The February 2025 PlayStation State of Play didn’t have a ton for me. Over the last year, I’ve upgraded to a gaming laptop + Steam Deck combo, and as a result, I’ve largely fallen off of my consoles. I still favor the Xbox ecosystem a lot just because of Game Pass, but I turned off my PS+ renewal in January and didn’t look back.
That’s not to say there wasn’t stuff I wanted to check out. “Lies of P: Overture” looks great, and I’m really excited for “Saros,” the spiritual successor to “Returnal” (ironically, the only game to give me FOMO when I didn’t have a PlayStation 5).
But there was one game that caught my eye: “Warriors Abyss,” the latest spin-off of the long-running and beloved Koei-Tecmo “Dynasty Warriors” franchise. “Abyss” dips into the roguelike genre while still using all the trapping of the various “Warriors” games, and the result is honestly a hell of a time.
I’ve not played a ton of “Dynasty Warriors” games, despite enjoying the franchise. I spent some time with “Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate” back in the day when it hit Games with Gold, but otherwise, the bulk of my musou experience comes down to “Persona 5 Strikers,” “Berserk & the Band of the Hawk,” and the Bandai Namco musou clone “Kamen Rider: Battride War.”
I do, however, have more experience with roguelikes, having played my fair share of “Rogue Legacy,” “Hades,” and, most recently, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate.” I was expecting something a lot closer to those, but what I instead got was a roguelike with shockingly deep RPG elements.
In true “Warriors” fashion, “Warriors Abyss” features a massive roster of 100 playable characters found in the Hall of Bonded Souls. You’ll bond with these characters through the use of in-game currency as you progress, which in turn opens up a slew of unique abilities.
It’s through these characters, all of whom are playable heroes from previous “Warriors” titles, that the game expands its system at a level that rivals “Hades.” Each character has different weapons and skills, and recruiting new characters (you can have up to six active) will impact your specific build.
The gameplay itself is a remarkable blend of the classic musou gameplay everyone knows and loves with the top-down stationary camera of “Hades.” It’s such an oddly perfect blend of gameplay styles, as you use your hero to mow down waves of baddies with simple tasks like “Kill 100 enemies” or “Destroy this specific enemy in 2 minutes.”
I’ve only made it to the second stage as of this writing, and so far, it’s about as varied as you expect from a roguelike. Each stage has about eight levels, and you’ll have a degree of branching paths leading you from zone to zone as time goes on. You can usually choose a specific character type to ally with or visit a store or a challenging “Danger Zone.”
Naturally, the final zone will have a challenging boss. The first one took a few tries, but after leveling up bonds and getting better stats and formation, I found myself able to melt him.
I think that’s what I enjoy most about how the “Warriors” aspects are integrated here. I feel like I am pretty in control, even among the increasingly random aspects of branching paths, hero draws, and enemy challenges.
To touch on performance, I played this on both my laptop with an Xbox wireless controller and on the Steam Deck. It worked and looked great on both. This feels like an excellent Steam Deck game, as it’s a single-player affair that only seems to touch the internet to verify itself with Steam.
I played the Steam version of “Warriors: Abyss,” which is available now for $24.99 and is Steam Deck Verified — an absolute bargain, in my opinion. It’s also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
