Revisited: Warriors Orochi

As gamers we sometime get urges to return to an old game and replay one of our favourite games that we have played in the past. This weekend just gone I had the urge to do just that and decided to start playing Warriors Orochi on the Xbox 360 again from the beginning. Something that I am glad I did (even though the game does feature a lot of bugs that I forgot about, including immense slowdown on certain levels) So has Warriors Orochi aged well in the 5 years or so since its release?

It’s a mixture of yes and no, some of the things I liked originally are still the same, yet there are some little things that seem to hinder my enjoyment of the game than when I originally played it.

One thing that I noticed this time playing is that the voice acting for most of the characters seems to have been done by the same set of people, leading to quite a few characters sounding exactly the same. I know this doesn't sound like much but it did annoy me quite a bit for some reason which after playing the game for a few hours started to really annoy me.

Another thing is the characters just seem so slow when compared with Orochi 3, they just seem to amble about and take ages to get anywhere (even when using a horse to traverse the map) This seems like a major thing at the start but turns into a petty annoyance after a while as you get used to it.

The major problem though is when you get onto the last level of the game and the slowdown starts, this makes the first part of the game unbearable and doesn't clear up until you have killed quite a few enemies and taken over some of the enemy spawn points. Then everything runs smoother making the game more enjoyable to play again even though it feels like your controlling a character that limps about the map. I was thinking about also playing Orochi 2 but that game was plagued with really bad slowdown on some levels (Even worse than in the first game) so my experience with my revisit to Orochi 1 has really changed my mind about ever returning to that game. 

I guess one thing I have learned from this is that sometimes games you enjoyed should never be revisited years later, that is unless you want to run the chance of being disappointed with how they have aged. Sure some games stand the test of time like Super Mario Land and a few other games, but I feel now that with the exception of a few games I really don't fancy revisiting any other games to avoid further disappointment. (Most early 3D games being an example, even including the awesome Ocarina of Time)