Recommendations for a Musou (or Musou-like) on the PC?

I played a TON of Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends on Steam, and recently started playing Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below. Unfortunately, DQH has an AWFUL interface/menu system that makes the game annoying to play for more than a level or two at a time.

Would you folks have any suggestions on good Musous or Musou-likes that are available on Steam? I'm considering Samurai Warriors 4-II, but it's got rather mixed reviews right now.

Thanks!

Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus and Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed.

@dagas: Maybe I'll look into Neptunia... I don't think I could bring myself to get Senran Kagura. Thanks!

As a massive fan of Musou (and Samurai Warriors specifically), I'd advise against SW 4-II. All of the improvements they made to mission structure in SW3 (optional objectives, planning your route, multiple ways to complete a level) were removed. There are also only a handful of stories (one for each faction), and many of the playable characters have very little dialogue. It looks alright, but it feels really soulless compared to the best Musou games.

Do you have any consoles at all? Most of the Musou games from the past few years have come out the 360, PS3, Xbox One, and PS4. The Orochi ones have a million characters and are pretty well made, especially 3. And if you have a Wii, you should absolutely play SW3. I've played a lot of Musou games over the years, and it's head-and-shoulders better than any of the others.

Most Koei Tecmo games on PC are terrible. One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 got somewhat of a good reception on PC, but I believe that's just a port of the PS3 version and not the PS4 one.

@notkcots: Sadly I don't have any consoles at the moment. I had a 360 for a while but after it red ringed a few years ago, I never got around to replacing it.

Thanks for the warning about SW4-II, also. I looked into it a bit more and realized that the game I was interested in, from Austin's quick look of it, was neither SW4 nor SW4-II, but SW4 Empires. And that's not on the PC. Ugh.

2 (somewhat contradictory, but whatever) questions about OPPW3, if you know:

1. Would I get anything out of the game if I know next to nothing about the OP franchise? I might just be skipping the cutscenes if I don't understand (or care about) what's going on. I didn't really know/care all that much about the Three Kingdoms period either, but I still liked mowing through dudes like so many blades of grass. Would OPPW3 scratch that same itch?
2. Even though I said I know next to nothing about OP and would possibly be skipping a lot of the story scenes, I still have a weird feeling that I might want to watch through the show (or read the manga) at some unspecified point in the future. With that in mind, do you think OPPW3 would spoil too much about the plot?

Thanks!

@bbalpert: I'm in a similar situation to you. I enjoy the musou franchise but have no experience with One Piece. I downloaded OPPW3 during a sale and have put about 5 hours into it. I actually really enjoyed it and would have put more time into it if other things hadn't come up. To reply to your concerns:

1. I think so. The One Piece world and story is ridiculous (and massive), and the game moves through it at a breakneck pace. It makes for an entertaining roller coaster ride. You get to see the dumb-ass character designs at a satisfying rate. I mean, don't expect to engage with the characters meaningfully, it really does move through things fast, but there is fun to be had just getting the story beats and seeing where things go. The gameplay is a bit faster than the average musou game because of the ability to cancel out of your attack animations with a dash. I really enjoyed this change, it made the gameplay fun and kinetic. So I think the gameplay does hold up in between the story moments to keep things entertaining.

2. I only played 5 hours so I didn't get deep into the story, but yeah I think its going to spoil things. The game doesn't really pull any punches when it comes to dolling out the One Piece story, and it rushes through doing so. If you really want to enjoy everything about One Piece, this game will extol it to you in a probably less-than-best way. For me, One Piece is f-ing huge and the pace this game moves through the story was satisfying and appropriate. However, you aren't going to get the best One Piece experience from this game. That said I think you could go through reading/watching One Piece after playing this game and still get a lot out of it. Reading/watching afterwards will elaborate on the story you've minimally engaged with.

One last point is that I think the game doesn't cover the most recent (and apparently massive) story arc of the manga. So if you are planning to follow through with One Piece, this game wont spoil everything.

@lesieg: Thanks for the thorough response. That's exactly the kind of information I was hoping for. I'm still up in the air as to whether or not I'll get the game, but now it's because of actual reasons rather than just "I don't know anything about the game".

@bbalpert: Since you're still a bit on the fence, I'll weigh in as well, speaking as someone that's a One Piece fan as well as a fan of musou games. Pirate Warriors 3 was kind of a dream game for me. I loved it and I put a lot of time into it on PS4. I especially liked the partner system. You'll get support characters assigned to you in a stage, and one of them will jump in at the end of your combo strings (to use PlayStation controls as an example, for a typical square, square, triangle combo string, you'd press triangle once more at the end to activate the assist). If you use them enough, they'll jump in during your super attack, which the game lays out in manga-style panels. It's a fun twist for this style of game, and it lends itself well to the One Piece series' theme of the bond between crew members. The game also does a really nice job of translating the characters' attacks into the gameplay in fun and interesting ways. There's a character with a surgery room gimmick, he'll put up a bubble and then his sword swipes will attack everything within that space. There's another character that teleports around in flashes of light and he looks like an old Yakuza film actor, so he's got a ton of styyyyle. If nothing else, you would likely enjoy just playing around with the cast.

If you want to get it for the gameplay alone and skip the story, by all means go for it. It is a lot of fun to mow down scores of peons, while learning the different playstyles of all of the characters. But as far as fully experiencing the story of One Piece, it's not great for that, as mentioned above, but there's an incredible amount of story that they're going through so I can't really fault them too much. The game has many characters and it goes through the story kind of in a cliffnotes style. It'll cram a whole story arc into one stage with the antagonist of the story arc acting as stage boss. Since you've played Dynasty Warriors, you'd probably be familiar with the style of storytelling that's in this game. They'll have cutscenes for some important moments, and then battle dialogue during gameplay to continue the story. It would probably be hard to follow along with playing and then peeking at the bottom of the screen to catch the dialogue. They hit the broad strokes, but you'll miss out on context for a lot of impactful character and story moments along the way.

It seems like slim pickings for the genre on PC though, so you would be missing out on a really fun one of these. If you'd like some advice on the best way to catch up on the story, it would be quicker to read through the manga since the anime has an absurd amount of episodes, as well as filler content.

@redyoshi: Awesome, thanks for the advice! I'll see if I can find some (legal) way of reading the manga online somewhere. If I can't find anything feasible, maybe I'll check out the first few episodes on CrunchyRoll and see how that suits me.

Pirate Warriors III for sure. Ton of fun, especially if you're a fan of the series. Attack on Titan just came out and seems like a fun romp as well.

I started watching/playing One Piece, and both @redyoshi and @lesieg were spot on with their advice. The game seems to be going through the major plot points of the series in a less-than-ideal but serviceable manner. It's definitely preferable to know what's going on beforehand. The controls feel a bit wonky, but I'm sure that's just a matter of getting used to them.