To Orochi, or not to Orochi?
The other day, I posted an article about how bad my video game buying habits have been, pledging to never spend more than 20 dollars on a game.
For 90 percent of the content out there…this will totally work. Third party games often see dramatic discounts not that long after release, and most first party exclusives usually end up in some kind of “Greatest Hits” lineup.
But in a handful of cases…the theory breaks down. Mostly with Nintendo games, and those from a scant few other companies.
Like Koei Tecmo.
I love the Dynasty Warriors franchise, but the games almost never get discounts. Retail copies, when they’re available, will sometimes have a brief clearance window right before they disappear from shelves. Digital copies sometimes go on sale on Steam or on the consoles, but the discounts tend to be more modest than the massive savings on other titles.
Koei knows that their fans are dedicated, and they know how to get a lot of money out of their games. For better or for worse.
Warriors Orochi 4 is out in a few days. The base edition is $60 and the version that comes with everything is $90.
Yeesh.
The odds are pretty good that, at best, the cheapest this game will ever be is around $40, for the base version.
So a stupid conundrum then. I want to play this game. I know I’ll probably get at least 50 hours of gameplay out of it. I’m 100 hours into Dynasty Warriors 9 and still nowhere near done,
But I can’t help but feel like I’m making a mistake if I buy the new one.
First, I still have a handful of other Warriors games I haven’t totally finished. I could push through those first, and see if I still have the urge to play the new one.
Second, I was most interested in buying the Switch version….but it looks like it’s in rough shape. Other Warriors games on Switch have very good framerates. Fire Emblem Warriors even has an optional 60FPS mode.
But footage of the Japanese Switch version on Youtube shows framerates regularly dipping into the low 20’s, and worse. I had my doubts that this was running on the latest version of the Warriors engine, but seeing this performance I realized that this is totally the new tech, and that the optimization gains made in the Dynasty Warriors 9 patches haven’t really helped performance on Switch.
I could get it on one of the other consoles, where it seems to perform much better, but then I wouldn’t be able to play the game on the go, and that gives me a better chance of finishing it in a timely fashion.
I realize that this isn’t a real problem, but it’s a thing I’m dealing with, haha. And to increase the pressure a little, there are of course special pre-order bonuses…that differ from platform to platform.
Ugh.
I have no doubt that Warriors Orochi 4 will be a game that very much speaks to my personal interests…but I wish Koei’s games received discounts over time. They’re so huge and weird, and a lower barrier to entry might help increase the size of their largely hardcore/niche audience.
