Well this was a surprise, literally as it was suddenly revealed and shadow dropped last month! I was expecting the first and only new Warriors review to go up on this blog to be Dynasty Warriors Origins but as that still hasn’t dropped to a price I’m comfortable with I’m happy to get this rather addictive Roguelike with nostalgic characters (i.e. reused models) from the peak of both the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors series instead. Is it perfect? No, but it’s relatively cheap (so long as you’re not interested in vastly over priced costumes!) and really fun. Let’s take a closer look, as the game has understandably gone under the radar I feel this is one of the few reviews that might actually matter in the long run!
Background:
I’ll admit, a lot of these screenshots are going to look awfully similar…
Warriors Abyss was shadow dropped during a PlayStation “State of Play” stream on February 12th 2025, coming out on the PS5, the XBOX Series, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. That’s about it for background, as I said it was just released out of nowhere and hasn’t really received a lot of press. The producer has said he likes the genre and hopes this makes it more popular in Japan, and um… that’s about it really!
Gameplay:
Doing your Musou attack sends enemies smashing into the screen, cracking it for a second. It’s a fun idea and unique to this game, Warriors-wise (not overall gaming-wise, obviously!)
The game is rather unashamedly a mash of classic Warriors gameplay and Roguelike games, most obviously Hades, which given Warriors games and Hades are two favourites of mine meant this shameless “borrowing of ideas” was right up my alley. So your main method of attack is the good old square and triangle combos, so square and then triangle, square, square and triangle, and so on up to six presses of square, plus pressing triangle by itself several times is a combo as well. This is mixed with Hades’ near-top-down perspective and dash movement, allowing you to dodge around clearly telegraphed enemy attacks as the area of effect glows purple before it hits. You also have the Warriors Musou Gauge, where if you build it up to the top you can unleash a powerful special attack, but there is a twist amongst all this and that’s in the Roguelike character building mechanic. You see like all games of the genre each stage you clear (and sometimes during the stage) you get buffs for your run in a random manor, making each run through different, but in this game the buffs are mostly attached to other characters you recruit, six of which you can assign to six slots with each slot corresponding to one of the six square and triangle combos I talked about earlier, causing them to appear on the battlefield and do an assist attack each time you do a combo (with a cooldown mechanic so you can’t spam them).
This then ties to a second meter that fills slower through combat alongside the Musou gauge that when activated you not only summon all six allies to the field to do their attacks over and over until the meter empties but your Musou attack changes to a more powerful new one (like the Rage Mode and “True Musou” attacks seen in previous games) that if activated before the meter runs out it will ends with all seven of you creating a large explosion that does significant damage. Some characters will give each other buffs or will give the player passive buffs as well, meaning collecting certain pairs or more and putting them on your “Formation Grid” in the right way is another way each run can be different (as there are just over 100 characters to play as and recruit as of this review, with more in the pipeline) As mentioned there are other buffs you collect as well which take the form of labelled “orbs”, which range from simple stuff like attack, defence, Musou power, speed and tactics (which allow you your fifth and sixth combo chain and more) as well as the classic Warriors weapon elements of Fire, Ice, Wind, Shock and Slay, and the more of one orb you get the more extra buffs and passive effects you get, not to mention some of the many Formations you can switch to have buffs like “increases attack 5% for every Slay Orb the player has”, so if you get the right characters with the right orbs and then get the right Formation you can be pretty damn OP, and its very satisfying if you do manage it!
In the midst of a seven-way combo, racking up the damage in the hundreds of thousands!
In true Hades fashion the game is split across four levels of Hell, each with several stages that end with a choice of several different random routes to go down, each with a Tree that mysteriously allows you to recruit a new warrior as well as a flag where you can rearrange your Formation (or let the AI do it if you can’t be bothered, which is what I normally do, it does know the best combinations to be fair to it!) Each stage then has three options made up of a random amount of: a combat stage, which can also have a bonus mission attached and/or have red lightning coming from it signifying a more challenging route; a Peach Tree which will give you more HP; or a “King’s Cauldron” which allows you to exchanges one of the two in-game currencies (that are plentiful and aren’t available to buy outside of the game with real money, so don’t worry!) called Blood Tears for either specific characters from a list, new Formations or a health or musou gauge refill. Blood Tears vanish after each run but the other collectable, Soul Embers, last between runs and are used to unlock new characters to play as, with each one making all characters stronger or with more health and defence (so you get stronger the more you unlock), plus you can also buy new Formations or just buy permanent passive buffs. You can also buy each character’s ultimate weapon, which gives them a unique second buff, by these cost 50,000 Embers each, so that’s a rare event even after you’ve unlocked everything else. Thankfully you do unlock them randomly in mission chests, but very rarely. Apparently this will be more common in a future patch, so… that’s a part of this review that may be dated by the time you read it!
I’m in there somewhere!
Lastly at the end of each section is a boss, defeat the boss and not only do you move on to the next stage but you also get to pick a relic which gives you often really strong buffs, but there’s 25 of them and its random each time, so again: each run is different and all that. Obviously this doesn’t include the final stage, which ends with a sub-boss and then a two-stage final boss. Once you beat the game once you can then start doing runs on higher and higher difficulties, up to 8 I believe, not that I’ve gone that far. The game is very much a chill out, have a quick run when I’ve time to kill and I don’t want anything too deep or stressful game, so a greater challenge isn’t really what I’m after. Throw in a gallery where you can read some lore, look at pictures/concept art and listen to music (which is 80% recycled classics!) and that’s your lot. With so many characters each with their own movesets and buffs, advantages and disadvantages, combined with all the random things each run means it really has legs, so long as you like the Warriors style gameplay, obviously!
Graphics and Sound:
So many Unrepentant Souls, so little time…
Graphics aren’t much to write home about, they’re using PS3/early PS4 era character models for the playable cast, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the pulled back camera helps hide this a good amount, and seeing so many enemies on screen go flying with damage numbers over their heads never gets old, so I’m fine with it.
Sound is a mixed back. New advisor Enma has a voice over and talks to you during static text-only cut-scenes but everything else is reused lines from Warriors Orochi 4 or there-abouts and only during gameplay. The soundtrack, as mentioned, is mostly reused old songs, but they’ve chosen some of the best, so it’s hard to call it bad…. The sound effects are fine, good even. Very satisfying ploughing through waves of enemies with a good chunky hit sound.
Story:
… and there’s your story! Well, that was easy…
Enma, the ruler of Hell, has been ousted by the release of the demon Gohma, who has stirred up the undead and caused havoc. Their power diminished Enma summons a powerful warrior from the past to traverse the four levels of Hell and vanquish their enemy for them. The only issue is that once Gohma is defeated it’s not long before it reforms, meaning another warrior will need to repeat the process until he’s defeated for good, however that happens…
Downloadable Content:
Hmmm… 28 health and in the middle of a purple ring indicating an up-coming attack. I guess this early run didn’t last much past this moment…
Weirdly, there is DLC for this game but the new characters are free and the bonus costumes is what you have to pay for, and boy do you ever. One set of costumes costs pretty much the same as the actual game, let alone how much you’d be paying for all of the costume packs, it’s nuts. Meanwhile the Jin characters were added for free but their DLC costumes cost money to buy, and this month (March 2025) we’re confirmed to be getting another character for free again. I’m not complaining about free things that I want, but the pricing of the costumes is just bizarre, especially given the characters are so far away you can’t really appreciate the costumes during battle anyway…
Thoughts Now:
One last insane screenshot for the road!
Warriors Abyss feels like it was made for me. I was lamenting the death of the old character designs and crazy weapons that the Warriors games used to have in the old DW8/SW4 days, I love Warriors games and I loved playing Hades a few years ago, so someone just decided to take all these things and not only jam them together but jam them together really well. Abyss isn’t for everyone, far from it, but if you fall into any of the above categories then I promise you’ll have a fun time. I know I’ll be popping it back on here and there for a very long time…
Hogan Reviews 