Dynasty Warriors 3 is a step in the right direction, but it still has too many issues for me to recommend it. While I acknowledge that it's a vast improvement from the previous game, the gameplay loop is just not good enough for me.

The graphics and music are way better than those of Dynasty Warriors 2. The music from 2 is reused sometimes and so are some of the levels, but Dynasty Warriors 3 has a new layout for all recurring levels, and it also includes completely new stages like the Nanman campaign, plus some new, exciting music tracks.

The combat is also improved. The combo system has more options now, and new attacks are unlocked as you play. You can also ride elephants now. But my favorite addition is that commanders no longer heal when you know them down!

That said, the storytelling is still not compelling. I feel like the game is definitely made first and foremost for fans of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The cutscenes are better than in the previous game, and there are also more of them, but I still felt lost when trying to piece together the story. The game would greatly benefit from a better storytelling, explaining who the characters are and the relationships between them.

The most annoying thing in this game is that archers are too powerful. Sometimes they overpower you and kill you very quickly, without giving you a chance to defend yourself. It feels unfair. While you can now save anywhere in a stage, I feel like I should be able to overpower enemies with my skills. Instead it feels like, at certain points in the game, if I'm low on health, then I'm dead.

Without a compelling story or a more interesting gameplay loop, I can't really recommend this game. It's a step in the right direction for sure, and the franchise has potential, but there is still some way to go before the games in this franchise can be called "good".

I always hear people online like Totalbiscuit and Jim Sterling talking about how much they love Dynasty Warriors, so it's always made me wanna try them. I looked up some stuff about them, and 3 seemed to be a pretty good place to start, other than just buying the most recent game in the series (which seemed to be the actually most common recommendation). There was much frustration at losings, and this game certainly has its problems, but I actually had quite a lot of fun with it :) . For reference, I played through as the Wei Empire as Dian Wei.

We're gonna start off with my problems with the game, for no particular reason. First off, I'd imagine that most people who've played more recent 3rd person action games are going to take big issue with the camera, and rightfully so. The camera really feels too zoomed in sometimes, and the ONLY way to reposition it is to hit the L button, but that's also your jumping recovery button, so often, you're just SOL and gotta deal with fighting towards the camera (the R-stick literally does nothing for some reason O.o ). Other technical problems include the fact that even though the draw distance isn't huge, I very often ran into problems where not every soldier actually present at my location wasn't being shown because of hardware limitations. This wasn't usually a problem, as their is a radar you can change to be either map-wide or just a local area, and using the radar to get a better idea of how many soldiers are actually around you is a good tip. That radar is especially good for tracking when enemy generals and officers are near, as they appear as white dots that blink red, which is only confusing because friendly officers also appear as white dots, but ones that blink blue :/

The control issues don't really stop there, but not for technical reasons. For a game that is not only a sequel to a very similar game but also a game that came out in 2002, this game does an inexcusable job of telling you how to play: It doesn't tell you jack shit. In my stubbornness, I refused to look at the manual and basically just spent the first hour or so of the game just getting a handle on how to actually play. Now, the actual controls aren't that hard to figure out, but its the overarching game strategies that will likely take you longer to figure out.

You level up as you kill soldiers, and if you kill more, you'll get stronger. You can also get straight up stat buffs from killing enemy generals, officers, and gate guardians, as well as new weapons and passive items to equip. Now, even though it numerically shows your EXP-gain from killing mans at the end of battle, (I'm like 99% sure) you actually do get stronger in real time, but there's no way to really know that other than the fact that you'll notice you're killing enemies quicker, or not getting staggered as much. Additionally, at first, the battles really feel like there's a sense of urgency to them, as you get notifications like, "X-general's troop is in trouble!" which will constantly make you think you're losing. However, there are hard time limits on battles, with fairly easy to understand win/lose conditions, so generally, you want to kill as many enemy soldiers, officers, etc. to level up as much as possible, because otherwise you just will not be strong enough to do the later missions, some of which do require some element of speed.

Now onto what I really love about this game, and that's the style, concept, and gameplay. The whole concept and style of the game is that you're fighting the on-foot battles of what would be larger strategic affairs in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms setting. As a result, though it takes a little while to get used to, there's just something so satisfying about fighting a massive battle with thousands of troops as just one uber-troop on the field. The strategy that you have to develop after (usually) several tries at a map, based on which allied NPC's tend to start having trouble and where, and how best to hit up all of the enemy generals in the most advantageous situations. For a game about mostly just mashing the X-button, there's a lot more strategy involved than I first thought.

The combat also has a surprising amount of nuance to it. Though you'll be initially expecting that the best way to go forward, is just to mash the x-button like crazy. But not mashing it so fast won't go through your entire combo and makes it so your down-time before you can attack again is much lesser, meaning you can keep on top of a blocking opponent much harder (I don't believe there's any way for the player to block attacks, at least not that I could suss out. It's a bit like God Hand in that way). Additionally, you also have your Musou (warrior) attack, which is one you can activate once you build up the Musou gauge by striking enemy soldiers. Your Musou attack breaks you out of staggers, and almost always has some crowd-clearing element, so fighting generals in a sea of their own troops to keep your Musou gauge topped up can actually be a legitimate strategy. There's also a charge attack of some sort, but I never actually figured out how to use it effectively, so I'll refrain from commenting on it. I certainly know the enemy knows how to use it though! They beat my face in with it a whoooole lot Xp

The last bit that I love is the setting and style, which this game is just oozing with. It's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so it's based on real events that took place after the fall of Han China. For a history nerd like me, this stuff is sooo cool. Being real generals and fighting hand to hand (admittedly in a very unrealistic and exaggerated fashion, but still) in real places is just such a cool thing to me. The game's graphics are okay for an Xbox game with a scale like this. The most important thing is that the generals look pretty darn good, and the use of a color palatte in their design is also well used, so nothing (other than the ground textures) is too hideous to look at.

Verdict: Somewhat recommended. As my lengthy problems section trys to get across, this game has a lot of problems, which make it difficult to objectively recommend across the board. However, as a fan of action games and historical fiction games, I enjoyed this game to pieces, and if you are as well, then I think you'll likely get at least some enjoyment out of it. And if this game's mechanics are too obtuse, then trying one of the more recent entries which are just as cheap is also a safe option :)

I have found a meme that sums this game up in a nutshell.

10/10 Abysmal dogshit
10/10 Fun
10/10 Soul

We can all thank kitsuneredP3 for the meme.

One of the first game's I ever played and pretty much a pillar of not only my childhood, but my life. I know people complain about the "clone" movesets and although a lot of the weapons have the same base combos, they do have little subtle differences in there that separate them all from each other.

When I was young, I used to have trouble completing some of the later stages but after returning to it later I have nearly completed it 100%. I have 4 or 5 4th weapons to unlock and that's me but they are the harder weapons to get.

I much prefer this over Dynasty Warriors 4 as I prefer the character design, stage design and music. I love the general gameplay loop of this game over Dw4 too as Dw4 although harder, doesn't always necessarily play fair. Often times, you may jump and the enemies will all jump with you and hit you. Jump charge attacks become pointless as a result.

The AI is aggressive and if you're not careful you may find yourself in a tough spot (Liu Bei's 4th weapon you'll likely be the only person alive 5 minutes in for example) but if you know what you're doing then you do have a chance of not taking on the final officers alone.

The voice actors, although cheesy and bad, it's the good kind of bad. Where as Dw4 I don't think a lot of them are bad in a good way. I think they're just bad. Also these actors have provided some of the most iconic deliveries in all of this series. I could write for hours about this game but there are so many reasons why it is among my favourite ever games that I simply cannot explain in a single review.

Three wasn't my first musou, so it will never have the same weight to me as it does for a lot of other people in the fan base. I respect it a lot for what it did, as another reviewer here noted, this built the house that is modern Koei. The foundation for every successive game in this franchise in genre is right here. And it is pretty fun, at times. There's just the right balance of aggression and pressure to make matches interesting, but maps are just way too big, and way too copy pasted among characters that aren't differentiated enough in this entry to maintain interest after you've done a couple of musou mode runs. The foundation here though, is so good

its insane how much was improved from 2 to 3 in just one year between them

that being said this game as fun as it is gets to bullshit levels of difficulty even on EASY mode its kinda unfortunate

i think the reason you'd wanna go back to this game is for the funny voice acting