Warriors Abyss (PC)

Geoffrey Wright | March 5, 2025 | Review | No Comments

Warriors Abyss is a new take on the various musou series we’ve all come to enjoy over the years. The hack & slash gameplay gets wrapped in a rogue-lite setup, with its own unique story, in an attempt to offer something new to fans at a budget price. Ready to take on another horde? Lets take a look

Souls of heroes find themselves summoned to the underworld by its current ruler, a young boy who calls himself Enma. With his power weakening, Enma informs you that an ancient evil named Goum has been released from their prison and quickly got to work conquering hell. With Enma at your back guiding the way, the heroes dive into the abyss to bring balance back to the underworld.

Story is alright but mainly acts as something to give context as to what & why you are hacking your way through this hellscape. The rouguelite nature of the game means things are more focused about completing runs as opposed to navigating a narrative so it’s no surprise really. There’s several areas to get through and plenty of officers to play or build your team from, Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and Warriors Orochi make up most of the roster. While you could conceivably do a run relatively soon, it will take some time to maximise relationships etc and fully have all the tools at your disposal.

Being a budget release and also a completely different genre, it’s not quite a looker in comparison to the recent Origins. Environments can be a little basic, but the screen still fills with plenty of enemies and there’s plenty of effects in play too, it still very much looks and feels like a musou game. The officers still look great still, and there’s plenty of costumes ranging from old iterations through to oddities and spin-offs.

The music you’ll be battling to should be recognisable, there’s plenty of classic tracks from the warriors series to enjoy while playing. There’s a lot of audio from the main games reused here, as well as some new voice acting during story segments. Given the makeup of the game it should come as no surprise performance is solid. 4K/120 was attainable, native too as no upscaling, on my system (R7 5800X3D/32GB/RTX 3090) so there should be plenty of scope to optimise for you setup.

The hack & slash nature of the various musou games is brought to the fore with this one, there isn’t much else to distract you from that simple premise. Surprisingly it fits like a glove to this spin off with a roguelite setup. On a simple level you’ll be entering a stage and just have to cut through as many of the horde as required to open up the route down to the next floor, tho it isn’t always as simple. Enemies can have various attack patterns within the mob to keep you on your toes, and occasionally there’s a gruelling boss battle to contend with. Not only that but choosing the bonus for the next floor can help or hinder that progress downward.

Picking your route down from the options available is key for the obstacles ahead, boss battles in particular can be a slog if your not having a relatively tuned party to your strengths. Each clear of a floors usually gives you a few options – buying some boosts, resting or recruiting a new member for the party. There’s a little more to the party makeup than simply adding someone new as they can be summoned during battle, relationships and allegiances can also add a further boost to stats and additional abilities to use. There’s a whole tree of sorts with all the roster on that you can gradually unlock to gain better coherency between officers as you build the team on the journey down.

Taking the usual musou gameplay of the series and its spin-offs, while marrying it to a rogue lite structure, actually turns out extremely well. The gameplay is just as fast and frantic, enemies fill the screen, plenty of officers to play as, and a gameplay loop that will see you return often enough. Not only that, its budget price of around £20 makes it a compelling proposition for not only fans of the series looking for something a little different, but genre fans also considering the same.