Throughout Sony’s February 2025 State of Play presentation, the large shadow drop was Koei Tecmo’s Warriors: Abyss, which provides a low-budget, roguelite tackle the favored Warriors hack ‘n’ slash system. The excellent news is that this style hybrid looks like each halves match completely collectively—the mindlessness of the fight blended with the temporary run-focused nature of roguelite motion is so good that it nearly feels laborious to consider that the staff by no means thought to provide one thing like this earlier. The dangerous information is that its struggles with repetition hold it from being anyplace close to as addictive as roguelikes comparable to Lifeless Cells or Slay the Spire. Fortunately, Warriors: Abyss nonetheless proves itself to be a worthwhile new entry within the collection, however solely simply.
Warriors: Abyss begins with you being summoned by an impish little god named Enma, the king of Hell, who was just lately deposed when an historical evil being named Gouma was launched and took over the land of the lifeless. Wanting to reclaim his throne, Enma enlists the celebrities of the Warriors franchise to struggle off Gouma’s forces and in the end ship the creature again the place it got here from. Now and again, Enma will pop up with a bit extra of lore or some snarky quip, however there’s not far more to the storyline past this fundamental setup.
Gameplay in Warriors: Abyss looks like a typical Dynasty Warriors entry with a touch of Diablo and Hades thrown in for good measure. A complete run shouldn’t take you any longer than a few hours and consists of dashing by way of 4 distinct biomes with eight ranges every, with the ultimate phases at all times reserved for that biome’s resident boss monster.
Every ground usually duties you with killing a set variety of enemies, who you’ll fell by the handfuls as you tear by way of hordes with reckless abandon. After every ground, you declare treasure or summon one other hero (extra on this in a bit) and decide the room rewards you wish to chase for the following ground.
When you’re remotely versed in roguelites, you’ll be accustomed to the construction right here, however that’s a great factor. Warriors: Abyss might not add numerous fascinating new concepts to the standard roguelite model, however it executes on every thing fairly effectively. The facility ramp is pretty satisfying as you quickly snag buffs and power-ups that rework your character into a military of 1, whereas the brutality of the ‘robust however honest’ problem will be softened by way of sheer persistence and taking part in the meta-progression parts proper.
Warriors: Abyss is the form of sport the place you’ll end up shedding runs left and proper at first, however the thrill of fight and development is powerful sufficient that (no less than initially) you possibly can hardly resist making an attempt only one extra run.
A part of what makes every run fascinating is the sheer variety of potential playable characters: 100. Everybody follows the identical combo assault construction of mixing both heavy or gentle assaults to tug off flashy strikes, however the fascinating bits include the character-specific skills and buffs.
One character shall be granted a free immediate revive as soon as per run after they lastly get overwhelmed by the enemy hordes, one other may get a set share buff to their power for every member of a particular clan they handle to gather. It could take some time to discover a ‘foremost’ or two that basically gels along with your playstyle, however there’s no scarcity of choices to experiment with right here.
The majority of the extent rewards come within the type of a crack on the Crystal Sapling, a tree that allows you to commune with the spirits of different warriors you’ve unlocked and add them to your staff. Not solely will the primary six of those change into summonable for bombastic cooldown assaults as an extension of your base combos, however every one may even grant you a wealth of stat buffs and new skills to make your character that rather more formidable.
Selecting the correct hero on the tree can usually really feel slightly overwhelming given what number of stats and variables there are to contemplate, however the sport helpfully summarises issues by providing you with a set energy quantity as a tough estimate of how a lot that character will buff your fight skills. This quantity turns into rather less helpful should you’re going for a really specialised construct, however it nonetheless acts as a great metric to gauge general effectiveness.
Whenever you inevitably fall in battle, you’ll be despatched again to the Nice Corridor to begin over from sq. one with a brand new character, although there are some methods you possibly can fudge the percentages in your favour. Within the Corridor of Bonded Souls, you possibly can spend forex obtained out of your run in a large talent tree that grants you issues like new characters and buffs to the expertise that you simply achieve in a run.
Each unlocked character results in some type of everlasting stat enhance that applies to all characters, which creates a noticeable impact when you’ve constructed up these buffs throughout a number of dozen character unlocks. And though everybody begins a run at degree one, all accrued ranges from throughout their many makes an attempt feed right into a ‘cumulative degree’ that grants that character additional everlasting stat boosts. These metaprogression parts are a welcome a part of the cycle, guaranteeing that sustained effort will lead to you ultimately managing a profitable run.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Warriors sport with no ridiculous quantity of grind and that’s the place Warriors: Abyss is each at its greatest and its worst. On one hand, there’s one thing brilliantly pleasing a few modestly troublesome, however comparatively senseless sport the place you possibly can decide to do little else however maintain down both ‘Y’ or ‘X’ and watch the fireworks as your character rips and tears their method by way of most of their foes.
Then again, run makes an attempt quickly begin to really feel indistinguishable from one another no matter which character you select, which makes additional makes an attempt really feel progressively much less interesting. Warriors: Abyss is the proper ‘second monitor’ form of sport, one thing that’s at its greatest once you’re listening to a podcast or have a rerun of a favorite present on within the background.
Visually, it is relatively disappointing, which contributes in a roundabout approach to the grindiness of the gameplay loop turning into extra obvious over time. The biomes all have a relatively low-poly and unimaginative design, whereas the enemies are largely generic troopers and monsters. On condition that there are generally actually a whole bunch of shifting characters on the display screen without delay, the simplistic visuals really feel like an appropriate compromise for holding every thing shifting at a clean body price, besides, it doesn’t make for a really visually fascinating or artistic expertise.
Conclusion
Warriors: Abyss is a good low-budget spinoff within the long-running hack ‘n’ slash collection, however is not notably inspiring. There’s tons of replayability, a great deal of unlockables, and an exhilarating fight system that assist to maintain this one fascinating for some time, however its paper-thin plot, repetitive gameplay, and poor visuals very a lot maintain it again from being something distinctive. We’d give this one a modest advice to followers of both roguelites, Musou video games, or each, however with the caveat that you could be wish to wait to select this one up on a deep sale someday afterward.
