Review: WARRIORS: Abyss (Nintendo Switch)

The first thing that struck me while playing the roguelite action game WARRIORS: Abyss was just how fond I’ve grown of these characters. Most Nintendo fans have Mario, Peach, and Toad. I have Zhang Fei, Mitsuhide Akechi, and Sun Shangxiang. I mention this because Abyss gives you access to over 100 characters from Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. Unfortunately, you’re not quite given enough of interest to do with them.

In this deviation from the standard Musou gameplay of the Warriors franchises, you now embark on quick hack-‘n’-slash trips into Hell. Apparently, Hell has a king (Enma), and that king has been dethroned by a fellow named Gouma. Enma would like to reclaim his title, so he enlists fancified versions of Japan and China’s greatest warriors to help. Not a bad call, really.

Being a roguelite, the general flow of gameplay tasks you with entering dungeons, proceeding as far as possible before eventually succumbing to the countless enemies. Any treasures, buffs, and characters you unlock along the way, however, are yours to keep. This makes you tougher for your next run, allowing you to progress a bit further each time until you’re finally able to take care of the issue(s) at hand.

So, the strategy and constant change-ups of the traditional Warriors games are mostly gone, but the quickly-paced action is not. Indeed, if you’ve ever played a Warriors game before, you’re prepared to fight. Basically, the levels require you to find a mass of enemies and cut through them with a combination of basic and special attacks.

There’s even a map of the possible X/Y combos at the top of the screen, so you’re able to see exactly what you’re doing. And because these basic attacks are mostly similar across all characters, you’re not required to relearn the combos.

In other words, you can tear through massive amounts of enemies with relative ease…some of the time. The challenge ramps up quickly, and you can find yourself completely outmatched if you don’t follow the proper path towards your goal. In fact, that’s one of my first complaints about the game. WARRIORS: Abyss doesn’t do enough to guide you early on. Sure, you get the standard tutorial screens as you progress, but you’re otherwise thrown to the wolves. Only through numerous replays are you really going to figure out what you have to do to be efficient.

For example, different characters have different special abilities: instant revives, various buffs, etc. It’s up to you to discover who’s better against what, or (as in my case) who best compensates for your gameplay shortcomings. With over 100 characters at your disposal, that can be a daunting task.

I muscled my way through with my favorites, and that likely wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Thankfully, stat boosts you unlock on each character become permanently available to all characters. So, if there are boosts you want from a characters you don’t, you can acquire those and then toss them to the back.

You are able to assemble a team to utilize for cooldown and formation attacks, and to provide powerful buffs and abilities to your main character. Mixing and matching is not just fun, it provides some much needed diversity to the gameplay. Grinding is a necessity, you see. I get that this is just part of roguelites, but most other games do a better job of masking this. Yes, the action is satisfying. The controls are tight and the moves are easy to execute. But the new characters and abilities you acquire on your runs don’t do enough to distinguish the early levels from the late ones.

The same can be said of the graphics. The environments are surprisingly drab. This would be fine if it allowed the enemies to stand out, but they’re mostly pretty drab, too. Yes, there are thousands and thousands of them; it would be unfair to expect a lot of variety here. But more to break up the general appearance and flow would’ve been appreciated.

It’s also unfortunate the heroes don’t really stand out in all of this. After a while, they all start to look and feel the same. This makes the costume DLC seem like a weird addition, as the characters are placed too deep into the levels to really look all th​at different. That said, the game plays wonderfully on the Switch in both docked and handheld mode. I’m happy to sacrifice some detail to get solid performance on a game with such heavy action.

I feel like roguelite fans have better options available to them. Diehard Musou fans will get a kick out of how well the Warriors combat scheme was implemented here, but that will only hold them for so long. Somewhere in the middle of that is a group of gamers who will have a fun time with WARRIORS: Abyss. Once you understand the flow and have unlocked a chunk of characters, it doesn’t require much more than a desire for action. And that’s good, because it doesn’t provide much more than that, either.

Well, other than the hope for a proper Warriors launch title on the Switch 2.