There’s an old saying that nothing can ever compare to the original. While this isn’t necessarily true (especially these days and regarding advances in the capability of media technology), the old proverb holds weight in many circumstances when the topic involves video games. Going as far back as 1997, theDynasty Warriorsseries developed by Koei Tecmo and Omega Force has touched millions of players' hands and influenced just as many passing and active gaming concepts, including and especially the now trendy 1-vs-1000 hack ‘n’ slash action fighting game genre. The long-running fantastical re-imagining of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series almost single-handedly carved a new genre into being, and we have since seen scores of clones in various other games and franchises borrowing the formula to emulate its success yet often failing to fully capture the appeal of the original series' titles.
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I first encountered the Dynasty Warriors series at the fourth installment as a youth. It was one of those PS2 games that you weren’t sure how it ended up in your possession, and you didn’t ask for it, but it was on the shelf one day. I plucked it off and was thrown into battle after awesome, grandiose battle playing couch co-op with my cousin, and all I remember was how empowering and satisfying it felt cutting my way through infantry and officers in competition with my cousin to see who had a higher body count by the end of a stage. It was Dynasty Warriors 4 where I was first introduced to the Warriors-esque genre from the source, and I fell in love with it, going on to play 5, 6, 7, and 8, in addition to some of the Empires titles. Then I learned there was aSamuraiWarriors series by the same developers, and I proceeded to lose myself in the same thrilling gameplay cycle of glorified historical war figures blasting across battlefields with supernatural abilities. That, I think, is when I first noticed theclones.
Video games are a complex artistic medium used to deliver compelling stories and simultaneously serve as an enjoyable and often physiologically stimulating hobby for hundreds of millions of people; we tend to hold them, understandably, to a high standard. Often that is in the form of seeking authenticity, originality, and passion in the final product of whatever product a developer outputs for mass consumption. When a game doesn’t measure up to standard, fails to communicate its purpose, or simply feels clunky to play, it is generally quite easy to tell through hands-on experience. There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other games, (ergo, other works of art) as that is often how the best iterations of human imagination come into being, building off of previously well-received, innovative ideas. However, there also comes a point where inspiration can become imitation and diminish the potential for such new ideas and creative endeavors to manifest.
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What drove me to talk about this was my chance encounter with Persona 5 Strikers. I had just completed Persona 5 Royal, and I wanted a bit more time with the Phantom Thieves troupe in a new setting and under new circumstances. Having played ATLUS titles before andadoring their blend of storytelling and gameplay, I came into this title with open arms and expectations of the standard of what ATLUS had already established they were capable of. To my chagrin, I found myself drolling through repetitive combat encounters and cyclical ‘jail’ (this game’s variant of palaces) chapters that involved an uninspired investigation phase followed by lengthy, underwhelming realizations of interesting plot devices. While the characters and storytelling remain as inspiring as they ever were, I found that the Warriors formula painted over top of the bones of a Persona game stole away a lot of what makes those iconic moments and characters memorable.
After that experience, I started looking at other games that took a similar route for their spin-offs. Games Like Hyrule Warriors, Fist of the North Star, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, and One Piece: Pirate Warriors - each statistically successful in their own right as far as sales and marketing - all borrow the Warriors formula for their respective title(s), and it really does depend on the nature of a franchise’s typical storytelling capacity to assess whether that decision proves a boon or detriment fairly. Hyrule Warriors, for instance, accommodates the Warriors genre more fittingly than P5 Strikers did for the simple fact that the scale of the plot required the space taken up by what a game using the Warriors genre demands. The slate of distinctive characters, pre-existing enemy types, and the setting of Hyrule made the nature of the gameplay more sensible for the story presented (especially when noting it’s sequel, Age of Calamity, is a spin-off of Breath of the Wild). In contrast, there is a sort of intimacy that exists in the mainline P5 story that is removed in Strikers because it had to spread itself thin to fill that same requirement.
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Whether or not the Warriors genre works best for a spin-off title depends entirely upon the content of the original, which is precisely why it cannot become a standard or ‘go-to’ genre, especially when that spin-off title has something important to say. When we think of Dynasty Warriors or its many, many spiritual successors, we don’t consider the Romance of the Three Kingdoms to be the main appeal anymore. The story has been retold quite literally dozens of times by this point; we’re in it for the action. Ergo, when others take the Warriors genre to produce a title in any kind of attempt to tell a gripping story meant to hook the player with the same intensity as a game produced using original gameplay concepts, it has a much higher chance of falling flat. I’m not implying that these titles and others don’t take a lot of work or a lot of passion, I’m sure they do, but I think every title deserves to have its story given a unique platform to leverage them (this being in the way of original gameplay elements) so that they can receive the kind of reception that carves them into lasting memory.
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