Warriors Orochi

Warriors Orochi (無双OROCHI, Musou OROCHI) is a crossover game that combines the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series in a new parallel universe. It is the first title in the series.

Gameplay
A majority of the previous features found in both series have been removed: bow movesets, arrow deflection, rolling, bodyguards, ninja double jumps, parrying, Musou Rage, the weapon weight system, and Level 3 Musou Attacks. Updated graphics, manual camera control, enemy behavior, and camera animations as well as a majority of the game's engine are reused from Samurai Warriors 2. Horse jumping and horse calling is now available to all characters.

Warriors Orochi allows the player to choose three-man teams to play in-battle and are limited to playing only one character at a time. Inactive warriors recuperate health and Musou. Switch to the other characters in a team via L2 or R2. Although the player chooses a team, a single character's death leads to a stage's failure. During 2P co-op, the second player must use the same team the first player has picked. Working closely with other allies causes characters to slowly regenerate health.

Characters are divided into three classes - Power, Speed, and Technique, which provide other abilities known as Type Actions that can often be used by pressing R1, which act as special attacks. Each character type has different conditions and uses to distinguish one from the other. Depending on the character, these attacks may require draining the Musou gauge, but can be used at any sufficient Musou amount unlike a Musou Attack (indicated by a vertical line on the gauge).

Unlike in the traditional titles, the Musou gauge can only be refilled by switching a character to a reserve position, picking up recovery items, or by holding when idle. It cannot be refilled by getting hit, attacking, or by being low on health.

Up to three characters can participate in a damaging attack called Musou Chain. While initiating a Musou attack, switch to another character and immediately press. If the timing is right, the following character will use a stronger version of their True Musou attack. Their attack gains a special property depending on the team's character classes.

Growth Points, earned through completing stages and picking up EXP drops from slain enemy officers and higher ranked normal troops, can be used to enrich weapons through Weapon Fusion. Elements for weapons can be added using Growth Points. Fourth weapons are now obtained by playing through a level 3 or higher stage on Hard or by clearing any stage on Chaos difficulty. The EXP/level up system used in Samurai Warriors 2 is also used as a means of improving independent character stats, now dubbed as the "Proficiency" system instead.

Unique items are used to improve the strength of Type Actions. Each character has his/her own item, and has his/her own requirements to unlock it.

Story Mode
Four different scenarios for the main narrative.
 * Shu
 * Wei
 * Wu
 * Samurai

Free Mode
Allows any team to play once on any stage. Each time free mode is selected, the player will need to select a team of three characters. By contrast, teams created in story mode will keep for multiple runs in the story scenario they were created under.

Gallery Mode
Allows players to see acquired characters, weapons and movies. Each character has four images dedicated to them. For each image unlocked, a miniature description is given to state the requirements to view them.

Characters
Every playable character in Dynasty Warriors 5 and Samurai Warriors 2 (including Yoshimoto Imagawa, Kunoichi, and Goemon Ishikawa from the first Samurai Warriors game, who aren't appear in its sequel) appears in the game, and Two new unique characters from this game. Unique NPCs from Samurai Warriors 2 (Katsuie and Kojiro) weren't in this game until they debuted in Warriors Orochi 2.

New Characters
Zuo Ci, Lu Bu, and Tadakatsu Honda have special unlocking requirements.
 * Zuo Ci - complete all four stories
 * Lu Bu - impress him in every eighth Gaiden stage
 * Tadakatsu Honda - impress him in every seventh Gaiden stage

Replaying completed Story Mode stages with more characters unlocked changes the opening and closing event dialogue.

Bugs and Glitches

 * Jumping charge bugs
 * Have Xu Huang in a team. When facing an enemy officer, finish them with his jumping charge. He will continue spinning until he is hit by peons, arrows or cannon fire. A similar phenomenon can also happen with Zuo Ci and Xing Cai.


 * Have Ginchiyo in a team and perform her R1 ability. Switch immediately to a Dynasty Warriors character and perform a jumping charge attack. Depending on the character, certain elements of their attacks will act erratically. This is also an easier way to recreate the previously mentioned effects.


 * Kunoichi and Goemon share a unique glitch in which they can defeat faraway foes with their jumping charge attacks. The characters do not need to be near one another as the ninja will seemingly "shoot" a destructive, invisible force to foes. This also affects Kunoichi's C3. The requirements are vague but it seems that a weapon must have the barest of essentials to make this work. This does not appear on the Xbox, PSP or PC ports.


 * See the Sky
 * Have Ina approach a wall and perform her C1. The camera has to be facing the wall when this occurs. The same effect can be done with Okuni's C4.


 * Horse glitch in Fan Castle
 * To do this glitch, you can only do this on SW Chapter 6 Battle of Fan Castle. While on the bridge between the land and Fan Castle call a horse, but randomly the horse appears under water. To get the horse out of the water, you must call the horse far away from the bridge or capture the flood gates. Sometimes this glitch/bug will not work on the bridge.

Differences between ports
The Xbox 360 version of this game offers the highest resolution graphics. However, just like the same console's version of Samurai Warriors 2, some characters' action voices have lower or higher pitch than normal.
 * Xbox 360

Due to the limitations of the hand held console, none of the in-battle dialogue lines are voiced. Additionally, the cutscenes have been replaced with voiced dialogues with simple images from the original scenes or character portraits. This game marks the first time a Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors game port featured full maps. Before this game, maps were divided into smaller portions that had to be taken over before players could move on.
 * PSP

This game features all of the characters and features from the original game with the addition of wireless multiplayer by using the PlayStation Portable's wireless networking.

The PC version features the same high resolution graphics as the Xbox 360 version, and additionally adds two more pictures for the characters' gallery sections. These images can be obtained when the character reaches level 30 and level 60. Many of these same renders later appear in the gallery section for Warriors Orochi 2.
 * PC

Related Media
Aside from the guide books, character encyclopedia, and special character guide, Koei officially funded the following publications for this game:


 * Comic Musou Orochi ~ Battle Royal Vol. 1 - collection of four panel parody comics created and illustrated by fans. ISBN: 978-4-7758-0605-0
 * Comic Musou Orochi ~ Battle Royal Vol. 2 - ISBN: 978-4-7758-0606-7
 * Comic Musou Orochi ~ Battle Royal Vol. 3 - ISBN: 978-4-7758-0607-4

Image Song

 * Zero no Kotae
 * Performed by UVERworld
 * * used for commercials

Trivia

 * Due to a majority of the game engine being based on Samurai Warriors 2, a few interesting things occur:
 * A number of the Dynasty Warriors NPCs end up wielding most of the Samurai Warriors NPC weapons, while still retaining the standard movesets from the former series.
 * Dynasty Warriors peons now attack with the new movesets of the peons from Samurai Warriors, while also cowering and fleeing like so.
 * Despite the character models for the Dynasty Warriors figures being carried straight from their fifth installment, a number of their weapon designs have radically changed in this game and its sequel.