Warriors: Abyss – An Unforgettable Dive into Tactical Action
By Towards Sony’s February 2025 State of Play showcase, the major surprise was Koei Tecmo’s Warriors: Abyss, which presents a budget-friendly, roguelite twist on the classic Warriors hack-and-slash formula. The good news is that this hybrid genre feels as though both parts mesh seamlessly—the simplicity of combat paired with the fast-paced roguelite elements is so compelling that it’s hard to believe the developers hadn’t conceived something like this before. The downside is that its challenges due to monotony prevent it from being nearly as addictive as roguelikes like Dead Cells or Slay the Spire. Fortunately, Warriors: Abyss still establishes itself as a valuable new entry in the franchise, though only moderately so.
Warriors: Abyss starts with you being summoned by a mischievous little deity named Enma, the ruler of Hell, who has recently been overthrown when an ancient evil being called Gouma was unleashed and seized control over the realm of the dead. Eager to regain his throne, Enma recruits characters from the Warriors series to combat Gouma’s minions and ultimately send the creature back to where it belongs. Occasionally, Enma will appear with a bit more lore or a sarcastic remark, but there’s not much more to the narrative beyond this basic premise.
Gameplay in Warriors: Abyss resembles a traditional Dynasty Warriors installment infused with elements from Diablo and Hades. A complete run shouldn’t take you longer than a couple of hours and involves racing through four distinct biomes, each consisting of eight stages, with the final stages consistently reserved for a boss creature associated with that particular biome.
Each floor typically challenges you to defeat a certain number of enemies, whom you’ll dispatch by the dozens as you charge through waves with reckless abandon. After each stage, you can gain favor or summon another hero (more on this shortly) and select the room rewards you wish to pursue for the next level.
If you have any familiarity with roguelites, you’ll recognize the layout here, but that’s a good thing. Warriors: Abyss may not introduce many exciting new features to the classic roguelite format, but it executes the familiar elements quite effectively. The power curve is quite satisfying as you quickly grab buffs and powerful stats that transform your character into a one-person army, while the challenge of the “tough yet rewarding” gameplay can be mitigated through sheer perseverance and engaging with the progression mechanics effectively.
Warriors: Abyss is the type of game where you’ll find yourself losing runs repeatedly at first, yet the enjoyment of combat and progress is strong enough that (at least initially) you might often be tempted to undertake just one more run.
Part of what makes each run exciting is the sheer number of potential playable characters: 100. Each character follows a similar combo attack structure that combines heavy and light attacks to perform flashy moves, but the interesting elements come from the character-specific abilities and buffs.
One character might be afforded a free instant revive once per run whenever they are ultimately overwhelmed by enemy forces, while another may receive a static percentage boost to their strength for every clan member they manage to defeat. It may take some time to find a ‘main’ or two that truly aligns with your playstyle, but there’s no shortage of opportunities to experiment here.
The majority of the level rewards come in the form of enhancements to the Crystal Sapling, a tree that allows you to connect with the spirits of various warriors you’ve unlocked and incorporate them into your team. Not only will the first six of these become summonable for powerful cooldown attacks as an extension of your regular combos, but each will also grant you a wealth of stat boosts and new abilities to make your character that much more formidable.
Selecting the right hero from the tree can sometimes feel a little overwhelming given the many stats and variables to consider, but the game helpfully summarizes things by providing a fixed power number as a rough estimate of how much that character will enhance your combat abilities. This number might become somewhat less significant if you’re aiming for a very specialized build, yet it still serves as a useful metric for assessing overall effectiveness.
If you inevitably fall in battle, you’ll be sent back to the Grand Hall to start over from the beginning with a new character, though there are several ways you can manipulate the odds in your favor. In the Hall of Bonded Souls, you can spend currency earned from your runs on an extensive skill tree that grants you things like new characters and buffs to enhance your experience during a run.
Each unlocked character provides some form of permanent stat boost that applies to all characters, resulting in a noticeable effect once you’ve accumulated these enhancements over several character unlocks. And although everyone starts a run at level one, all accumulated stages across their numerous