If youre looking at character rosters the absolute champion is the fourth orochi entry with an incredible 170 playable warriors in the base game, and they went even bigger with the ultimate version pushing it to 177. Its pretty wild when you think about it since they basically took everyone from the dynasty series, threw in all the samurai fighters and even added some mythological heroes for good measure.

The mainline entries dont quite hit those numbers but theyre still impressive with the ninth one featuring 90 characters spread across all the major factions like wei, wu, and shu. The cool thing about these massive rosters is how they keep the historical timeline going, so youll unlock different warriors as you progress through the story mode which actually makes sense when you think about it.

Something interesting to note is how the crossover titles always end up with bigger rosters than the standalone games, but thats kind of expected since theyre mixing multiple series together. The ultimate version even threw in some surprise additions like joan of arc and gaia which was a nice touch especially since they came with their own unique fighting styles and sacred treasure mechanics.