Warriors Orochi 4

Be afraid of those who care about story

It's a Warriors/Musou game. It has an absurd amount of characters. It appears to have 0 balance attempted.
If you asked me, I would say Samurai Warriors 5 has better gameplay and balance (and story), but Warriors Orochi 4 closes the gap by having many more characters and much more content.
There's a few things to take note of:
First and foremost: The port seems a little jank. Logic is tied to frame rate. Things like character-model physics are much more uh... "bouncy" at 30 FPS than 60 (people originally noted this comparing the Nintendo Switch vs PS4 versions of the game). More than that, on PC, load times take longer at 30 FPS, and things like button up/down inputs seem to be tied to frame ticks.
This has led to times when the game thinks I'm still holding down a button on my PS4 controller when I'm not. This happens frequently, and to get it to realize I'm not holding a button down, I have to press the button again so it can, presumably, register the button-up action that it dropped.
This has caused me some grief as the game drops my inputs because it's registering inputs I'm not making. Like, I'll press R1+X to summon/mount my horse, then later, when I press X to dismount, it does nothing, because R1+X isn't valid riding button combination, and the game still thinks I'm holding down R1 when I'm not.
This seems to happen more frequently at 30 FPS than 60 (hence why I think it's tied to frame rate, but I could just be imagining that - either way, it's annoying). Other than the weird frame-tied logic, the port seems mostly fine. It's relatively annoying though.
Technical stuff aside, one thing that sets this game apart from other Warriors game is the magic system. It is not the same as something like Dragon Quest Heroes.
You have a rapidly-charging mana gauge that can be used to use your equipped sacred artifact to cast a few of spells. These, for the most part, are able to be equipped on any character, and some are obviously much stronger than others. While some might take all your mana to take down 1/5th of an officer's health, something like the Trident will do twice that damage with the same amount of mana, meanwhile following up doing stagger and damage on everything around you for a short sustained period (including officers, giving you free hits). It's actually insane how not balanced these are, particularly since they're not ported in from other games.
Speaking of porting in stuff from other games, at the point Warriors Orochi 4 came out, we're looking at Samurai Warriors 4-II characters from that particular franchise. This means the Samurai Warriors cast of characters have the hyper attack mechanics, where pressing the charge attack button without a basic attack first will send you around doing rapid dashing attacks. It's cool that they brought this in, and adds a level of uniqueness to those characters, but none of the Dynasty Warriors or Orochi original characters have this mechanic, which make Samurai Warriors characters far better at clearing trash while on the move, and they're not any worse at anything else.
Even not considering hyper attacks, the balance just doesn't appear to have even been attempted. I don't believe it's an exaggeration to say that Magoichi, for example, can take down enemy officers 5x faster than someone like Diaochan, meanwhile also being significantly better at crowd control due to rapid sweeping attacks with his gun, which shoots like a full-auto assault rifle, despite being a matchlock (flintlock? haven't actually looked that closely). Not that I'm complaining about the way his gun (or Masamune's guns) functions, but just pointing out the vast power gap that can exist between characters.
It's fine though, generally. There's just an absurd amount of characters, and you play what you want. They can be relatively weak compared to others, but this is a Warriors game, you're still a god on the battlefield. Also, you can just equip stuff like the Trident on everyone, so that helps close a lot of power gap space. Still, it's notable how wildly imbalanced the game is.
Characters being just ripped from games and plopped into this one goes beyond balance as well. Character models are of varying quality. Joan of Arc, from Bladestorm, notably looks much worse than everyone else in the game, and some Dynasty Warriors characters have DW9 outfits available, which are predictably more detailed than their DW8 counterparts. Also, none of the Orochi original characters have uh... bust physics objects, regardless of size, whereas the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors characters that have larger endowments all do.
That aside, the story is nonsense. It's pretty much just an excuse to throw characters at you, but some characters join you absurdly easily, betraying even their own family, which they're on good terms with, with pretty much 0 convincing needing to be done. Like yeah, it's a Warriors game, we're not here for the story, but I opened this by comparing this game to Samurai Warriors 5, which actually does its story really well.
Going further down the comparison to Samurai Warriors 5, the skill sets with individual cooldowns are comparable to the Warriors Orochi 4 magic system, but Samurai Warriors 5 balances it much better, and doesn't allow you to just swap skills around to anyone (though, that game lets you swap weapons around to anyone).
Samurai Warriors 5 also has more meaningful random enemies. In Warriors Orochi 4, there's pretty much just officers and trash, and all of the trash is pretty much interchangeable fodder. Samurai Warriors 5 has a number of different standard enemy units that actually perform different functions and can be a real thorn in your side (drummers, archers, gunners, large shield units - yes, ranged units exist in other titles, but in Samurai Warriors 5 they can pretty consistently stagger and interrupt you if you don't deal with them).
Pretty much what Warriors Orochi 4 has going for it is the fact that it has much more content. The cast of characters counts at a whopping 170, each with their own relatively unique combat styles, meanwhile Samurai Warriors 5 only has 39 characters, 10 of which have 0 unique moves (the other 29 have preferred weapons that they have unique charge attacks with), and only 15 different weapon styles.
Warriors Orochi 4 also has far more stages, even counting the pretty much duplicates that Samurai Warriors 5 has (doing the same missions but from different viewpoints/sides). The Infinity Mode also seems to have more variation than Samurai Warrior's Citadel Mode, because Infinity Mode has a number of different objective types, whereas Citadel Mode are all gate-guarding missions.
Notably, Samurai Warriors 5 also seems to have taken a cue from Infinity Mode and ran with it. In Infinity Mode, all of your 3 selected characters are out on the field at all times, and you can command them (I think I read that in the tip - I haven't tried it). Samurai Warriors 5 almost always gives you 2 characters on the field (a very small number only have 1), and you can command and swap between them at will throughout the entire game, which adds a layer of strategy not available in Warriors Orochi 4's mainline story.
Anyway, I actually can't say which one is a better value. Samurai Warriors 5 feels a decent bit more refined in a lot of ways (it is a newer game, to be fair), but Warriors Orochi 4 has much more stuff in it. Bother are fun, either way. If I had to pick one for someone, I would have to ask what they're looking for. Content/length, or gameplay refinement?
Or uh... co-op. Samurai Warriors 5 got kind of too focused on delivering the story (which I really do enjoy), so you generally can't co-op any mission until you've beat it with the assigned story characters solo (from what I've been told), so if that's what you're looking for, Warriors Orochi 4 is clearly the winner in that regard.

Bought this because I know this game is a fun one. Regretfully, I have to refund.
I'm saying this based on my own experience, the game has been crashing back to windows every single time I entered Chapter 2 Stage 1, the stage that you have to rescue the Sanadas and Shingen.
I still recommend this game if it does not crash for you.

It may not be better than previous series in terms of story, but personally I really like fast-paced gameplay, with SW characters using Hyper Attacks as an alternative of riding horses. This was also one of koei games (on steam) where I spent long hours, grinding those towers, just to get one of the greek god's cool costume. The only thing that was lacking are the guest characters compared to previous series. Also with the existence of magic, you can basically cheese almost any enemy.

Get ready for over-the-top action and absurdity with Warriors Orochi 4! This game throws strategy out the window and replaces it with unrestrained battlefield chaos. Who cares about tactics when you can wildly hack through thousands of enemies as mythical heroes like Zeus and Achilles?
The sheer scale of the battles becomes downright silly as you unleash devastating combos that launch enemies skyward. Seeing noble samurai like Nobunaga flailing around like overpowered action figures is priceless!
With a roster featuring legends from various eras, anachronisms abound in delightful ways. Nothing's more amusing than seeing Sun Wukong or Joan of Arc to slaughtering on ninjas. Talk about clashing civilizations!
So embrace the wackiness and turn your brain off for over 100 hours of mindless button-mashing fun. The story is nonsensical and the gameplay is repetitive, but with such epic spectacle, who cares? Paint the battlefield with madness and watch history's heroes devolve into power-tripping super soldiers.
If you're seeking strategic depth or historical accuracy, look elsewhere. But for unrestrained martial arts havoc featuring history's most badass warriors, Warriors Orochi 4 delivers crazy fun in spades!

i love playing these musou games even though it's just a mass murder of hack and slash mixed in with a bit of strategy. I hadn't been loving the crossovers as much and felt nostalgic for more traditional Warriors games.
This one is a solid entry to the Warriors Orochi franchise! I love all the new mechanics for the magic power and the chaos monsters that can't be killed with regular attacks. The juggling enemies with swapping, the rage mechanic. It keeps it from getting boring, which is usually why I stopped playing the games after unlocking all the characters I wanted.
On the top of characters, the roster here is amazing! It's easy so far to unlock characters and to level them up. Unlocking them in the others seemed more tedious than it is now. Granted, I'm early game so it has yet to be seen if later on I'll need to rescue someone in a certain order before they'll join. Regardless, I like seeing the characters I know popping up here and there. I also like the bonding conversations between the unlocked characters. It gives them more personality even if it's just flavor text against a static background.
I don't hate anything at the moment, but I'm very forgiving for musou games. I'm used to the repetition, the copy past mobs, the pretty easy fights, and the rng for wpn drops. I do wish they went back to dubbing these games, but that's never happening. Reading the texts while fighting and looking at the mini map can be tedious, but that's just how it is now so I don't knock it.
Nothing is groundbreaking here, but I think it's worth it when it's on sale right now! Get it, and then be a mass murdering machine with the flair of the gods!

Fantastic game. Poured hours into this one both on PC and Xbox.