Dynasty Warriors: Origins - Visions of Four Heroes - PS5 Review

Dynasty Warriors: Origins - Visions of Four Heroes by developer Omega Force and publisher Koei Tecmo America—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher. #DynastyWarriorsOrigins #VisionsofFourHeroes

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Dynasty Warriors: Origins - Visions of Four Heroes is an example of DLC done quite well, with a decent amount of content and some good design. It’s an excellent reason to go back and visit one of my top games of 2025, even if I do think this DLC could have gone just a bit further given its price point.

It’s been about a year since the base game released on most platforms, and I was a tremendous fan of it (you can read my review of Dynasty Warriors: Origins here, where I scored it 8.75 / 10, and where I had it in my running for 2025 Game of the Year, which you can see here). The game has been back in the headlines this year already due to its release on Nintendo Switch (you can take a peek at PY’s review here if interested, where his 8.5 / 10 score mirrored many of my favorable feelings about the game).

So this was a great excuse to go back and revisit a game that really resonated with me last year. Visions of Four Heroes returns the same excellent gameplay we saw last year, and that same agency over the storyline that prior versions in the series lacked. It was interesting last year when I spent so many hours playing Origins, only to go back and play a couple of the older Dynasty Warriors games and Origins just felt leaps and bounds better than its predecessors. 

So what does Visions of Four Heroes bring to the table in 2026? As the name hints at, there’s some new scenarios that get introduced after you reach Chapter 2. They’re treated as daydreams of our protagonist, Ziluan and not necessarily conflicting with the core game progression. Still, they present different ways the story could have gone, had Ziuan chosen not to follow any of the three primary story paths and instead followed characters from the game who are presented in a more villainous light. It’s a cool twist on the otherwise more noble intentions of the primary Wei, Wu and Shu factions that make up the Three Kingdoms narrative, and instead offered the likes of Lu Bu or Dong Zhuo your support. These made for some pretty entertaining “What if?” scenarios. 

The gameplay gets a bit of extra texture as well, due to two more weapon types that were lacking in the base game: the rope dart and the bow. I’ve really enjoyed the bow in some of the prior Dynasty Warriors games, so I missed their inclusion in the base game last year and was happy to see it returned here. There’s also a few new companions such as Diaochan that you can adventure forth with in these scenarios. One new mechanic is the addition of a new skill tree, but its benefits can only be leveraged in the DLC content it was meant for – not the base game. It’s presented in a logical way, but creates a somewhat walled-off feeling that keeps the DLC separate from the core game. I am sure it was done for balance reasons, but I’d have enjoyed seeing it more tightly integrated into the core gameplay, as the weapons are really the only aspects from the DLC that sort of ‘carry over’ into the main storyline. 

The DLC does play with a couple of fresh new ideas, such as ‘Strategic Battles’, which actually are more approachable than they sound. It’s a neat idea that probably could have used a bit more depth, and I’d like to see more robustly implemented in any future Origins games (assuming we get any). It feels a little bit like the Strategic Battles are being tested in this DLC to see if the development team will want to invest in them further in a future release. In my opinion? Yes please – to a future Origins game and seeing this mechanic more fleshed out. We are presented with a new training ground with more challenges worth exploring, even if it doesn’t really provide anything meaningful to the narrative. 

Visions of Four Heroes still understands the assignment when it comes to the core gameplay: the one against many combat that Origins excelled at a year ago. I do wish there was more effort put into original maps and battlegrounds, but the new storylines present fresh objectives that make excellent use of the combat and gameplay mechanics that make Dynasty Warriors so much fun to play.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins - Visions of Four Heroes is a very good DLC that provides around a dozen or so hours of gameplay, some fun new additions while not quite sticking the landing when it comes to weaving itself fully into the existing base game. It’s been a year and that is probably to be expected, and it was still enjoyable to have this excuse to come back and play this excellent game. At $35, is this worth paying roughly half the price of the base game? I think so, as I had a great deal of fun coming back to this game and this was the perfect reason to do so. It should tide me over until there’s a sequel (fingers crossed). 

Score: 7 / 10