Dynasty Warriors: Origins – Visions of Four Heroes Review

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I really enjoyed Dynasty Warriors: Origins last year, which felt like a fresh take on the series. I didn’t see it as replacing the main Dynasty Warriors games, but as the start of something new – a series that focuses more on story and character progression. Now, almost a year later, Koei Tecmo and Omega Force have released Visions of Four Heroes, a story DLC that offers alternate storylines for four key characters: Zhang Jiao, Dong Zhuo, Yuan Shao, and Lu Bu.

I’ve seen other Dynasty Warriors games play around with alternate histories, like imagining what would happen if the Yellow Turban Rebellion had actually won. But Origins feels different. It’s way more focused on the characters themselves – like a deep dive into who these four leaders could have been if they’d made better choices. Honestly, it feels like really well-written fanfiction, showing us the best, most heroic versions of these guys if they’d just lived up to their full potential.

You can start the Visions of Four Heroes DLC from the inn menu in the main game. Each story arc is separate, both from the main game and from each other, but your character’s progress – including levels, stats, items, weapons, and skills – carries over. These stories are straightforward and follow a single path, unlike the original game where you could choose between the Wei, Wu, and Shu storylines.

The ‘Visions of Four Heroes’ DLC starts with the story of Zhang Jiao. You need to finish his campaign before you can play the stories of Dong Zhuo, Yuan Shao, or Lu Bu. This first part begins in the same open area where you last fought Zhang Jiao in the main game. Surprisingly, you’ll control your character, Ziluan, to help Zhang Jiao before he’s defeated.

I haven’t found any completely new maps, which is a bit disappointing. It’s neat to see maps revisited with different times of day, weather, and enemy placements, but ultimately, they’re all locations I’ve played before. The story DLC does adjust to your level, which is good – even at level 70, I couldn’t breeze through everything. I also made things extra challenging by playing on the hardest difficulty setting, Ultimate Warrior.

This story expansion features Ziluan aligning with several key antagonists before the Three Kingdoms – Wei, Wu, and Shu – were fully established. As a result, players will frequently battle against powerful characters from those factions. “Visions of the Four Heroes” focuses on fast-paced action, quickly moving from one challenging battle to the next with minimal pauses or downtime.

The story DLC introduces a few changes from the main game, including two new weapons: the bow and the rope dart. You get these weapons by defeating enemy officers. The bow seems to drop fairly quickly – I got it within the first two stages of Zhang Jiao’s campaign. The rope dart, however, is much rarer. My colleague at RPG Site, Kite Stenbuck, found it much earlier than I did – I didn’t get mine until the very last stage of the DLC! It’s hard to say if this is typical, or if I just had really bad luck.

Despite being a bit complex to master, the bow and rope dart add exciting new options to Ziluan’s combat abilities. Both weapons have unique follow-up moves after attacks and dodges. As you improve these weapons, Ziluan gains extra stats and skills, and you can use them throughout the entire game, not just in the new DLC areas. You can also buy additional skills for them with in-game money, similar to other weapons.

The Vision of Four Heroes DLC introduces a brand new skill tree, but its benefits – stat boosts and special skills – only work within the DLC’s levels. This makes sense, as the skills are tied to a new game mechanic exclusive to the DLC campaigns. Limiting the boosts to the DLC helps maintain balance in the main game. It’s a little disappointing, though, that the tree mostly focuses on those boosts and the ability to carry more healing items, without offering much else that feels truly impactful.

Throughout the Vision of Four Heroes DLC, Ziluan gains several temporary companions, including Zhuhe, Diaochan, and a mysterious new character. While Diaochan and the new character are only available for a limited number of stages, Zhuhe accompanies Ziluan for the entirety of the DLC’s story paths. It’s worth remembering that in Origins, companion characters are only directly playable for a short time when a special meter fills, allowing you to switch control from Ziluan. Despite player requests, the game still doesn’t let you permanently play as anyone other than Ziluan – Omega Force never added a free-play mode for the companions.

Because each downloadable campaign is separate, you won’t be able to access locations or features from the original game’s world map. While you sometimes travel between stages on the map, its primary purpose in the Visions of Four Heroes DLC is to use the new Strategic Battle system.

This downloadable content expands on the game world between major battles by using the existing map and smaller fights in a new way, similar to a tabletop game. Allies and enemies appear on the map with health bars, and numbers in the corner show each side’s overall power. Players aim to lower the enemy’s power before a turn limit, which then triggers the final, large-scale battle.

Strategic Battles might seem complicated, but the core mechanics are actually quite straightforward. When Ziluan wins a fight against an enemy group, that group’s health drops to zero, and then the enemy gets a turn. During their turn, they’ll damage any of your groups that are currently battling them on the map.

When you defeat enemy groups, you’ll gain energy that powers special skills on the world map. The new skill tree in the DLC lets you unlock and improve these abilities. Some skills can temporarily freeze enemies, preventing them from attacking your allies, while others can restore health to a group of friendly units.

One of the fun abilities I have is that the next group of enemies Ziluan fights will be challenged to a one-on-one duel. Once, a glitch made this apply to every enemy encounter in a battle. It was hilarious – I just won by fighting five or six duels in a row, taking out the whole enemy army that way!

This new system feels a bit basic as it is, and I think it could be much more engaging with some further development. I imagine a future game, like a sequel to Origins, could really expand on it and integrate it more deeply into the gameplay.

Strategic Battles also unlock special, temporary bodyguard powers called Secret Tactics. These abilities can be used even when Ziluan’s bodyguards are running low, allowing you to create areas that boost stats or restore health. You can even change the battlefield to harm your enemies.

Honestly, what I loved most about the Visions of Four Heroes DLC is that it really leaned into what made the original Origins game so awesome. It’s all about huge battles – like, constantly throwing you into fights with massive armies clashing against each other. There’s just a ton of those big army versus army moments packed in, so you’re always in the thick of things, trying to deal with dozens of enemy officers in a sea of soldiers. And some of the campaigns in this DLC actually have the best final battles in the whole game, seriously!

The game keeps the action moving quickly between battles, but offers some relaxing diversions too. Players can visit a central hub with shops and the usual inn. They can also practice with different weapon types in a training area, earning basic weapons with varying qualities to improve their favorites using the Reforge system – a feature added after the game launched. A more difficult set of training challenges unlocks at level 102 for players who want an extra test of skill.

The Visions of Four Heroes DLC for Dynasty Warriors: Origins delivers more of what players loved about the original game: challenging battles where you lead your troops against seemingly impossible odds. The large-scale army confrontations remain exciting, and this DLC offers them frequently. While the DLC’s self-contained stories feel a bit disconnected, its take on alternate historical events offers some fun moments for fans of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story.

7

We tested Dynasty Warriors: Origins on PC. It’s also available on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S, and includes the Visions of Four Heroes downloadable content.

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2026-01-16 17:01