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“I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3000 years ago.”
Elrond might have said that, but it pretty much sums up my experience with KOEI TECMO’s DYNASTY WARRIORS series. I was there when the series was born, as a fighting game (of all things) on the original PlayStation, and then when it was reborn as a Musou entry on the PlayStation 2. It’s fitting, then, I guess, that I’m still here when it’s reborn yet again as DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered.
While I still prefer the WARRIORS OROCHI series (WARRIORS OROCHI 3 forever!), there is something to be said for the DYNASTY WARRIORS games. After all, not every game can say it started its own sub-genre! …Or, for that matter, an enduring series of memes.
With KOEI TECMO promising to treat the remaster with kid gloves and to remain as true to the original as possible, does DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered signify a new era for the series?
What is DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered?
DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is a 3D Musou action title, and a remaster of DYNASTY WARRIORS 3 and its expansion DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: XTREME LEGENDS completely redone in Unreal Engine 5. Developed by OMEGA FORCE and published by KOEI TECMO, the game is available right now on the the PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2.
Our review code was provided by KOEI TECMO. We really appreciate it!
As usual, I’m reviewing the game on our trio of review machines.
Here are their specs:
Desktop 1 –
– MSI B550M Mortar WIFI
– AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with NZXT Kraken X73 RGB Liquid Cooler
– MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim X 24G
– Teamgroup T-Force Dark Z 64GB DDR4 RAM
– Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD
– NZXT C1200 Gold ATX 3.1
– Lian Li LANCOOL III RGB case
Desktop 2 –
– MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
– AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D with Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core ARGB cooler
– Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB
– G.SKILL Trident Z5 NEO 32GB DDR5-6400 RAM
– Samsung 990 PRO 2TB SSD
– Corsair RM850x PSU
– Lian Li LANCOOL 207 Digital
Notebook –
MSI Raider GE78 HX 14V
– Intel Core i9 14900HX
– NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
– 32GB DDR5 RAM
– 1TB SSD
First the good news with no bad news!
The game runs well, and it even loads data in the background while you’re in the briefing portion at the beginning of every stage—just like the originals! Less loading time means faster diving into the action!
Yes, you can exhale now. The Unreal Engine 5 curse failed to take hold for DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered.
…mostly.
I lied. There’s some bad news.
While it’s true that the game’s performance is good and stable for capable hardware, the game doesn’t have any sort of upscaling or enhancement tech built in.
No FSR, XeSS, or even DLSS… which is pretty surprising for a modern title.
I mean, not having one of the three might be acceptable, but all being MIA? I realize DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is based on a game from 2001, but do we really need to regress tech back to that point too, when image upscaling doesn’t even exist?
That means if your computer needs some extra oomph to carry the workload, DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered might not run well on it. Yes, those techs can be patched in, but KOEI TECMO has had a pretty spotty record when it comes to updating its PC titles in the past, so it’s a toss-up as to whether it’ll even be done for DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered.
If I was a betting man, I’d bet on them never coming. But hey, maybe I’ll be proven wrong this time.
Like pretty much every game running on Unreal Engine 5, there’s a shader compilation cycle that kicks in the first time you play. It doesn’t take that much time on our review rigs, so that’s a good thing, but it might on weaker hardware. Despite that, I did experience some texture pop-in during cutscenes. They’re barely noticeable and resolve in less than a second, but they’re still noticeable.
There are minor niggles too.
Draw distance is good (certainly much better than the PS2 originals), but there’s still noticeable pop-in in some stages and in wide-open areas. Whole swaths of the landscape (or huge masses of enemies) will magically teleport into existence. There is a case to be made that this is intentional (so as to preserve the feel of the originals), but I don’t buy it.
Why wouldn’t a developer want their game to be the best it can be?
If they wanted the game to look like it did on the PS2, there’s no reason to migrate everything to Unreal Engine 5 when just a basic emulated port will do the job.
Another visual oddity is that the faces of the characters remain stoic and emotionless whenever you’re executing Musou or True Musou moves. Why didn’t OMEGA FORCE add some emotion to their faces? A shout, a determined look, or a scowl…anything other than the lifeless, robotic death stares that are in the game!
Come on, this couldn’t have been missed!
The game also has (and this puzzles me for some reason) TWO different main menus.
You get the menu on the left upon starting. After you hit continue there, you’re taken to the one on the right.
Why?
I have no idea, but you’ll need to navigate both every single time you start the game. I’m not saying this is pointless (actually…wait, yes I am), but it’s just wasting time for no discernible reason to me. It’s not like the game has two different versions or something that would warrant two different menus to wade through! Why not integrate the menus into one?!
There’s also a minor bug that I’ve encountered a couple of times where the game doesn’t show the names (or HP meters) of enemy and friendly generals. It basically made the game unplayable for me, because I couldn’t even pick out the enemy generals or guards in the mass of soldiers. A quick restart resolved the issue every time it popped up, though.
Those technical issues aside, the game performs decently enough that I had a good time running it.
Originally released on September 20, 2001, it can be argued that DYNASTY WARRIORS 3 was the first game in the series to really show the potential of the Musou genre. DYNASTY WARRIORS 2 (while a surprise hit) was pretty barebones and basic, even for a first entry.
Yeah, I’m throwing shade at it, but to be honest, it’s one of the very few PS2-era games I have a vivid memory of.
For newcomers, DYNASTY WARRIORS is a series of 3D action games where you’re dropped smack dab into a battlefield during the Three Kingdoms era. Playing as a famous general (or other character) from that period, you fight alongside AI allies on massive battlefields, where you’re regularly going up against hundreds of soldiers.
You hack and slash (or smash) your way around. The AI may request that you participate in its strategies (such as reinforcing an area or helping with an attack), which may alter the conditions of the battle, but ultimately, what you do during the battle is pretty much up to you. As long as the losing conditions aren’t met (usually the defeat of the allied commander), you’re given free rein.
The series’ claim to fame is that it throws a massive number of characters at you to fight all at once. Screen-filling numbers. So many people fill up the screen that you’d think you’re taking a train in India, if not for the lack of smell. Masses of humanity dot the battlefields. A sea of bodies everywhere you look.
…and you can smash them all.
It’s incredibly cathartic, something to play at the end of a long, terrible day. A game where you can sit back, turn your mind off, and just enjoy wreaking havoc as a force of nature.
I still remember using Dian Wei (my very first-ever character pick) and then playing the Yellow Turban Rebellion stage. How my jaw dropped to the floor at the sheer amount (for the time) of enemies swarming me. Nothing could’ve prepared me for that. This and Armored Core 2 (which had an insanely good CGI trailer) made me salivate thinking of what the future of gaming would be like!
That was just the beginning, though. It wasn’t until a few years later, when KOEI (now KOEI TECMO) dropped DYNASTY WARRIORS 3, that my brains were well and truly blown.
DYNASTY WARRIORS 3 added split-screen co-op, an RPG-esque equipment system and stats, a refined engine (allowing more enemies onscreen), and more features that would become staples of future entries in the series. It’s no wonder that KOEI TECMO chose to use it as a template to (hopefully) usher in a new(er) era of DYNASTY WARRIORS games.
For those used to newer entries in the series, DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered might seem a bit strange and unwieldy. Its maps are confined, more linear, and less interactive. Its battles are somewhat basic, with not much to speak of in terms of surprises. Its cast of playable characters pales in comparison to the number playable in recent WARRIORS OROCHI titles.
It feels more like a step backwards instead of a vision of the future for those weaned on the new WARRIORS (particularly DYNASTY WARRIORS ORIGINS) games.
Here’s where I come in and say it’s meant to be that way, but also not meant to be that way.
Wait…wut? Let me explain.
DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is weird in that it’s labeled a remaster (it’s right there in the title!), but it also has elements that make it a remake. While the underlying mechanics are ported over from the original games, OMEGA FORCE decided to also implement optional quality-of-life additions that recent Musou titles have incorporated.
These include new features like a dodge and counter mechanic, the ability to summon your steed directly to you, auto checkpoints, and even the weapon fusion system from later entries in the lineup. These are much appreciated, but on the flipside, they do make the game much easier because the Weapon Fusion mechanic can lead to massively overpowered builds.
Personally, I’ve never found it a bad thing.
While DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is a bit tougher than your average WARRIORS title (the AI is much more aggressive on Normal), it soon ceases to matter when your weapons have been fused and upgraded a couple of times. I honestly find steamrolling the enemies a feature to look forward to in Musou games, so I welcome anything that contributes to that.
Where’s the fun in that, right?
Still, this isn’t WARRIORS OROCHI 3 level of overpoweredness…which is sad. It can take a while to get really powerful in DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered because of a couple of reasons. You level up stats randomly (by defeating enemy elites and officers) AND weapon drops are also random.
Combining affixes doesn’t raise the total, only the higher leveled affix is used. So if you have 14 Attack on your weapon and combine it with 12 Attack on another weapon, you don’t get 26 Attack, just 14 replacing the 12. That makes it much harder to raise stats because you’re at the mercy of RNGeesus.
In fact, the highest difficulty stages can be a pain in the ass honestly. Playing normally, they’re filled with enemies with massive
Oh yeah, the AI is still all over the place.
It’s true that they’re more aggressive now (which is fine), but their pathfinding still needs work. They still get caught up on scenery objects, running in place until dislodged or the stage ends. It’s nothing major (fans of the series are used to it by now), but it still needs highlighting nonetheless.
Fighting has been sped up and is more fluid now. Musou (and True Musou) attacks are heavily utilized now too. The Musou gauge is quick to fill, and using a Musou (or True Musou) attack only drains it halfway. You can just manually charge it for a second or two to refill it (or just hit enemies to slowly fill it back up), and then you’re ready to unleash another Musou attack.
Musou attacks are no longer meant to be kept in reserve as an ace in the hole. In DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered, you’re encouraged to use them as often as you can. In fact, Musou attacks are now able to interrupt enemy Musou attacks too! If you see an enemy glow red and start to charge, unleashing your own Musou attack will disrupt theirs and give you an advantage!
If you don’t have a Musou attack ready, then you’ll need to utilize another new addition to the game—the dodge and counter mechanic. Time your dodge right, and time slows down, allowing you to hit Square (or X if you’re using an Xbox controller) to do a counter blow. This move works for every enemy attack, whether it’s a Musou one or just a regular shot.
There’s another way to stop an enemy Musou, but it’s highly unreliable. You need to use a charge attack. It obviously doesn’t come out in time if you’re in the middle of a combo string that isn’t ending in a charge, so don’t really depend on this to save your butt. Use the other two alternatives instead.
Weirdly, despite OMEGA FORCE showing that they’re willing to (optionally) integrate new ideas into the game, they’ve still overlooked a major sore spot—wasting time.
The game absolutely doesn’t respect your time if you suck.
Everything (XP, gear, progress) you’ve gained in a map is lost if you decide to abandon your progress for whatever reason instead of sticking it out and completing it. Good luck to you if your game crashes before a checkpoint, or you lose power or something along those lines.
It’s a very player-unfriendly way of doing things.
You can restart as much as you want without penalty if you die from multiple checkpoints (which is cool), but you’re still forced to repeat the same map and battle until you clear it for the game to log your accomplishments.
OMEGA FORCE also added in Huanglong Elixirs into the mix.
In theory, it’s a very good idea. Every time you complete a Musou mode with a character, you get 3 of these. You can then use them on other characters when you restart a new Musou mode campaign. Each elixir boosts stats a set amount and there’s no limit to how many you can use at once. You can even use it on characters you’ve levelled up, though it won’t raise stats past their limit for the character.
It’s mainly aimed for new characters though.
In theory, this allows the weaker ones to start off stronger. That’s good!
In practice, the execution is very, very bad.
You only get Huanglong Elixirs the first time you clear Musou mode with a character. Clearing it multiple times with the same character gets you nothing. On top of that, the elixirs are consumed upon use. That means there’s a finite amount of them to go around…which again, is a mindbogglingly anti-player decision. WHY!?
It’s a step forward, with five steps back!
Why not just let players decide if they want to buff up their players as much as they want? They bought the game and played it, so why handicap those who continue to play it?! For somebody like me who hoards items (my precioooousssss), I can honestly say the feature might as well not exist because I will never use it due to its limited nature.
Perhaps OMEGA FORCE will change the implementation in the future…or hell, perhaps KOEI TECMO will mandate that more Huanglong Elixirs will be sold as DLC. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised at the least if it’s the latter considering how the company nickel and dimed players for Dead or Alive DLC.
I love KOEI TECMO and their properties, but they are hardcore predatory.
Also, you will learn to hate archers.
Be they bowmen or crossbowmen, they will be the bane of your existence. Not only will they interrupt your combos, but these asshats will also whittle away your health constantly while hiding in the midst of their comrades. If you see even one archer, make it a point to destroy him and his family line! Ignore everything else…even Lu Bu!
Being based on an older entry in the series comes with another drawback —some of the generals that are playable in later games have regressed to being generic officers. Ding Feng and Zhou Tai from Wu are good examples of this. It’s a bit jarring, but unless you love them and their unique movesets, you won’t care that much.
Speaking of movesets, the cast in DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is rather lacking in variety when compared to later entries. The weapons are mostly of the bladed variety, and there’s a clear lack of grapplers (like Ding Feng). Even those with grappler movelists (like Lu Bu and Dong Zhou) in later games are still using their older movelists in DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered.
There are a few standouts (Diao Chan and Taishi Ci, for example), but they’re rarely fun to play with because their movesets usually have glaring weaknesses (like a lack of a decent AoE) that were fixed in later sequels.
One of the biggest highlights for DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is that OMEGA FORCE wisely decided to retain and reuse the old voices and music. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a massive plus this is for the game, especially if you’ve played the original. If not, you must play the game with English voices. There is no other acceptable way to experience the game. Every other voiceover might as well not exist.
English or bust!
With all the hype and gushing, you’d think the voices were done by a stellar cast of performers, wouldn’t you? A cast that delivered their lines with such aplomb that grown manly men cried, and women spontaneously became pregnant.
Nooooope.
They are hands down some of the most atrocious voice-over performances in the history of gaming. To be fair, the industry at that time was dominated by crappy voiceovers (as studios didn’t want to waste money on quality voice actors), so it was par for the course.
Now, when we have award-winning-caliber auteurs doing voice-over work, we can look back and see how hilarious it was…and it was (and is) hilarious.
Famous lines like “It…it’s Lu Bu!” return.
Name pronunciation was so butchered (so bad, it became good) that we got voice actors seriously calling somebody “Cow Cow” and “Cow Pee.” Lines were delivered without thinking about the gravity of situation. It’s hilarious how some of the lines are delivered with casual indifference when they’re meant to deliver exciting (or terrible) news.
On the flipside, we have the music. They aren’t a case of “so bad, it’s good.”
They’re just pure, unadulterated awesome.
Theme of Lu Bu (the song that plays right after the infamous “It’s Lu Bu!” cutscene in the Hu Lao Gate stage) never fails to get the blood pumping, with its awesome electric guitar riffs. It’s so awesome that KOEI TECMO made it into the official DYNASTY WARRIORS theme in later installments. That’s like Square Enix making One Winged Angel the theme song for all Final Fantasy games after seeing how awesome it was in Final Fantasy VII.
That‘s how awesome the song is.
And that’s probably the best way to describe DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered.
It’s a game caught between two eras.
On one hand, it’s a lovingly preserved snapshot of what made DYNASTY WARRIORS 3 such a revelation back in 2001. On the other, OMEGA FORCE has grafted modern mechanics and quality-of-life improvements onto it in an attempt to make it feel less archaic to modern audiences.
For the most part, it works.
There are definitely moments where you can feel the game’s age. The limited movesets, basic maps, primitive AI, occasional technical oddities and some of the more questionable design decisions are impossible to hide under a fresh coat of Unreal Engine 5 paint. This isn’t DYNASTY WARRIORS ORIGINS, and it shouldn’t be expected to play like one.
But that’s also missing the point.
DYNASTY WARRIORS 3 was never about having the biggest roster, the most elaborate maps or the most sophisticated combat system. It was about the sheer spectacle of being one warrior dropped into a battlefield packed with hundreds of enemies and watching the entire army explode into a bloody pinball machine around you.
And you know what?
That shit still works.
There is something ridiculously satisfying about charging into a sea of soldiers, watching your combo counter climb, unleashing a Musou attack and seeing bodies fly everywhere while that absurdly good guitar soundtrack kicks in. It’s the same dumb, glorious fun I remember from the PS2, just with better visuals and a handful of modern conveniences bolted onto it.
Is it perfect? Hell no.
Is it showing its age? Yup.
But after spending all these years playing increasingly elaborate iterations of the Musou formula, going back to one of the games that helped establish it has reminded me of something rather important:
Sometimes, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
You just need to remember why the wheel was fun in the first place.
The Bottom Line.
DYNASTY WARRIORS 3: Complete Edition Remastered is a fascinating piece of Musou history because it sits somewhere between a faithful remaster and a partial remake. OMEGA FORCE has preserved the bones of the 2001 classic while bringing in a handful of modern conveniences that make the game considerably more approachable. The new dodge and counter mechanics, auto checkpoints, weapon fusion, faster combat and the ability to summon your horse directly are all welcome additions, even if some of them make an already satisfying power fantasy considerably easier.
The presentation isn’t without its problems, though. The lack of DLSS, FSR or XeSS is a glaring omission for a modern PC release, while shader compilation, texture pop-in and inconsistent draw distance prevent the Unreal Engine 5 makeover from being as clean as it could have been. The occasional general-name/HP bug and the bizarre requirement to navigate two separate menus to start are also unnecessary annoyances.
Still, none of that changes what makes this game special.
The foundation is still DYNASTY WARRIORS 3, one of the entries that helped establish the Musou formula that KOEI TECMO would spend decades refining. The old English voices are gloriously terrible, the music remains phenomenal, the battles are fast and satisfying, and watching hordes of enemies get obliterated remains exactly as cathartic as it was back in the PS2 days.
It isn’t the most technically polished remaster around, nor is it designed to satisfy players expecting the breadth and complexity of modern WARRIORS games. But that’s also the point.
This is DYNASTY WARRIORS 3, warts and all, with just enough modern seasoning to make revisiting it considerably more enjoyable. For longtime fans, that’s a pretty damn compelling proposition.
TLDR:
A decent entry point for newcomers but rough edges that were ironed out in sequels still remain for some reason.
The Technoverdict: Get it immediately (if you’re a series fan) but wait for a sale if you’re not.
The Good:
- The music.
- The English voice acting.
- The new QoL additions.
- New visuals are decent.
- Lots of stages and characters.
The Bad:
- No upscaling tech.
- Some technical issues.
- Lacking movelist variety.
- Old some issues still remain.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
