For those who have played the recent musou games...

[Caidezes]

Which one would you recommend to someone who's been interested in the series, but has been wary of playing any of the games due to how simplistic they look?

I understand that the series has a set type of gameplay. However, it seems like some of the recent games have been adding more variety little by little (RPG mechanics and whatnot).

How does this compare to the other games when it comes to gameplay variety and complexity? Which game would you suggest I try out?

[エメベアー]

Well, I'm considering you talking about the ones available on Steam, so they should be:
Dynasty Warriors 8 (Three Kingdoms)
Samurai Warriors 4-II (Warring States)
One Piece 3
Dragon Quest Heroes
Arslan
And to some level, Bladestorm

If you are considering the PS3, than we have more options.

I would recommend to first start with DW8, reason is: The story is awesome, and you play the story mode through all sides, so if you don't know the story, you will have a lot of surprises. the gameplay is simple and there are no big amount of extra objectives to make on each stage, so there should be almost no need for you to repeat stages to unlock stuff.

Now, DW8 comes in 2 flavors: Xtreme Legends and Empires. My first DW game was DW7 Empires.

The Empires series have no story mode, you are an officer (Custom or normal), and you are placed somewhere in China, and you do your own plans. It's basically the Musou version of strategy games like Nobunaga's Ambition or The Romance of Three Kingdoms. I must say that, meeting unknown characters and forming a bond with them will make playing the Xtreme Legends much more tasty, since that's the game where you have everyone's story. (Cao Ren was my buddy in DW7E. :D ). You can fail a mission and that's no game over, in fact, your losses are part of your saga too.

Xtreme Legends has the Story Mode and stuff, so it's the vanilla game, so you select the mission and you follow the explanation of what the screen says so you know what you have to do (Musou games are someting like an Army Simulator, you may be a super powered human slaughtering enemy armies, but you can't be everywhere, so there is a plan for you to follow, and trust your comrades).

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Then we have Samurai Warriors, which follows the same principle, but there are more than 3 sides of the war. Problem though is that the Steam version is 4-II, that does not have the story mode from the Original 4, which means it would be better for you to know the story before checking this game.

To explain the differences, on the original 4, each Story is based on a clanm so the Legend of Sanada, Legend of Tokugawa, Legend of Oda, etc, and you play a story involving characters of that set, so for example, while in most missions you may play with Oda Nobunaga and related, on the last stage of the Oda battle, you play as the killers, with Nobunaga being the last boss. So this is the story of the Clan, not of the character.

Meanwhile, 4-II has a character based story mode, so you have characters that had interactions with multiple clans, and you are forced to play with that character for all this Story Mode, which also means you are always playing your character's side of the story.

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One piece is pretty simple, I'm currently playing the 3rd one. The first one tried to be a plataform game, it was simplistic, the second one came with an original story, so everything was new, and the third one goes with the normal gameplay, but you have to go through the whole Story Mode (And One Piece is LOOOOOOONG). Also you end up having to redo missions a few times to unlock abilities for different characters (Had to do one 3 times with Luffy, Zoro and Sanji to unlock their 2nd Special Moves... Will have to redo more stuff later...), so basically, gameplay wise it's nice, but too many collectibles.

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Dragon Quest I have not played, just watched some gameplay from the PS4 version. Seemed ok with some pretty fun touches, but still I guess it's best appreciated for DQ fans.

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Bladestorm is not a Musou game, as it involves more strategy than action, and the maps are HUGE, the gameplay is nice.

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Arslan feels a little like DW8 and Bladestorm. You have small objectives as the story goes, you can change weapons anytime (DW is the only other Musou game with this trait, though it's like anyone can use every weapon here), and you have an ability to control a huge army to kill anything that is in your path (Kinda like Bladestorm, but here you get a temporary invincible army, in Bladestorm, they are your means of normal attack, and are overall weak).

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My recommendation is: Go with the game with the story that mosttly interests you, I'm playing Arslan without having checked neither the manga nor the anime, and it's pretty nice. Playing something that you already know may make the game feel boring quite fast (One Piece 3 is doing that for me...).

[Caidezes]

Whoa! That's a lot of info, thanks. Ha.

I suppose beginning with the regular Dynasty Warriors is always a safe bet. Though I did hear that another main entry in the series might be revealed this year. If so, I might just wait for that. (If it comes to PC.)

[You Kissed a Boy and Liked It]

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage[/i] is by far the best of the musou games -- it has a solid game engine and is at least moderately challenging. The rest are just copy-pastes of the same paper tiger hordes, comatose inducing mash-athons.

PW3 is the best that's on PC right now.

[William Shakesman]

DW8XLCE is probably still the best. It is insanely broken at the high-end stats game though. As long as you just stick to Normal and avoid crafting broken weapons you'll be good. Good quality port too.

One Piece is a bit of a mess but what it does have is the best combat I've seen in the series so far. A snappy dodge and an immense amount of moveset variety. I don't know anything about One Piece but I still enjoyed it. The port is ugly but still runs decently.

SW4 didn't do any better of a job telling the SW story than SW4-2 does, in my opinion. 4-2 is still a decent game with some nice characters and fan service and a few clever ideas but 4-2 was Koei experimenting with a game system that got out of hand for them and a lot of little edge cases in the combat can grate. Enemies leap out of your juggles rendering combos completely useless and completely breaking a few uppercut+air combo moves that were not designed for that. I do like SW4 for Noh's giant boobies and Lady Hayakawa as mai waifu. 4-2's port is very very good.

DW8E is a minigame. It's a dumb pseudo-strategy pseudo-RPG (And I mean role playing game not stat grind RPG though the latter is certainly there.) It's more "Hey I'm Xiahou Dun I'm gonna go rob/help villagers and stuff and here I am conquering a kingdom now I'm building up pointless numbers for three turns and then launching a battle I'll win easily now just do that 23 more times and China is mine!" No story, no English dialogue, just... the hokey strategy overlay on DW8 combat.

[brudda]

I would definitely go with dynasty warriors 8 XL, I feel you get the most bang for your buck with that game and it is on sale right now too. It is an excellent entry level game for those that have not played any musou games before, but want to try it out.

There's just much more to do and more weapon variety in terms of stats and weapon design. Also more modes compared to Arslan.

I would honestly wait for Arslan to go on a sale in the future, by then you will most likely be playing Dynasty warriors 8 XL still xD

[DeeeFoo]

I don't know what other platforms you own, so I'll just list my recommendations.

I would first start out with titles that are crossovers with a franchise that you're familiar with. Whether, it's Hyrule Warriors, Dynasty Warriors Gundam, Pirate Warriors, Fist of the North Star, Arslan Musou, Warriors of Troy, or even Dragon Quest Heroes (not really a Musou game in the traditional sense). When you play a game with characters and a universe you already know and love, it helps ease you into an unknown genre. My very first Musou experience was with Hyrule Warriors, and being already familiar with the Zelda franchise made my experience that much more enjoyable and memorable.

If you find that you have a taste for the Musou style hack'n'slash combat, then any game from the other titles would be a good choice really. DW8XLCE is generally considered the best value, because of all the content it offers. Samurai Warriors 4/4-II was another Musou game that I poured at least a hundred hours into, since the gameplay is slightly different from DW, and is a bit more stylish and flashy (which I like). I then moved on to Warriors Orochi 3, which is simply a crossover between Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, which I mostly played for the original story. And since I'm a One Piece fan, I poured quite a lot of time in Pirate Warriors 3 (it's the very first game for which I obtained all trophies/achievements/medals).

[Gamefan]

if you like these games you have to play dynasty warriors 8! enoumous amount of content. historical battles. alternate history campaighns for each side. and its the first game that goes from the begining of the story all the way to the end with Sima Ye and his children. its great

[Will]

Originally posted by ssj4maiko:

Well, I'm considering you talking about the ones available on Steam, so they should be:
Dynasty Warriors 8 (Three Kingdoms)
Samurai Warriors 4-II (Warring States)
One Piece 3
Dragon Quest Heroes
Arslan
And to some level, Bladestorm

If you are considering the PS3, than we have more options.

I would recommend to first start with DW8, reason is: The story is awesome, and you play the story mode through all sides, so if you don't know the story, you will have a lot of surprises. the gameplay is simple and there are no big amount of extra objectives to make on each stage, so there should be almost no need for you to repeat stages to unlock stuff.

Now, DW8 comes in 2 flavors: Xtreme Legends and Empires. My first DW game was DW7 Empires.

The Empires series have no story mode, you are an officer (Custom or normal), and you are placed somewhere in China, and you do your own plans. It's basically the Musou version of strategy games like Nobunaga's Ambition or The Romance of Three Kingdoms. I must say that, meeting unknown characters and forming a bond with them will make playing the Xtreme Legends much more tasty, since that's the game where you have everyone's story. (Cao Ren was my buddy in DW7E. :D ). You can fail a mission and that's no game over, in fact, your losses are part of your saga too.

Xtreme Legends has the Story Mode and stuff, so it's the vanilla game, so you select the mission and you follow the explanation of what the screen says so you know what you have to do (Musou games are someting like an Army Simulator, you may be a super powered human slaughtering enemy armies, but you can't be everywhere, so there is a plan for you to follow, and trust your comrades).

-----

Then we have Samurai Warriors, which follows the same principle, but there are more than 3 sides of the war. Problem though is that the Steam version is 4-II, that does not have the story mode from the Original 4, which means it would be better for you to know the story before checking this game.

To explain the differences, on the original 4, each Story is based on a clanm so the Legend of Sanada, Legend of Tokugawa, Legend of Oda, etc, and you play a story involving characters of that set, so for example, while in most missions you may play with Oda Nobunaga and related, on the last stage of the Oda battle, you play as the killers, with Nobunaga being the last boss. So this is the story of the Clan, not of the character.

Meanwhile, 4-II has a character based story mode, so you have characters that had interactions with multiple clans, and you are forced to play with that character for all this Story Mode, which also means you are always playing your character's side of the story.

-----

One piece is pretty simple, I'm currently playing the 3rd one. The first one tried to be a plataform game, it was simplistic, the second one came with an original story, so everything was new, and the third one goes with the normal gameplay, but you have to go through the whole Story Mode (And One Piece is LOOOOOOONG). Also you end up having to redo missions a few times to unlock abilities for different characters (Had to do one 3 times with Luffy, Zoro and Sanji to unlock their 2nd Special Moves... Will have to redo more stuff later...), so basically, gameplay wise it's nice, but too many collectibles.

-----

Dragon Quest I have not played, just watched some gameplay from the PS4 version. Seemed ok with some pretty fun touches, but still I guess it's best appreciated for DQ fans.

-----

Bladestorm is not a Musou game, as it involves more strategy than action, and the maps are HUGE, the gameplay is nice.

-----

Arslan feels a little like DW8 and Bladestorm. You have small objectives as the story goes, you can change weapons anytime (DW is the only other Musou game with this trait, though it's like anyone can use every weapon here), and you have an ability to control a huge army to kill anything that is in your path (Kinda like Bladestorm, but here you get a temporary invincible army, in Bladestorm, they are your means of normal attack, and are overall weak).

-----

My recommendation is: Go with the game with the story that mosttly interests you, I'm playing Arslan without having checked neither the manga nor the anime, and it's pretty nice. Playing something that you already know may make the game feel boring quite fast (One Piece 3 is doing that for me...).

Is there a way to actually VOTE UP a post?
That's an incredible post which should be sticky and added onto when another MUSOU game is out.

Very detailed for people wondering where to start ssj4. Well done!