Reviewed on: PC
Code provided by the publisher.
For a long time, I’ve loved the idea of the Dynasty Warriors games more than the games themselves. Fighting through an army of foes is a compelling idea, which the series made good on in its early installments. As it went on, however, the game’s standard enemies grew weaker and more docile while their numbers exploded.
Dynasty Warriors 3 Complete Remastered could have been the perfect solution to this and, while it’s mostly pretty great, it falls short in this regard, as it fails to capture the intense feeling of the very game it's supposedly remastering (albeit while also adding some welcome features to it). I wish it had maintained certain aspects, but I can’t deny its improvements.
Weirdly, this isn’t actually a remaster at all. It absolutely utilizes the same exact structure of the original game, down to its menus, loading screens, redone cutscenes, and general character movesets. But the gameplay itself, from the controls, action, and enemies, feels like a completely different game. Therefore I’m not quite sure why it’s purported to be a remaster and not a remake.
Much like the original game, most characters have their own seven stage Musou Mode (although the three main generals get ten stages). This takes them through maps where they must defeat the enemy general to progress. They all start out with low stats and a weapon that grants them about two thirds of their movesets, but enemies start dropping better weapons that allow them to gain more after a bit.
Each character’s Musou Mode is quite short, often taking under a couple of hours if you don’t die much. If this doesn’t sound like a lot, there are over 40 characters, so attempting to do all the story modes will take a fairly long time. On top of that you can freely select missions in Free Mode (and even play them as Origins’ main character), as well as go through multiple challenges, although these lack a lasting appeal.
Of course, there are around 20 maps, so you’ll see the same levels over and over again, plus characters tend to play very similarly. Everyone has a six-hit combo, plus six charge attacks. Pressing the charge attack button after the first five inputs of the standard combo will let you use a different charge attack. This system is fairly archaic and I strongly prefer the new one set in place by Dynasty Warriors Origins, but that’s neither here nor there.
The game’s levels have been lovingly remade in Unreal Engine 5 and the game is shockingly well optimized to boot. It’s pretty gorgeous and ran very well for me, so I’m extremely pleased on this front. The original game’s graphics were quite awful, with a lot of flat maps with tiny draw distances and tons of pop-in. Omega Force did a truly terrific job updating the visuals.
The gameplay itself is also miles better. You now have right stick camera control, you can call a horse freely (and the horse dash from Origins returns) so getting around the game’s maps is no longer such a massive slog, and, most importantly, you can dodge and block from all directions. A perfect dodge allows you to use a counter attack as well, while attacking at the right time during a block allows for one too, although they’re both kind of finicky.
All of this causes the game to feel far more mobile and engaging, making it more akin to Origins and edging out previous games as well. Unlike later series games, Dynasty Warriors 3 Remastered Complete doesn’t let you feel like a war god, as your charge attacks aren’t a bunch of ridiculous anime explosions that decimate everything in a five-mile radius.
I’ve been watching the game with great interest since it was announced, all the while worrying that Omega Force would go back to its previous massive error and dumb down the enemy AI. Enemies are thankfully much more aggressive than in Dynasty Warriors 5-8, but they’re still a far cry from their behavior in 3 and 4. They can absolutely still juggle you to death, but many of them still just mill about and stare at you.
I went back to the original game to compare them side-by-side and was disheartened by just how much more braindead the peons are. It’s truly a massive missed opportunity that takes the game from easily being one of the best in its series to just one of the best in 20 years or so.
It does look and play better than damn near everything before Origins, though. This is a victory, of course, but I simply don’t understand why Omega Force is so scared of actually letting players live out the fantasy of fighting an army when they accomplished that very thing 25 years ago. The game has countless options to make it play more like the original, including limiting the camera control, having the archers be terrifyingly overpowered, among many others.
But there’s still no option or even attempt to keep the enemy AI intact. This is just such a shame, since the enemy AI is one of the absolute best parts of the original DW 3 and 4. And when the game works, it feels really fantastic. Fighting a tense battle while desperately attempting to stay alive and not get juggled around is exhilarating. But it really should have been the entire game.
Verdict
There are so many things I appreciate about this game, including the addition of weapon fusion and so many quality-of-life adjustments that have updated the original game into something truly special. This is a damn good game. Even so, I can’t help but lament the fact that we were denied greatness because the dev was too scared to make the series hard again.
