KOEI Tecmo has lifted the review embargo for Dynasty Warriors: Origins. Powered by the Katana Engine, the game will come out on PC on January 17th. So, time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC platform.

For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 566.36, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.12.1 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.

Omega Force has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Models, Shadows, Foliage, Effects, and Ambient Occlusion. And that’s it. Thankfully, the game supports pretty much all available PC upscalers. As such, there is support for DLSS 3, FSR 3.0 and XeSS. Plus, the maximum framerate is set at 240FPS (which is high enough in my opinion).

Dynasty Warriors: Origins does not require a high-end PC system at Native 1080p/Max Settings. Even our dated NVIDIA GTX980Ti was able to push 60FPS at that resolution. Moreover, our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D was able to push over 180FPS at all times, even during chaotic battles.

At Native 1440p/Max Settings, our NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080Ti was able to push framerates over 80FPS. And, honestly, it’s been a while since we last time we saw this kind of performance on this particular GPU. However, we should note that we had some stability issues with the Turing GPU. The game was constantly crashing each and every time we were going back to its Main Menu. During gameplay, the game was stable. We were able to replicate this multiple times. So, this is something that NVIDIA and Omega Force will have to fix. As for Native 4K/Max Settings, our top four GPUs had no trouble running it smoothly.

Graphics-wise, Dynasty Warriors: Origins does not come close to what most recent triple-A games have achieved. The game does not use any Ray Tracing effects at all. Some textures also feel a bit low-res, and there are numerous pixelated shadow issues (even on Max settings). Despite that, the game has no trouble at all displaying huge amounts of enemies on screen, and that is its biggest feature. The 3D models of all the main characters also look great. Plus, the in-engine cut-scenes push visuals that are a bit higher than what we get during gameplay. Or at least that’s the vibe I got from them. To put it simply, DWO looks more like a PS4 game. At the same time, though, it’s also the best-looking Dynasty Warriors game to date, particularly thanks to its great art style. So, this is a win for most Dynasty Warriors fans.

Before closing, I should note that I did not experience any stuttering issues. This is one of the few games that does not suffer from any traversal or shader compilation stutters. Everything feels buttery smooth, even when dealing with a lot of enemies. The game also displays proper KB&M prompts. Since this is KOEI Tecmo we’re talking about, this is huge. However, while there aren’t any mouse acceleration issues, the devs have used different values for the X and Y mouse axes. It’s not a game-breaking issue, especially if you game with a high DPI. Still, the mouse implementation could have been better.

All in all, this is one of the most polished games that KOEI Tecmo has released on PC. It took them a few years but they have finally nailed it. Thanks to its art style, the game looks great and it runs silky smooth on a huge range of PC configurations. It also plays great with a keyboard and mouse, and it does not suffer from any stutters. So, congrats to Omega Force for finally delivering a solid PC product!