Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered review

Last year’s Dynasty Warriors: Origins was brilliant, but if you’re a long-term fan of the series you might not have liked that you played as an amnesiac wanderer rather than one of many historical characters. In fact, fans have been yearning for a more classic take on the Dynasty Warriors format for years, which is perhaps why we now have Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered.

Bundling up the base game along with its Xtreme Legends expansion and then giving the package a hefty Unreal Engine 5 makeover, Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered offers the classic Dynasty Warriors experience but with modern performance and visuals. It doesn’t look quite as good as Dynasty Warriors: Origins, with some of its maps looking a bit sparse and some character models still being a little basic, but it’s a dramatic improvement on the original, that’s for sure.

There’s a huge amount of content here, too. Musou mode is the main attraction, which lets you choose one of the available characters and battle your way through a number of stages. As you go, you’ll develop your chosen character’s stats, gain new weapons and items, and even unlock new characters to play as. You’ll end up replaying a considerable number of stages if you do play as multiple characters, but the nature of the game means that it’s still relatively fun.

You also have plenty of options outside of Musou mode. In Free mode you can replay any stages you’ve unlocked with any of the game’s 40-odd characters you have available. Any character development you make is shared with Musou mode, too, so it’s a good place to go if you get stuck in that mode and need to power up a bit. There’s also a Challenge mode where you can test your skills in a small range of scenarios, and a VS mode for a bit of competitive local multiplayer action.

There’s tens if not hundreds of hours of gameplay to eke out of Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered, then, but there’s one hurdle you’ll have to deal with: the antiquated gameplay. Being one of the earliest games in the series, released way back in 2001, the gameplay is very basic here, with many features from subsequent entries that added more depth being absent. So, you’ll repeatedly be performing the same basic combos over and over, which quickly grows rather repetitive.

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered does what it set out to do: it gives a classic entry in the series a new lease of life. I do wonder if there were other classic entries in the series more worthy of the makeover treatment, however, as there are many that still offer a traditional Dynasty Warriors experience but with more gameplay depth and features. Still, as long as you don’t mind running around battlefields that sometimes feel a little empty while repeatedly performing the same basic combos over and over again, you’ll find yourself entertained.