Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered Review - War Never Changes
It’s been a long while since I’ve thought about the early Dynasty Warriors games. Dynasty Warriors 3 was my first foray into the series; I still remember seeing my friend play it after a sleepover, and me being very interested in it despite knowing little about it. Now there’s almost always a new entry in the series on the horizon, so it’s hard to look back and have any form of nostalgia. I get it though, when some of the newer numbered entries haven’t hit the same, return to your roots and remind people why the series is great.
This is being touted as a remaster, but frankly that’s incorrect. This is a remake – new engine, new mechanics. That’s not a bad thing in the slightest, I think this game is great, but it’s important to recognise. I didn’t mind too much at all, there are classic mode options for those who wish to play it like it was way back when. Classic settings like making archers do damage that ignores defence might seem like incredible nostalgic design, but for me this game was hard enough as-is without wanting to punish myself even further for the true experience as it was at launch.
Even on the default settings and Hard difficulty, I found this to be very challenging. Archers have gone from mosquito bites to doing serious damage, and melee enemies are no slouch either. Meat buns for healing are fairly limited, and outside of the few on the map can only be earned by killing fodder enemies with a combo of sixteen or higher, which isn’t always an option in the thick of combat. Armies don’t replenish very much either, so you really need to keep your head on a swivel.
Battles flow differently here to many other titles. Keeping morale high is important, but a commander’s individual morale is tied to their squad size. This means that on top of putting out individual fires like commanders getting overwhelmed, or enemies trying to perform strategies in the field, you’ll also need to have more situational awareness. If a squad is fighting a bigger army for too long, is it going to damage their morale? Are you making sure that your guard captains are keeping their gates, and that the enemy is losing theirs? Your eyes will be constantly darting across the field looking for problems, which is something I’ve not felt from the franchise in a long while.
Part of the reason this is a bit of a problem is that the AI frankly sucks. The amount of times I’d see a squad milling around the bottom of an archer tower unable to kill the archers, or units running against a palisade, not knowing how to get around it was innumerable. There’s other issues too. The game seems adamant on a cutscene for every officer showing up, and dying (it can be toggled off if you go through the settings enough), and the English voice acting is so laughably bad I had to turn it off after a single mission. Maybe that’s an homage to the original’s truly woeful voice acting.
I had forgotten just how much content there is in the game too. Many missions have unlockables which can be earned by doing specific things, and unlock items to equip to make your units stronger, as well as officer’s special weapons. Each officer also has their own Musou mode, a collection of 6-8 missions to complete for their story. This unlocks more officers, and more missions. Then there’s Free mode, which gives you more freedom in terms of what missions to play and what officers to use. Challenge mode is there to compete for certain goals against the AI. If that wasn’t enough, the remaster package also includes Xtreme Legends, an expansion pack which adds new difficulties, unlocks and modes. It’s a lot of content for those that want to ingest it all.
I’m torn a bit on how I feel about this game. On one hand, this was my first dip into the series and it’s great to replay that with some new mechanics and visuals. On the other hand, I hope this isn’t a trend of constantly treading out older games with updates. I like them, but I want them to take the lessons they learned from these old, popular games (like DW3-5) and bring them into new games. This is the duality of my feelings on it and during my playtime I was constantly flip-flopping between loving it and feeling like I’d done it before. Part of me was also punching myself for apparently becoming softer in my gaming old age, and not remembering how tough the series used to be. This being said, whoever wanted to bring back the button mashing duels should be reprimanded. My old hands can’t deal with that punishment anymore.
Dynasty Warriors 3: Completed Edition Remastered is a good game. It represents some design philosophies that don’t get used as much in newer games, and I hope by introducing players to them they’ll have renewed zeal for the mechanics that made the early games great. I also hope that knowing they can return to the well of old games doesn’t make the team complacent.
Despite all of this, this is a game I’ll recommend to fans of the series. I don’t think it’ll attract new fans to the genre, but I know there’s people out there this will really appeal to. It’s got so much packed into it that you’ll definitely get your money’s worth if you love the series. Sometimes it’s nice to take a trip down memory lane, as long as you’ve always got an eye on the horizon.
Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered was reviewed on PC with a code kindly provided by Koei-Tecmo.
