Christmas 2002
A Sears in a shopping mall, late night

In the full spirit of christmas shopping at the time while my parents were looking at clothes in a different section, I went alone to the electronics section to head to the video games kiosks to alleviate the boredom since my GameBoy Advance was completely out of battery. Only one of the kiosks were actually on and it was playing a copy of Dynasty Warriors 3 or at least that's what the demo disc loaded if it was one. I think the notion of mowing down a huge amount of soldiers was something of a brand new notion of fun for me growing up mostly playing Pokemon mostly before that point. The funniest part about this is that despite playing 3 and 4 in some way, I only ended up getting the Xtreme Legends variant and nothing else which is essentially only 10% of the game itself. My own chagrin is that I never played the original versions of these or the combination of the two until this point.

I truly feel like Dynasty Warriors 3 took a huge leap for the series and brought it into some prominance going forward. If Dynasty Warriors 2 built the foundation, Dynasty Warriors 3 built the whole goddamn house. Where do I even begin with what was added? I won't even go into the Xtreme Legends content either and there's still so much. Four weapons for each character (five with Xtreme Legends) that enhance your moveset to a whopping six chain with stats to roll for. A brand new item system that brings more customization and variety into including special effects, stat boosts and the ability to bring Red Hare into battle. Way more characters with their own musou mode each. A plethora of game modes to boot and more events and stages that further flesh out the three kingdom eras. Going into every minute detail would be an extremely herculean task and test my own mental capacity so I rather just go into why I liked this entry in the series.

I think something you realize going back into this entry specifically is the perfect blend of aggression and pressure. Easily one of the toughest entries in the series and while I do prefer the difficulty boost compared to later entries, it does come with some frustrations that kinda hindered my experience back into going into Easy. One of the biggest ones is attempting to level up bodyguards in musou mode on Normal. Playing regularly is fun but those starter two privates die to a sneeze that it felt like babysitting just for them to actually get experience for the stage since that's the only way they develop themselves. Maps are pretty huge too and without a horse item, you're gonna be spending most of the time running around empty fields unless you take all the time to defeat enemies but comes the inherit risk of just dying to an unfortunate musou combo at the end that can waste thirty minutes down the drain. Don't get me wrong, I love the difficulty here since it keeps me focused but I think you should grab some items and upgrades for certain gameplay mechanics before fully attempting it.

The elephant in the room has to be the voice acting which I think is okay but it can be pretty egregious (in a good way personally). Character designs in 3 are some of my favorite with how colorful each design has and how practical they are. Playing a vast majority of the characters myself, they each feel pretty unique and fun especially Lu Bu which is essentially easy mode in itself. It's not a Dynasty Warriors games at this point of the series without a solid soundtrack to boot.

I really think this game is where the series rose into prominence and found its stride especially with the addition of Xtreme Legends adding more content into the game down the line and future spin offs to boot after this. I'm more surprised this still holds up despite some of the gameplay quirks that come with it but it's more to show how strong and familiar the musou formula has been for years. Musou is adapting now it's never bad to forget where we once were.