Combat is over-the-top button-mashing pap, but you gotta love Warriors Orochi for all the nifty bells and whistles.
I am not a gaming snob. Fun is fun.
So let's take it as a given that the combat is very much about button-mashing.
Nevertheless I am finding it very hard to complete some of the missions, even on the "normal" difficulty. The missions I have played so far have been sort of like "capture the flag" scenarios. You have to fulfill numerous objectives at various locations on the map (such as "eliminate all enemy officers") while also reacting to triggered events and ensuring your own bases do not fall to encroaching enemies. I had to replay an early mission a handful of times to finally get the hang of things. It's not chess, but there is some need for a vague strategy to get through the missions.
When you do advance, you have all sorts of options. You can swap out members of your team as you acquire new fighters, "fuse" acquired weaponry into a single, more powerful weapon -- and the available options during the "fuse" process include all kinds of special attacks (ice, slay, fire, and so on) and various attack modifiers.
There is an enormous variety of weapons, variations of weapon permutations, different attack types, hero fighting styles, and maps. You can follow "story mode" playing any one of a number of different factions, each with its own set of missions. From my early impression, the variety and amount of content seem huge, albeit along the limited lines of the style of gameplay offered.
The variety of weapons, attacks, and heroes; the colorful graphics; and the "rewards" for completing missions -- these all add up to provide a somewhat addicting game formula, and give an otherwise mindless button-masher some actual substance. Heck, there is even some story to boot, to go with some passable cut scenes and voice acting.
As seems to be the norm with these ported third-person type games, camera control is sort of lousy, but it does attempt to swing around to a proper trailing view on its own, given time, and so it is definitely not as FUBAR as some other games of this nature. Given some of the third-person game-pad-using action games I have played in the past, the camera in Warriors Orochi is downright smart (by comparison only, of course).
Whether the overall formula grows stale too quickly still remains to be seen, as I haven't invested all that much time. And I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone looking for a deep mental challenge. But if you just want to unplug and mindlessly pound the crap out of swarms of enemies, Warriors Orochi might just hit the spot. It's pretty clever and polished.
(One side note I thought I should mention: I have no prior experience playing ninja/shogun/samurai warrior -themed fighting games, and therefore I do not know how derivative Warriors Orochi might be; I cannot testify about its originality -- or lack thereof -- and whether or not a similar game might be far better. I can only talk about this game from my relatively isolated perspective.)