Warriors All-Stars Critic Reviews

Warriors All-Stars is a delight. It’s explicitly a love letter to the Koei Tecmo faithful, and it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise.

Interesting friendships between varied characters from multiple games, a fun combat system with some welcome additions, and that same soldier stomping fun make Warriors All Stars a solid Musou game.

It's pure fan service, and the story is absolute nonsense, but it's the most fun I have had playing an Omega Force Musou game in a long time. Fans of this long-running series of games will love this, but it won't do much to make anyone looking in give the series a chance.

Warriors All-Stars digs deep to bring together a roster of unlikely Koei Tecmo heroes, but the roster just isn't large enough to build your perfect five-person dream team.

Lack of local multiplayer notwithstanding, Warriors All-Stars is another worthy entry into the Musou series. This is one for fans who want to get a little silly with it and ones who have an affinity for other Koei Tecmo titles.

Warriors All-Stars has quickly become my favourite Warriors game of recent times. The great cast, the huge amount of content and the smattering of unique game mechanics all combine to make a game that’s fun despite its repetitive nature. It’s yet again a ridiculous power fantasy, but this time with more colour, wit and humour. That makes it a winner in my book, despite its couple of missteps.

On one level, it’s incredibly satisfying just to see popular characters from various franchises hanging out with one another. Especially when the franchises are as incredibly different as these – what could William from Nioh possibly have to say to Ayane from Ninja Gaiden? A lot more than one would think, apparently. Beyond the fan-friendly concept, the developers have put together one of the strongest and most playable musou titles, ever, and is a beautiful thing that will satisfy both genre fans and newcomers alike.

Via licensed musou action (Hyrule Warriors, Dragon Quest Heroes), Omega Foprce finally managed to shake up their own franchises. Don’t expect a groundbreaking paradigm change and if you despise the mass battles you won’t find anything here. But fans will certainly embrace the little tweaks and best-of-attitude that not only shows in the roster but also in the mixture of gameplay elements.

Despite the absence of the co-op and the free mode, Warriors All-Stars succeeds in bringing fans of the genre a lot of action, imbued with a lot of well known characters from the Koei Tecmo roster.

Warriors All-Stars is a game with plenty of characters from most of successful games from Tecmo Koei. It provides plenty of hour of fun, combats and additional content as the story progress and characters grow stronger. It doesn’t make a difference from similar games but its style and the characters’ mix make this title an interesting proposal to play.

With an enjoyable take on the Musou formula and boasting a fantastic cast of both mainstream and obscure Koei Tecmo characters, Warriors All-Stars is sure to delight a variety of fans and perhaps recruit a few new ones in the process.

Unlocking the various story branches to trigger the different endings provides a sense of puzzling to proceedings that adds some welcome depth but while the trimmings have been given a new feel and the varied cast of characters provides some new attraction, Warriors All-Stars is unlikely to draw many new players in. That won’t matter to those with any interest in the game though, as this is exactly what they will have been hoping for since the game was first announced. In short – and I’m sorry to use this, but it fits the bill – fans of the series will absolutely love it.

Warriors All-Stars it's 'The Expendables' of the KOEI Tecmo videogames. His characters are his best complaint. A game focused almost exclusively on the musou lovers.

Another musou from the best studio in this kind of productions, Omega Force, a game granted with a gorgeous selection of Tecmo Koei characters such Ryu Hayabusa, William Adams or Kasumi.

Your reaction to Warriors All-Stars will depend on how big of a Musou fan you are. If you're a hardcore fan of the series and have played through many of the main entries and a number of the side titles, then you may be fine with renting this one or getting it when it's cheaper. The crossover appeal and the new mechanics are very nice, but the lack of modes can make this feel incomplete. If you're a more casual fan or new to the series, this is much easier to recommend, as it's a good introduction to past games and prepares you for the changes in the upcoming ninth game in the main series.

If you expect a Koei Tecmo all-stars musou, that's exactly what you get. It's fun and full of well-known characters, and even if it's not the best musou available, it's original and quite enjoyable.

The trouble is that All-Stars has the misfortune of being released as the Dynasty Warriors 9 hype train is gathering speed, and Tecmo-Koei have made it quite clear that they're on the cusp of bringing substantial changes to the admittedly formulaic series. While it might seem unfair to judge All-Stars against a game that doesn't even have a release date yet, it's hard to see it as something more than a stopgap to keep fans happy while the promised headline act is still in development.

Warriors All-Stars is good silly fun as the story never takes itself too seriously, nor do the cameos. But in the process a few huge staples we've come to expect have been stripped.

Warriors All Stars brings some of Koei Tecmo’s most famous characters into the Dynasty Warriors format, including characters taken straight from the aforementioned series. While a few extra bells and whistles are added here and there, along with much improved character variety, it’s still a Dynasty Warriors game at its heart—and that’s not a bad thing. Fans of the series will still love this, despite an underwhelming narrative set in a cliché new world.

Warriors All-Stars sticks with the formula it knows best, and that works. For players looking to dive into a lengthy game with nothing but that satisfying punchy feel of the hack-and-slash combat, this is absolutely perfect. There’s an endless stream of side missions and content to tackle, and the unlockable cutscenes between the crossover characters are just the cherry on top. However, for players who might not entirely be sold on Omega Force’s classic combat, or even for players who have taken a 16-year break from these Warriors-style games and are just returning, you might find that it drags on a tad too long with no real variety in gameplay to shake things up.