Meanings
plural musous
- countableuncountablevideo gamesA subgenre of hack-and-slash usually involving fighting hundreds of enemies simultaneously in a mazelike 3D world, or an individual game in this genre (especially a game in the Warriors franchise).
Instead, the avatar navigates environments filled with hundreds of enemies (making these games similar to musous) that are quickly dispatched
2025 April 16, Ryan Zhao, The Fundamentals of Video Game Literacy: Theory, Practice, and Aesthetics, CRC Press, →ISBN2 more examples
Having to babysit Al has always been one of the more frustrating elements of musou games, and being able to heal them makes these objectives much less obnoxious.
2022 June 29, GamerGuides.com, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - Strategy Guide, Gamer Guides, →ISBNNow, to recount the tale of how I ended up suicide bombing a castle only to begin cleaving through mobs of people like a musou game would be a very long story.
2022 October 24, Schuld, Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World: Volume 4 Canto II, J-Novel Club, →ISBN
Origin
- Japanese無双“unrivaled”
- Englishmusou
From Japanese 無双 (musō, “unrivaled”), the final word in the title of the 2000 game 真・三國無双 (Shin Sangokumusō, "True Three Kingdoms Unrivaled"), released in English territories as Dynasty Warriors 2.
More words from Japanese
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
musou. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/musou
“musou.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/musou. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “musou,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/musou.
Source: musou on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.