they all require a lion's share of grinding. The former two do much more to provide variance between fights than the latter. Another difference is that the former two make it easier to progress in other directions instead of staying stuck at a single grind wall, while the latter forces continual backtracking. A sense of continual, persistent progression is a drivin??g factor of any grind-d??riven game. All-Stars’ gamble on a repeatable story mode worked against it because it eliminated almost any sense of persistence. Sure, my heroes keep their levels and stats, but I’ll have to go th?rough the exact same motions to re-unlock them.

Most Warriors games have alternate modes to recycle that content and preserve its freshness. That still isn’t enough to stave off boredom for everyone, and that’s okay. Dynasty Warriors will always be niche by its nature. But there is a threshold where even a niche’s most?? avid supporters get tired what they enjoy. The modes a game is built around are just as important as the core gameplay itself.

I have confidence that Warriors Orochi 4 won't have this problem because it is a sequel to Orochi 3. According to the precedent it has set in the past, part of the Orochi spinoff series's major pull is giving every character in its ridiculously massive roster enough room to shine. Some will naturally shine much more than others, but in order to simply fit them all into the same space, the story will be written around dozens of story battles with ample content. And according to footage that Koei Tecmo has streamed itself, these will be the traditional Orochi battles t?hat fans are already familiar with. It's simply natural to assume a sequel will borrow more cues from what it's a sequel to than from its?? less popular cousins.

At the same time, the chickens haven't hatched yet (there's no reason to assume the story will be as massive as Orochi 3 Ultimate's) and there's still much we don't know. It's safe to assume there will be no upheaval of the series's status quo, unlike how Dynasty Warriors 9 was announced to be open world right from the start (and Koei also revealed that WO4 wouldn't be an open world just as quickly). That ?still?? leaves the question of whether it will have enough quality content with enough variation to stay interesting.

The story mode may be a worthy ride itself, especially by introducing a new cast of main characters in its Greek pantheon rather than sticking squarely to Orochi's goons. If it isn't, many Warriors games are defined by their alternate modes/campaigns anyway. Koei Tecmo has remained hush-hush about other modes in WO4 for the time being, but I think they could restore a lot of faith from their fanbase if they share anything within the coming months. Another arcadey adventure like Gauntlet Mode that encourages leveraging familiar skills with new tactics would be great if that's in its pipeline. Something that offers multiple paths of progression, like HW's Adventure Mode or WO3's ??plethora of side battles, also smooths out the grind.

Critiquing repetition of something fun has always felt weird to me because it sounds like an oxymoron on paper. If you?? enjoy doing it, it sounds like it’d be fun to do again and again. And it is for a while, but that eventually builds up boredom. Especially if you have to do it before moving onto something that comes after, like before beating a boss with stats too high for your current level??.

I don’t even dislike Warriors All-Stars. It's enjoyable to me, I just get tired of it extremely quickly. I don’t need Orochi 4 to be that much better either, I already have a half-dozen Warriors games. I’m also always excited to discover new characters, worlds, and features, so I’m interested in sequels all the same. But having faith is no guarantee when Zeus himself is determined to smack you in? the face, so we'll have to see for ourselves when Yukimura and friends out-smack him this Fall.

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Less grinding required!

By the grace of god, save data from multiple versions of Warriors Orochi 3 will be compatible with the upcoming Warriors Orochi 4. This is actually a feature from previous entries in the Warriors series, but is typically relegated to reissues (like Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate) instead of sequels. While it won't get you more than 100,000 EXP for your fighters, it ??is a nice head start and a great way to reward longtime players.

In another great move, the feature will be available on every platform. While the Xbox One version of Warriors Orochi 4 isn't mentioned in the press release, Japan doesn't get versions of the Warriors games on Microsoft's plat?forms. It would be? pretty silly for the Western release to not include the feature, especially when PC is getting it.

As for what games are compatible, save data from the original Warriors Orochi 3 on PS3 is supported. The PS4 port has the most options, with the aforementioned vanilla release and Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate on every Sony console supported (PS3, PS4 and Vita). Switch will only work with 3 Ultimate from Switch, but that makes sense (it was the only r?elease of the game on Ninte??ndo's platform).

If you happened to buy Dynasty Warriors 9 on PS4 or PC, then you have my condolences. More importantly, though, save data from DW9 will net you a costume pack with alternate outfits for Zhenji, Daqiao, Yueying, Wang Yuanji, and Diaochan in Warriors Orochi 4. It may not be much, but the gestu?re is certainly nice.

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Zeus ain't got nothin on Lu Bu

Warriors Orochi 4 will be heading West this year on October 16 for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch! Many had assumed the game would be exclusive to Japan for 2018, but Koei Tecmo kept its promise of a worldwide release for the title. If that wasn't enough, split-screen co-op will finally be making a return to the Warriors series (even though it did show up in Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition). Along with that news, a new trailer has been released that shows off footage of Zeus. While he looks pretty int??eresting, even a god has nothing on Lu Bu.

The big surprise is that the Xbox One isn't being forgotten. While Japan won't be getting a localization for the platform, I'm sure there are plenty of Xbox fans in the West that would welcome the game. I'm also sure that many more will eagerly grab this as it isn't open-world like Dynasty Warriors 9.

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Coming to Japan in September

Koei Tecmo have released the first full gameplay trailer for hack 'n' slash sequel Warriors Orochi 4 (or Orochi 3 in Japan) and it sure looks like a Warriors Orochi game.

The fast-paced, ballistic trailer gives us a chance to check out some of the game's staggering 170 playable characters in action, tearing their way through masses upon masses of enemies on the battlefield. I particularly like the matador dude with his mystica??l bull attacks.

The trailer ends with the announcement that Warriors Orochi 4 will launch in Japan on PS4 and Switch on September 27, before following on PC October 16. Although there is no official date for the West as of yet, it was previously announced that the game would arrive globally in 2018.

Warriors Orochi 4 is currently in development? for PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch

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PC version coming, too

Further details have come out from Famitsu's reveal of Warriors Orochi 4 (3 if you're in Japan). While the roster will have 170 characters on it, none of them will be guest characters. It is specifically mentioned that Ryu Hayabusa will not be returning, which definitely has me bummed out. That being said, only five characters will be brand new to this latest installment, so who is making the cut is anyone'?s guess??.

The story, this time, will feature a bunch of Greek deities. I'm not sure how that is going to work without guest characters (there is that awful Warriors game based on The Battle of Troy), but Zeus will be the main boss. The Greek Parthenon is also set to be a stage in the game, which would be suitably epic for such a massive roster. The story is being supervised by Yoshitaka Murayama, best known for his work on the Suikoden series.

Along with a bunch of other info about specific gameplay elements, Koei Tecmo did confirm that a PC port is in the works. It will launch after the console ports land in Japan. I don't know if I should be happy or scared, since most of Koei Tecmo's PC output has been pretty lackluster. At least if ??you don't have any consoles, you won't have to go without the game.

Warriors Orochi 4’s Story Is Supervized By S??uikoden Creator; Will Not Include Any Guests [Siliconera]

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That's not a roster, that's a battalion

Japanese gaming publication Famitsu have posted new details (or any details, in fact) about Koei Tecmo's upcoming sequel Warriors Orochi 4, which was first announced back in March.

The sequel will launch in Japan in 2018, and is coming to PS4 and Nintendo Switch (it has already been announced that the game will be headed West later this year). Warriors Orochi 4 will also feature the?? biggest roster to?? date, containing a staggering 170 characters. Finally, a new form of special move, known as "Divine Art Actions", is being added to the warriors' repertoire.

At least now fans have something to go on. It's also probably worth noting that, in the past, Koei have been known to add further platforms to a game when it crosses into other territories, so Xbox One or PC owners should keep???? their hopes up.

Warriors Orochi 4 is currently in developm??ent for PS4 and Ni??ntendo Switch.

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