Goddamn.

This game is such a marked improvement over DW2 it's honestly kind of insane.

DW2 isn't really a musou, I'd argue. It's just a 3D beat em up.

Here, in DW3, is where the entire genre that Koei have been riding the wave of for two decades was built. This is where DW gets its own style, where the levels take on a format beyond mountainous terrain and walls, where the music stops being "guy goes ham on the guitar before a 15 second break", and where objectives actually matter - to an extent. I could go on, but really; this game is foundational, and while it's not perfect, it's honestly kind of overwhelming to go back this far and see where it all came from?

Anyway, enough gushing, time to review.

I appreciate that characters are no longer stuck with the same attacks for the entire runtime, buuuuuuut linking new combos to weapon drops was a bit of a shit move. For reference, I gunned the campaigns of Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Jian just to be ~all-encompassing~ and in the latter it took me until about 3/4th the game to get a weapon that let me use C5. It's not great.
Also, as an aside, this game made kinda understand why some people whinge about clones; I dicked about with a lot of auxiliary cast members in Free Mode and damn, everyone with a sword feels near-identical. Even characters with more interesting weapons felt samey since C2/3/4 are launch/stun/sweep on almost everyone.

On the level front, just... Holy fuck they're actually enjoyable, barring some issues I'll get to later. The presence of objectives and events helps keep things entertaining to a degree, a welcome respite after DW2's ascetism. And, of course, there's the trademark dogshit DW3 dub to keep you entertained too. Above all else though, I appreciate that the paths forward are far less binary and droll.
But eesh, they hadn't really nailed the enemy density:level size ratio just yet. It's really noticeable in Chibi, where it feels as though a third of the map goes completely unused. Even outside of it, there's a loooooooooot of trekking through empty space, because...

I know PS2 musou fans swear by the morale system, and this game's especially, but in my experience (playing on Hard, thanks to some old PCSX2 save data giving me a starting boost) the morale system actually makes the game feel terrible.
I'm no musou spring chicken, so these games are easy to me by default. Here, in DW3, it actually feels as though the game punishes me for being good by letting me not play it.
An average DW3 stage sees me daisy chain officer kills together, sink the enemy morale, and then struggle to find new things to kill as my emboldened allies sweep the stage like locusts. This isn't an issue in any other DW, even this game's immediate predecessor, so it stands out really heavily here.

Further compounding this is the decidedly strange stage distribution for some characters. For the three I finished it's fine, there's a very nice buildup from easy peasy to hard. For characters like Gan Ning, you get a boring filler stage (the fandom wiki even calls them as such) and are then thrown in at the proverbial deep end with Chibi. For a newer player, I can see how this might be a little odd or even offputting, as the game makes no indication of which characters are the 'core' characters (i.e, have the most stages and better difficult distribution).

Looping back to the topic of presentation though, it's amazing just how much more of a game DW3 is, let alone a musou game. Stages are visually distinct, characters have a personality (despite the dub cutting most of it out) as opposed to being silent golems, the music finally has a distinct flair to it and the flow of levels actually feels like a battle now. While the progression systems suck, they're at least there, and help add a little justification to why you would ever engage with this game beyond a couple of musou/xtreme mode runs.

This game also sparked a ton of feelings regarding my history with the musou genre, a history which spans about 22 years and may be older than some of the people reading this review.

But I'll leave that till this marathon concludes. Till next time.

While Xtreme Legends original intention is to be additive to the original Dynasty Warriors experience, for the most part until recently you can technically play these expansion packs standalone which is what I actually ended up doing for 3 as a kid since I didn't know better.

For starters, this is a great expansion for the original game. It adds new characters, a fifth weapon, some new stages, musou modes for the "other" faction of characters, a new easier and harder difficulty settings and more challenge modes. It's just more Dynasty Warriors 3 which isn't a bad thing.

Now sadly considering this game can be played standalone, it can be also be completely lackluster in itself. Only having the musou modes for the new characters and a few stages leave a lot to be desired. You'd only really be getting ten percent of the original experience with just Xtreme Legends alone.

If you want to access the new content, I would highly suggest it being additive to Dynasty Warriors 3 instead of it being standalone of course. Word of warning from a kid that actually sunk dozens of hours into just this one alone.

Its.... Fine? I don't really want to copy my entire Dynasty Warriors 3 review. While this is decent and it does add a hell of a lot for those wanting more Dynasty Warriors 3 content, it also has the drawback of a lot of very player specific levels where, if you decide to play on free mode as somebody who isn't that character, the game cranks up the difficulty thanks to DW3's allies being completely unable to fend for themselves.

This reaches a real apex during the stage 'Diao Chans Escape' which.... Oh boy. If you're not playing as Diao Chan, be prepared for a REALLY mean spirited time.

But yeah. Its more of the same, seven new story modes, two new difficulty settings, new items, new horses, new bodyguards, new challenge modes, new unlockable weapons. Its ok.

DLC Expansion pack in the PS2 era? Basically yes. The content for die hard DW3 fans was tremendous. New more powerful weapons for every character, new campaign, new difficulty mode and some other extras. The new difficulty mode was really good, even taking a fully maxed out character you would still find it hard and losing was a real possibility. The new weapons added new tough challenges which would takes several hours to complete. I really liked what I got here. DW3+XL is the best Warrirors game even still to this day.

The ability to load the previous game unto the new one was pretty crazy. You had to pop in XL, then pop in DW3 and it would read the disc and load of all it's data into XL or something. I can't think of any other PS2 game that did that.