Though the Dynasty Warriors franchise might be tired for consoles, this PC port has a lot to offer.
-prays-
Ahem. I'll give a quick overview and then I'll talk specifically about the different aspects of the game. While the console version of Orochi might be a tired and repetitive remake, the PC version is the first Dynasty Warriors-style game in a very, very long time. For the first time in years, we (the PC people) are given a new beat em' up. I'll say right now that Orochi is very possibly the greatest beat em' up for the PC.
GRAPHIC - Great
The game looks fantastic. I've played the X360 version and they really do look like different games. On the PC, everything is vibrant, crisp and beautiful. You won't be disappointed here, but your socks won't be blown off either.
DIFFICULTY - Scales from easy to painful
The game offers 4 difficulty levels. You've got easy, which is very easy. Normal, which is a good bit harder than easy. Hard, which is quite hard. Lastly, Chaos, which is painfully difficult and challenging. All of the difficulty names, I found, appropriately described the challenge level. Aside from that, the difficulty level of the map you're on will also increase the later in a campaign you get. For example, if you just start a campaign in story mode, the initial missions are typically much easier than the later missions. They did well here.
GAMEPLAY - Objective-based beat em' up
The focus of the game is meeting objectives and in the process, beating up lots of people. This is a beat em' up game, so you'll be doing a lot of that. Objectives might include escaping someone, rescuing someone or simply assassinating a target. Some of the objectives are more complex, but nothing overwhelmingly difficult here. In each mission, it's safe to say that you'll be beating down 300 to over 1000 enemy soldiers which enjoy piling up on you and perhaps 10 to 15 officers, which are considerably stronger than the disposable soldiers. There are 79 total characters for you to use, most of which need to be unlocked through story mode and each generally offers his or her own flavor. The nice thing about Warriors Orochi is that it's a combination of Chinese and Japanese style heroes, so there should be at least a couple characters that appeal to you. Each character can be leveled and they get stronger and gain more attacks as you use them. All heroes in the game are 1 of 3 archetypes that define what they specialize in. There are power heroes, which can't be interrupted when attacking, there are speed heroes which are very fast and they can cancel out of attacks mid-combo and finally there technique heroes that can boost their own attacks. There is also a weapon fusion aspect of the game, which allows you to combine weapons until eventually you have one with very powerful bonuses.
REPLAY - A combination of incredible and immense
There's a disturbing amount of replay here. As I said, there are 79 characters and you can level each of them to 99. This alone would likely take you a good month of constant playing. Beyond that, each character has an ultimate weapon which can only be acquired in Hard or Chaos difficulty. Getting each character an ultimate weapon would be very time consuming, as all of the difficulties past Normal are dangerously difficult. Further, each character has a special item that boosts stats in the game that can only be acquired by performing a special task in the appropriate map - this will likely require a guide of some sort. Even further, each character in the game has a sort of achievement path with 3 to 4 unlockable powers. You can only unlock one power per stage, so you'll need to do a huge amount of fights to unlock them all. In the game, there's about 24 different powers that grow as you unlock higher ranks of them and you can turn on up to 8 at a time. These powers do things like increase your hitpoints or musou (used for special attacks) or give you access to better horses. There's a lot of variety here.
SOUND - Tolerable
I don't have an ear for music, so I can't really comment on it. Everything seemed okay here. Tolerable. The voice acting was actually quite good, for the most part.
STORY - Idiotic
Worst part of the game. It's just awful and illogical and painful. Luckily, I don't care if my beat em' up has a bad story. You don't buy this game for story, you buy it for mindless martial art ass kicking. In a nut shell, a demon named Orochi cuts through time and space and pulls the world's strongest heroes into his own dimension (which looks remarkably like china and japan). Depending on the faction you choose, the story typically goes in 1 of 2 directions. You either start the campaign allied with Orochi, then turn against him or you start the campaign with the intention of killing him. Both storylines result in a confrontation with the demon and he's immensely powerful. Assuming you kill him, all becomes right in the world. The End. It's painfully dumb.
MULTIPLAYER - Nothing /cry
There's no multiplayer. I would have given this game a full 10 if it offered an online multiplayer system or even LAN. I can't hit them too hard on this, as it's just a port and the game was inexpensive, but there was a lot of potential and gamers are rarely satisfied with singleplayer these days.
In closing, I'll just say that this is a very fun game. There's a ton to do and a lot of variety in character design and combat animations. It's definitely worth the budget price tag. Some other notes, I do recommend getting a gamepad and also, you can only buy this online from places like; direct2drive.com. You can read over koei.com for more details. Also, Koei released a downloadable program that shows you how Warriors Orochi will look on your computer, so I highly recommend checking into that.
Cheers.