Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered Review

Dynasty Warriors 3 originally released in 2001 for the PS2 in North America; it was also the second entry in the now long running Shin: Sangoku Musou series in Japan and was actually the first entry to release in the European market; releasing on Xbox via THQ. It introduced a myriad of improvements over its predecessor such as two player mode and new stages to name a few. It also received an expansion called Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends while simultaneously acting as the first title in the Xtreme Legends sub-series.

The events of Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered takes place across China during the Three Kingdoms era at the fall of the Han Dynasty, shorthly before the death of Emperor Ling. Simultaneously, the leader of the Way of Peace, Zhang Jiao, led an uprising against the Empire. The game also includes the Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends expansion.

The Dynasty Warriors/Shin: Sangoku Musou is a hack n’ slash franchise where players have to taken on large number of enemies at once. The goal is pretty simple: take control of an officer and take down enemy commanders standing in your way. You’ll navigate large maps beating cronies on your hunt of the commander(s). By killing enemy soldiers, you’ll raise your group’s morale; the higher the morale, the more efficient your crew is.

As you plow through waves of nameless cronies, they’ll sometimes drop items such as health items, new weapons, temporary attack/defense boost, reduced damage and also items to fill out your Musou gauge. This allows you to pull a devastating attack capable of wiping out enemies easily. As you attack and take out enemy soldiers, your gauge slowly fills up and once ready to go, pressing B will launch the special attack. You can also hold it down so the attack lasts longer (i.e. until the meter is empty).

Given the sheer amount of enemies, evading and parrying becomes vital. Thankfully parrying isn’t forced here and blocking isn’t full proof. If an enemy hits you with a charge attack or you’re attacked by a higher level officer, you’ll become staggered and opened to damage. Along with a melee attack, you can also use a bow and arrows for long range retaliation. Completing missions will reward players with new equipment and weapons. Some levels will have Rare items to find that can only be unlocked by completing the specific requirement.

While most of the time you’ll need to traverse areas on foot, you’ll also be able to ride a horse for quicker movement or an elephant. The former allows for short bursts of speed and thankfully you can still attack as enemies can knock you off. Whereas the elephant offers a few methods of defense; X will tackle enemies whereas Y will shake the ground and temporarily halt enemy movement.

Along with weapons, you can equip accessories for extra perks such as increase mounted attacks, increased bow attacks, increased defense; among other attributes. Interesting to note is that if you die, you’ll be able to pick up the battle at specific points and if you opt to quit the game mid-battle, you’ll be able to save and resume later.

Once you’ve conquered the story or simply need a change of pace, Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered offers a bevy of additional game modes to mash around in; Musou mode allows you to play through a myriad of individual officer’s story from the Three Kingdom era. Completing specific objectives will allow you to unlock additional officers.

Then we have Free mode where you can reate your own scenarios with any characters and just go nuts. Challenge mode features three types of challenges: Endurance (basically a fancy word for Survival), Time Attack (how fast can you kill 100 enemies) and Assault (Score the highest combo in 3 minutes). And then Versus where you can play (locally) against a friend in two sub-modes: 3v3 and 1v1 (first to beat 20 soldiers win).

The game looks great for what it is. Obviously, given the original being from the PS2 era, it won’t rival the AAA games built from ground up for the current platforms, but Koei Tecmo did a great job of revamping the visuals and bringing a classic closer to today’s visuals. Environments are vast and again limited in details. Generic fellow soldiers and enemy cronies due lack in variety, but higher ranking characters have their unique style and more detailed. The voiceover work is fine; some of it still sounds as over the top as goofy as something from the sixth generation of consoles.

Unfortunately, there are a few issues here. The first thing that baffled me, and indirectly involves this game, is why release a remaster after an excellent new entry, Dynasty Warriors Origin, in 2025. Given its success, you’d think a company would want to build on that and move forward instead of backwards. Also traversing maps can be long and tedious; especially when you have to go back and forth between officers to provide support. And as you’d expect, given the genre, it is incredibly repetitive so it’s not the type of game you’ll play for hours on end.

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered is an enjoyable, challenging, albeit repetitive experience. Going from Origins to this feels like going backwards, but fans of the genre will absolutey devour every bits of content here. Combat is simplistic, but still satisfying, there’s a lot of weapons to find and use, lots of gameplay value to experience. Although, this is not the type of game you’ll play for long stretches, it’s a great one to play in short bursts or relax after a long day of work.