Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered was provided by Koei Tecmo for review. Thank you!

I think everyone has a guilty pleasure game that they can always come back to for mindless fun, no matter what. For me, that’s the Dynasty Warriors series. Going onto a field and mindlessly plowing through thousands of enemies and watching their bodies fly is like a form of therapy for me. I have loved it ever since I was introduced to Dynasty Warriors 5, so I was quite excited when I heard that Koei Tecmo was going to essentially remake their older games. In a lot of ways, Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered brings back some of what I loved about the past titles, but it also reminded me of why the series evolved from the start.

For those who played the game before, this “remaster” is essentially a remake of Dynasty Warriors 3. It has all the content of the original game, combined with the content from the Xtreme Legends version, with some new content and mechanics mixed in. It serves as a way to not only experience this classic in a new light, but also keep that nostalgia that made us fall in love with the series in the beginning. It reminded me of mechanics that I used to love, and progression systems that I missed dearly, and I think that’s exactly what it was trying to do.

One of the things I feel like they nailed is the aesthetic for the game. Over the lifetime of the series, character designs and costumes have drastically changed. However, the designs here feel very close to their original, but feel gorgeously updated. It all looks incredible and is one of the more beautiful Dynasty Warriors games I have seen in recent times. It’s a great balance between updated visuals and classic designs.

The core gameplay elements remain the same as ever. In each battle, we take control of one officer and roam around the map, using our weapon to kill scores of enemies and officers to win. Attacking is simple and mindless, with a basic and heavy attack, and our special Musou attack to take down more enemies around us. It’s almost exactly the same as I remember, and if you’ve played any newer Warriors game, you’ll feel right at home.

Overall, Dynasty Warriors 3 feels just as I remembered. The classic battles, the slightly slower pace, the costumes of each character, and their respective move sets all match what I remember. In a lot of ways, it just feels nostalgic. Even with some of the new features included, like being able to dodge at the right time and striking at the right time to stun, they felt like they fit right in. There was no doubt in my mind that this felt like a classic Dynasty Warriors experience.

However, I’ve also grown very used to the current mechanics. The gameplay now feels especially slow, and I would generally only kill 300 to 400 enemies in each battle. Before, I could find myself killing 900 to 1000, and I went out of my way to do that because of the leveling system in newer games. I didn’t have that motivation here, and because of that, I would even end up with some battles where I only killed 150 enemies. It could also take a long time to get around the map, and with the horse, since we can only do short bursts of dashing, it would still take longer than I’d like to get from point A to point B.

On top of that, the enemies could be very obnoxious. Just like how I can hit back and stun enemies, they can do the same to me, and grants are able to as well. Because of that, I’ve had many combos interrupted and slight knockbacks that could almost stop me in my tracks. There were a few times when I was trying to kill an officer, and a squad of archers would keep shooting arrows that would interrupt my combos and knock me off my horse. The arrows would just keep coming, and it became so annoying that I actually had to take a break from the game. The revival system is very generous, and if we die, we can usually go back to an auto save from slightly earlier in that same battle, but it would still get in the way and feel very obnoxious.

Then, we have the classic progression systems return, which I’m overjoyed to see return. As we kill officers in battle, they will drop either new weapons, items, or stat boosts for the character we are controlling. These weapons are tucked into different tiers, which could have their own passive bonuses. And if we find some we like, we can fuse the weapons to bring over the passive bonuses to higher-tiered weapons to make them as strong as possible. As for items, we can equip five at a time, and if we find duplicates of items we already have, they will automatically be updated if the stat boost they provide is bigger than the previous one.

Then, there are the stat boosts for our character directly. We can get increased attack, defense, health, and Musou that will permanently stick to our character. I actually like the system a lot, but there are two issues I have with it. It can take a while to actually start to see the benefits of having the stat increases, especially when it comes to attack and defense. Even after I’ve increased my attack by 50 points, it can still feel like I only do a couple points of damage to some enemies. It can feel a little obnoxious when it’s going so slowly. We also only get that boost for our controlled character, which means we have to go back and increase the stats for every single character starting from scratch. Even if we equip a bodyguard from a different character we already have unlocked, they will only get Merit Points and no stat boosts. Merit Points make our bodyguards more powerful, but don’t do much to make us more powerful.

Ultimately, I still appreciated Dynasty Warriors 3's old systems more than I disliked them. Seeing the new items and weapons, infusing them to bring in better, passive effects, brought back some good old memories of grinding in previous entries. And with some maps holding valuable items, like ultra-powerful weapons or rare items to unlock, I never felt like I was lacking a reason to go into free mode and play a random battle or two to try making my characters more powerful.

Speaking of, there are a good chunk of modes to play around with in the game. We have the Musou Mode, which acts as individual stories for each of the over 40 characters we can play as, and that includes the extra stories for characters like Lu Bu that were a part of the Xtreme Legends version of the game. They are small stories where we play through seven or so stages; they get progressively harder. Playing through them is a surefire way to unlock new characters and battles for us in Free Mode, which is where we can choose which officers and battles at will. This is where I ended up doing most of my grinding, though I did play through some Musou stories to unlock more stages first.

Then, we have the six Challenge Modes. Each of these has its own challenges, like competing to see who can get as many kills before your health runs out, who can get 100 kills the fastest, or even who can pull off the most stylish combos. These modes aren’t affected by the progression or items or weapons we find, but they are a nice way to change up the pace of the usual gameplay loop.

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered

I was initially a little worried about how Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered would run on the Steam Deck, since it is using Unreal Engine 5, but I’m happy to say the early Verified badge it received wasn’t meaningless. It should be very playable on the Deck, so it’s not going to be as flawless as I would hope for a game from the series.

The game defaults to the Low preset with a 30 FPS lock, which it can handle just fine. I was able to enjoy battles this way, but there are a few ways that we can improve the experience for playing on the go.

Recommended Settings

I have always preferred higher framerates for the Warriors games, and this one is no exception. However, there’s no way we can get a stable 60 FPS, even on the lowest settings. So, my recommended settings are actually keeping the graphical preset at Low and changing the framerate to hit a stable 40 FPS. This keeps the game looking decent while feeling smoother.

Trying to turn up any of the settings adds some performance drops, and turning them down makes the game look worse. So, I recommend just keeping it as is and bringing the framerate up to take advantage of some of the new graphical enhancements while making it feel generally better. 

Quality Settings

For those who wanna push the visual quality and are fine with 30 FPS, we can bring up some settings to improve how the game looks while sticking above. We can bring up Textures, Effect Quality, Anti-Aliasing, Global Illumination, Shader Quality, and Post-Processing Quality to Medium, while keeping everything else at Low. This keeps the game looking marginally better, while also solidifying a stable 30 FPS, which gets tough when there are a lot of enemies on the screen.

Conclusion

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered brings back the classic Warriors experience, with the good and the bad. The classic Dynasty Warriors experience is preserved with some nice enhancements and a gorgeous new look, and I have missed it. However, the dated mechanics don't all hit the right spots, and it makes me appreciate some of the newer quality-of-life improvements in future games in the series.

However, it runs quite well on the Steam Deck, and it's an experience I recommend checking out if you are a fan of the series and want to see the roots of what made this franchise so fantastic.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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