Despite being over 20 years old this game is still just as fun today as it was when it released. Got this game for Christmas in 2001 and played it all the time to the point I occasionally forgot to do my homework and would get in trouble with my teacher lol! These days I play it on an emulator as I no longer own a console and I can still blow 3-4 hours straight on it. I've tried other games in the series such as 4, 5, 6, and 8 and but none of them are as good as this title. Definitely a once in a lifetime game that will never be replicated.
Says something. I've started with 2, only ever bought back DW3 and 4 for my PS2. 2 was made absolutely obsolete by 3. After 3 and 4 I only own 8. 5 I can't remember, but 6 sucked, 7 sucked, 9 sucks.
@@Sacrilege83Not to Me. Dw2 has The Best Guan Du stage, a Better He Fei and Yi Ling than dw3 versions.pkys I like that if you defeat a Sub Officer the officer will lose Morale which doesn't happen in Dw3.
Nah. Dw2 is the first True Dw game. It's Guan Du and He Fei are Better than Dw3 Versions.and it's version of Yi Ling is like having 3 Clashes at once. Dw3 is Overrated plus I like in dw2 All my Allied Army will Advancd on the Enemy while in dw3 they just stand there in some levels.
Replaying DW3 recently reminded me how intgeral Moral system was in this game since it served as another difficulty scaler determining how aggressive AI soldiers and captains are, so charging in alone is gonna leave you cornered and enemy will constently stagger you so best strategies (specially in very hard mode) is to take slower aproached and make sure your allies advance with you in high morale making it so that the enemy don't only engage with you but also have their morale all time low and your allies can overwhelm them easily while you focus on officer Such realistic yet fun mechanic that dearly miss, I feel with DW4 and 5 heavily reducing enemies hostility, charging in alone has no consequence anymore, btw THE CROSSBOW ENEMIES ARE SO OP goddamn, they gave me more trouble than lu bu
Enemies in 5 are still decently aggressive on Hard, but they were beastly on 3. Still, stronger generic troops slows the gameplay down, and sometimes you need to be a one man army.
Nice review, agree 100% about the difficulty - it's crazy what a snore musou games are these days outside of high difficulty 1v1's. Rank-and-file soldiers might as well not even exist at this point for how entirely weak they are. I'll never forget getting absolutely thrashed by a major using a musou attack when I wasn't paying attention on DW3 Very Hard mode.
Why i personally couldn't love DW4 and DW5 as much as 3 was because in DW4/5 it felt like on hard/very hard difficulties especially in the early game, minor units like privates actually felt difficult to kill and impactful in the fight. You would have to seriously consider running into a horde of enemies because of how quickly you'd be surrounded and bodied. DW4 did bring this feeling into the game but not as fierce as 3. The later u go in titles the more it becomes just rushing to the boss and not really caring about the fights around, they are just fodder. DW3 would make you seriously consider dragging a guard captain and his 4 guards away from an officer to clean them up before fighting the officer. Even making you consider fighting a main bosses body guards 1 by 1 until it was just the main boss left. to which you would use your allies as meat shields to go in. I will admit in the END game of DW4 was probably some of the hardest stages if i remember correctly. but DW3's end game was almost just as hard and the work up to reach end game was considerably harder then DW4's
Dynasty Warriors 8 wasn't bad but nothing really comes close to 3. I swear that if they just remastered 3 and released it on Steam/modern consoles they'd make a fortune.
@@Travybear1989 Agreed. My favorites were 3, 4, and 5. My dream would be if they remastered all three and maybe even added the playable characters that were added in later entries with each having a new appropriate costume aesthetic for each game.
@@SuperSkyScorcheralways use the nightly releases of pcsx2, if you have issues run the game in software mode, its the most accurate version to the original ps2.
One thing that always made me laugh about Dynasty Warriors 3 - THQ gave it a horrendous PAL 50Hz port here in Europe, which had borders, besides exacerbating the slowdown issues found in the game otherwise. Amusingly, whoever did the PAL localisation ended up fixing the 50Hz issues... But it required the Xtreme Legends disc-swap in order for it work aha! Great work again btw.
this game will always be a masterpiece for me !! and funny enough i loved the fact that we had english voices with Japanese cries ! other than that i really liked your retrospective
If KOEI just made a remake or even remaster of this game with only removing the target lock, i would buy it again for sure. Its weird that KOEI basically find out that people like hack'n slash "challenging" games and they immediatelly thought "lets make our games ai braindead" lol. With each game the fun element of the series lose power imo. Hack'n Slash doesnt mean to cut 1500 enemies with a few combos. Souls genre is also a hack'n Slash for ex. The difficulty in this one is just perfect for a historical war game. We still play this game with my friends and stuff lol. And not because of nostalgia, the game is just better even with all the old technology. The main gameplay is just better compared to rest and i believe its 90% because of the enemy ai. They just dont stand there and wait for you to cut them. That forces you to use minimal strategy and also most of your combos. Moral system was logical etc etc. Its good to see most of the people thinks kinda similar. Great vid!
I'm not the biggest fan of the newer titles. I don't hate all of them, but I dislike more of them than I like. It'd be really nice if one day we can get some official HD remasters of the PS2 titles.
I Love Classic DW A.I The Peon, Officer And Another Army Is Fighting Each Other. Not Just Standing By And Dancing While We Massacre All Enemy Force. In DW2&3 They Not Always Depends on You, I Remember I Need Help To My Own Army To Defeat Lu Bu in DW2. It's Hard Defeat Lu Bu Alone in First Encounter. Lu Bu Health Can Recover When He Got Knocked Down. I Lure Him To My Own Army And Attack Him Together. Morale Level Is Also Impactful. I Remember Got Gang Banged By Normal Peon Becoz They Still Have a Officer. I Almost Dead By Normal Peon (Like Weakest Unit Or Captain) (Sorry For My English)
I played yellow turban rebellion 1000 times to level up my characters, then when it got to slow I went to the final levels and would grind there. Tldr I spent A LOT of time on this game 😂
Wild that they never remastered this or tried to go back to its roots. If you played on a hard difficulty it was actually challenging not being able to just run around by yourself.
This game is great and I really enjoyed the movesets. It's not my favorite but I'll take it over most of the newer titles. I know people like English voices for the memes, but I personally just find it gets old very fast. So many lines in this game are so played out due to overused memes.
Remember playing this game being 9 y.o in 2001 and fuck, loved it sooo much, seeing toons of soldiers to defeat, the story.... I also liked 4 and 5 a lot (the next ones were fun but that magic the 3 had... no other DW had).
I don't know what it is or why, but theres somethins about DW3 that no other DW game has been able to capture for me. Also, HOW DID YOU GET IT TO LOOK SO GOOD
I started with this game years ago, I tried 4 and 5 but never took to them like I did with 3. And I hated the change in design in 6 onwards. So I only ever play this one, its peak Dynasty Warriors for me
6:30.. I always found the slow motion lag to be a unique + fr the game.. so much going on in the fight its nice to see slow motion happen... on the other hand the dissappearing soldiers due to lag is no good... usually happens with teo player mode... soldiers vanish due to the character count.. prolly the worse thing about the game as officers also vanish when too many men are on screen..
I played this seriously for the first time after 4 and 5, so no nostalgia. This game is an absolute masterpiece. It should be the standard for all Warriors games to never be worse than this (which imo, most of them fail). I see why this series flourished for so long with this game as the base though. Drifting away from it has had worse and worse results
dw3 was hard... i recommend playing zhou yu of wu the first playthrough. his weapon has a wide range and seems to not get interrupted very easily. once you have played thru once or twice you will have better items to equip making most characters actually possible.
How does the game hold up? It doesn't. If you go back to this game and still think it's the peak of the series, babe, take off the nostalgia glasses. The gameplay is a step up from DW2, but that was a low bar to hit. The historical accuracy in this game is kinda there? Maybe? Well, if you read the encyclopedia, it kind of is. The free mode is where I spent 90% of my time. This game had my favorite cast additions until DW7, though. Zhang He is hella fun and Zhen Ji is incredibly unique for an action game at the time being a battle musician. However, the opening made me determined to unlock my favorite character in the series: Da Qiao. A cute girl with fans? Sign me up! Plus, the fact you can get away with just mashing normal attacks and not lose DPS with her made her incredibly beginner friendly. However, that damn auto lock is STRONG in this one. The best thing about this game that almost every other game *cough*DW6*cough* is unique weapons for every character. Granted, they were just 3rd weapon models with unique stats, and also introduced weapon elements. Too bad not everyone got an element. A highlight of this game is how many scenes can change based on which which character you're using. Leads to some spots. The perceived smart or hard AI in this isn't really smart. It's aggressive and that, sadly, doesn't mean smart. I think the best balance between aggression and intelligent AI in a Dynasty Warriors game was honestly in DW6. I guess I'm weird because I don't universally hate DW6?
DW6 definitely seems overhated, at least to the point of critics downplaying its positives (ex. sieges, presentation). It sucks because that critical/fan backlash made Koei/OF throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, just like they're doing with DW9-confusing poor execution of ideas (and reactions to that) for "well this just can't ever work!". Auto lock's definitely the bane of pre-DW5 games. Thankfully you can disable it using cheats (via emulator or modded hardware), but it harms the vanilla experience for no really good reason. (Both 3 and 4 are *plenty* challenging w/o auto lock enabled.) 3 definitely had the best cast boost of all, what with many notable figures effortlessly joining in. It would take the next two games to really utilize them, but that's only a consequence of 3's repetitive musou mode.
Sorry for the late responses, my job keeps me pretty busy so when I saw the comments I figured I'd come back to it when I was free, and that turned into 3 weeks 😅 I think it holds up well enough if you don't come immediately off any games post 4E, but coming straight off something like DW5 really makes the lack of autolock disappointing. They really did a great job with the characters this game. I still use a lot of the DW3 costumes in the more modern games that allow the use of them. Yeah, auto lock is rough. I'm more open to it now that it's been so long since I've played the game, but I remember when DW5 was released going back to 4 or older was ROUGH. I don't think it's as big a deal though if you haven't experienced the newer games like 5 before playing this one though. Still the removal of auto lock was the best thing Omega force has done for the gameplay imo, and I'll touch on it a bit with the DW5 video since it was the first mainline DW game with it implemented. I'll have to disagree on the AI, but to each their own. AI wasn't as sophisticated back then as now, so I'm willing to forgive for lack of things like surrounding/ganking you/etc. I just think it would've been cool if they kept the concept of increasing AI aggression and tactics as time went on. Like every time you increase the difficulty the health and damage output still goes up like now, but they become a bit smarter. Seeing chaos play more like something akin to Ninja Gaiden or DMC would've been a cool twist. Unfortunately KOEI decided against that concept for the series, and maybe even for the best depending on how they programmed it, but in theory I think it would've been a cool addition. Keep the comments coming! It may take me a while but I'll try to get around to them all!
I agree. feel like KOEI has had a lot of excellent ideas that didn't transfer well into the game code/probably should've had more time in the "oven", so to speak. DW6 and DW9 both had some really interesting concepts that could have been really, really cool, but weren't executed correctly, and instead of working on them for the next installment, it seems KOEI is more keen on just outright removing them entirely. Autolock is the worst 😅. I remember arguing with someone like 20 years ago when DW5 released on why 5 was better than vanilla 4 and they just could not understand how big a difference auto lock meant before playing it
@@jayplayspoorly8293 The DW3 costumes are hit or miss for me. Some, like Zhang He, are great. Then there's poor Da Qiao with her cross between porcelain doll and court jester outfit. Peak Da Qiao for me is actually DW9 with DW5 as a runner up design wise. I actually wish low ranking soldiers had more than one basic attack again but the fact that the average squadron is ~20 peons instead of 5 means that, if they could infinitely juggle you again, it would be incredibly unfun to play against. I understand the reason AI is dumber, but I don't like it. At least in DW6, enemy officer's used techniques like grapples and counter attacks and there strong attacks to break your guard. I don't agree with the modern difficulty philosophy of higher difficulty means you take more damage and deal less. The game becoming a 1 vs 1000 power fantasy as opposed to an army vs army game is where it went downhill if you ask me.
the biggest issue I have with dynasty warriors 2,3 and 4 is the forced auto lock on target. it cannot be disabled and it completely ruins the gameplay.
@@noobinthefield9207 am quiet sure 4 also has the auto lock on target. I only game on consoles, I play DW 2,3, and 4 on original ps2. however, in DW5 they removed the auto lock whicb made the gameplay soo much better.
How many hours I spent into lockal gamehouse in 2005 and 2006 playing it boosting Lu Bu,Ma Chao,Pang Tong and Gang Ning.Even remeber their names.This,San Andrras,Ps2 turttles,medal of honor,pes 2006 and Scooby Do till I bought pc and shifted to Frozen Throne and Cs go and rest gaming at 2007.Will always be the best memmories and adrenaline u can have.
If Wei has Zhang Liao… Wu has Gan Ning… this game is easily a top 10 ps2 game… Classic, the problem now with the games, they added useless games, sexualized some of the characters and completely made it more childish…. Smh
Despite being over 20 years old this game is still just as fun today as it was when it released. Got this game for Christmas in 2001 and played it all the time to the point I occasionally forgot to do my homework and would get in trouble with my teacher lol! These days I play it on an emulator as I no longer own a console and I can still blow 3-4 hours straight on it.
I've tried other games in the series such as 4, 5, 6, and 8 and but none of them are as good as this title. Definitely a once in a lifetime game that will never be replicated.
I've tried the emulator, but it won't play, how do I use the emulator
I first played it last year, and it's definitely dated. However, it's also a lot of fun.
3xl was a even better version of Dw3
This was the one that got me started with the Dynasty Warriors franchise. I still have the game.
Says something. I've started with 2, only ever bought back DW3 and 4 for my PS2. 2 was made absolutely obsolete by 3. After 3 and 4 I only own 8. 5 I can't remember, but 6 sucked, 7 sucked, 9 sucks.
5 is good and 3 is where I started also
yup, still got my copy lol
This where I started also. Defeating lubu for the first time is one of my favorite gaming achievements.
@@Sacrilege83Not to Me. Dw2 has The Best Guan Du stage, a Better He Fei and Yi Ling than dw3 versions.pkys I like that if you defeat a Sub Officer the officer will lose Morale which doesn't happen in Dw3.
DW2 might have been the first 3D DW game, but DW3 was the first true Dynasty Warriors game.
Plus, Arena is still fantastic.
Nah. Dw2 is the first True Dw game. It's Guan Du and He Fei are Better than Dw3 Versions.and it's version of Yi Ling is like having 3 Clashes at once. Dw3 is Overrated plus I like in dw2 All my Allied Army will Advancd on the Enemy while in dw3 they just stand there in some levels.
@@hurricane7727 Yeah, the AI officers just holding position far away does get annoying.
“You flaming idiots! Feel the power of my MAAAGIC!!!!”
Such a classic line never gets old
No game says epic dialogue like Dw3
"GOOOOO ye children of the Yellow Turban" lol
Its...its...Lu Bu
@@neozeroluminatti7619GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!
I personally find many of these lines to be overused memes. I'm sure it will be hilarious after the 200th time.
Dynasty warriors 3 will always be my favourite game in the series, a good review thank you.
Thanks!
Replaying DW3 recently reminded me how intgeral Moral system was in this game
since it served as another difficulty scaler determining how aggressive AI soldiers and captains are, so charging in alone is gonna leave you cornered and enemy will constently stagger you so best strategies (specially in very hard mode) is to take slower aproached and make sure your allies advance with you in high morale making it so that the enemy don't only engage with you but also have their morale all time low and your allies can overwhelm them easily while you focus on officer
Such realistic yet fun mechanic that dearly miss, I feel with DW4 and 5 heavily reducing enemies hostility, charging in alone has no consequence anymore, btw THE CROSSBOW ENEMIES ARE SO OP goddamn, they gave me more trouble than lu bu
There's a pretty cool DW4 mod you may wanna look into. Substantially increases private aggression
Enemies in 5 are still decently aggressive on Hard, but they were beastly on 3. Still, stronger generic troops slows the gameplay down, and sometimes you need to be a one man army.
Nice review, agree 100% about the difficulty - it's crazy what a snore musou games are these days outside of high difficulty 1v1's. Rank-and-file soldiers might as well not even exist at this point for how entirely weak they are. I'll never forget getting absolutely thrashed by a major using a musou attack when I wasn't paying attention on DW3 Very Hard mode.
Yeah, it's really sad to see KOEI's direction for the more modern games :(
or trying to get Diao Chan 5th weapon in DW3 Xtreme Legend where you need to beat Lu Bu in 30 minutes (from the beginning of the stage)
DW3 was indeed the GOAT
the jump from DW2 to DW3 might be the biggest jump between games in the series. DW3 was amazing 🔥
Forreal
Why i personally couldn't love DW4 and DW5 as much as 3 was because in DW4/5 it felt like on hard/very hard difficulties especially in the early game, minor units like privates actually felt difficult to kill and impactful in the fight. You would have to seriously consider running into a horde of enemies because of how quickly you'd be surrounded and bodied. DW4 did bring this feeling into the game but not as fierce as 3. The later u go in titles the more it becomes just rushing to the boss and not really caring about the fights around, they are just fodder. DW3 would make you seriously consider dragging a guard captain and his 4 guards away from an officer to clean them up before fighting the officer. Even making you consider fighting a main bosses body guards 1 by 1 until it was just the main boss left. to which you would use your allies as meat shields to go in. I will admit in the END game of DW4 was probably some of the hardest stages if i remember correctly. but DW3's end game was almost just as hard and the work up to reach end game was considerably harder then DW4's
Dw2 I would say is harder than dw3 in that area. A Regular Soldier can kill your character
This was the game I bought with my first paycheck.
Gigachad
Playing this right now on ps2 emulator and honestly the mechanics and difficulty feel way better than most modern warriors games
Dynasty Warriors 8 wasn't bad but nothing really comes close to 3. I swear that if they just remastered 3 and released it on Steam/modern consoles they'd make a fortune.
@@Travybear1989 Agreed. My favorites were 3, 4, and 5. My dream would be if they remastered all three and maybe even added the playable characters that were added in later entries with each having a new appropriate costume aesthetic for each game.
Or let you play as a generic officer. I like their models.
Xl version has Very Hard Mode
I believe the PCSX2 is the best version. You can add shaders, Reshade, play at 1080 and it runs fast.
Wow really? Can you tell me the pcsx2 setting you use? Game runs in slow motion at 5 fps for some reason.
@@SuperSkyScorcheralways use the nightly releases of pcsx2, if you have issues run the game in software mode, its the most accurate version to the original ps2.
One thing that always made me laugh about Dynasty Warriors 3 - THQ gave it a horrendous PAL 50Hz port here in Europe, which had borders, besides exacerbating the slowdown issues found in the game otherwise. Amusingly, whoever did the PAL localisation ended up fixing the 50Hz issues... But it required the Xtreme Legends disc-swap in order for it work aha! Great work again btw.
That sucks, sounds like XL was absolutely necessary for PAL then! And Thanks! Hoping to have DW4 up in the next few days
Great video. This definitely a good game. The first Warriors entry I played.
Thanks!
this game will always be a masterpiece for me !! and funny enough i loved the fact that we had english voices with Japanese cries ! other than that i really liked your retrospective
If KOEI just made a remake or even remaster of this game with only removing the target lock, i would buy it again for sure. Its weird that KOEI basically find out that people like hack'n slash "challenging" games and they immediatelly thought "lets make our games ai braindead" lol. With each game the fun element of the series lose power imo.
Hack'n Slash doesnt mean to cut 1500 enemies with a few combos. Souls genre is also a hack'n Slash for ex. The difficulty in this one is just perfect for a historical war game.
We still play this game with my friends and stuff lol. And not because of nostalgia, the game is just better even with all the old technology. The main gameplay is just better compared to rest and i believe its 90% because of the enemy ai. They just dont stand there and wait for you to cut them. That forces you to use minimal strategy and also most of your combos. Moral system was logical etc etc.
Its good to see most of the people thinks kinda similar. Great vid!
I'm not the biggest fan of the newer titles. I don't hate all of them, but I dislike more of them than I like. It'd be really nice if one day we can get some official HD remasters of the PS2 titles.
Archers in Dw2 and 3 and 3 xl also are actually Dangerous and you have to watch out for them so they don't Shoot you from Behind.
I Love Classic DW A.I
The Peon, Officer And Another Army Is Fighting Each Other.
Not Just Standing By And Dancing While We Massacre All Enemy Force.
In DW2&3
They Not Always Depends on You, I Remember I Need Help To My Own Army To Defeat Lu Bu in DW2.
It's Hard Defeat Lu Bu Alone in First Encounter.
Lu Bu Health Can Recover When He Got Knocked Down.
I Lure Him To My Own Army And Attack Him Together.
Morale Level Is Also Impactful.
I Remember Got Gang Banged By Normal Peon Becoz They Still Have a Officer.
I Almost Dead By Normal Peon (Like Weakest Unit Or Captain)
(Sorry For My English)
Looking at that full character wheel brings back so many memories.
going toward Hu Lao gate, seeing soldiers getting sent flying.
me : "oh sh... that's Lu Bu!"
Best dynasty warriors of the whole series
I played yellow turban rebellion 1000 times to level up my characters, then when it got to slow I went to the final levels and would grind there.
Tldr I spent A LOT of time on this game 😂
Looking forward to watching more reviews, just recently got into the series and I can't get enough, hope you do Samurai Warriors down the line
Thanks! Yeah, I'm going to try and do most of the Warriors titles in the order they were released, so Samurai Warriors isn't too far down the line
Before Skyrim I had this lol, probably a top 3 favorite game of all time
Wild that they never remastered this or tried to go back to its roots. If you played on a hard difficulty it was actually challenging not being able to just run around by yourself.
The bodyguard customization was sick
This game is great and I really enjoyed the movesets. It's not my favorite but I'll take it over most of the newer titles. I know people like English voices for the memes, but I personally just find it gets old very fast. So many lines in this game are so played out due to overused memes.
Loved this game and still do to this day. Liked the review.
Remember playing this game being 9 y.o in 2001 and fuck, loved it sooo much, seeing toons of soldiers to defeat, the story.... I also liked 4 and 5 a lot (the next ones were fun but that magic the 3 had... no other DW had).
I don't know what it is or why, but theres somethins about DW3 that no other DW game has been able to capture for me.
Also, HOW DID YOU GET IT TO LOOK SO GOOD
I started with this game years ago, I tried 4 and 5 but never took to them like I did with 3. And I hated the change in design in 6 onwards. So I only ever play this one, its peak Dynasty Warriors for me
i started with DW2 but this is the one that made me a fan
6:30.. I always found the slow motion lag to be a unique + fr the game.. so much going on in the fight its nice to see slow motion happen... on the other hand the dissappearing soldiers due to lag is no good... usually happens with teo player mode... soldiers vanish due to the character count.. prolly the worse thing about the game as officers also vanish when too many men are on screen..
Dope video bro
Thanks!
i always wanted to unlock their moves weapons characters
Amazing game.. I still havent unlocked all of it or beat the game with all of the character.. over 20+ character THIS is how games were meant to be
Gyad I forgot how much of a upgrade DW4 was from 3.
Archers were Massively Weaker though
“the rats are gathering…”
I played this seriously for the first time after 4 and 5, so no nostalgia. This game is an absolute masterpiece. It should be the standard for all Warriors games to never be worse than this (which imo, most of them fail). I see why this series flourished for so long with this game as the base though. Drifting away from it has had worse and worse results
This and DW4 are my favorite Dynasty Warriors games bar none btw. Including their XL expansions in that of course
🚂🚂🐝
dw3 was hard... i recommend playing zhou yu of wu the first playthrough. his weapon has a wide range and seems to not get interrupted very easily. once you have played thru once or twice you will have better items to equip making most characters actually possible.
Whats up with your weapon stats? How did you get them to be all the same?
Magic 😉. But actually this was before I had recording equipment so I recorded the game on emulator and used a game save I found online lol
English Worse Doublage : French here , dont worry they manage to screw up it too
Dynasty Warriors just wouldn't be the same with good voice acting, no matter the language lol
Like a lamb to the slaughter.
Dw3 has the best graphics from all ps2 dw games
why cheating on the 4th weapons?
item +99 :v
So much skill I broke the game am I right ;)
@@jayplayspoorly8293
how to get items +99
北原放線選手マリオカートレースマシンボロボロ大半フハハハハ
How does the game hold up? It doesn't. If you go back to this game and still think it's the peak of the series, babe, take off the nostalgia glasses. The gameplay is a step up from DW2, but that was a low bar to hit. The historical accuracy in this game is kinda there? Maybe? Well, if you read the encyclopedia, it kind of is. The free mode is where I spent 90% of my time.
This game had my favorite cast additions until DW7, though. Zhang He is hella fun and Zhen Ji is incredibly unique for an action game at the time being a battle musician. However, the opening made me determined to unlock my favorite character in the series: Da Qiao. A cute girl with fans? Sign me up! Plus, the fact you can get away with just mashing normal attacks and not lose DPS with her made her incredibly beginner friendly.
However, that damn auto lock is STRONG in this one. The best thing about this game that almost every other game *cough*DW6*cough* is unique weapons for every character. Granted, they were just 3rd weapon models with unique stats, and also introduced weapon elements. Too bad not everyone got an element.
A highlight of this game is how many scenes can change based on which which character you're using. Leads to some spots.
The perceived smart or hard AI in this isn't really smart. It's aggressive and that, sadly, doesn't mean smart. I think the best balance between aggression and intelligent AI in a Dynasty Warriors game was honestly in DW6. I guess I'm weird because I don't universally hate DW6?
DW6 definitely seems overhated, at least to the point of critics downplaying its positives (ex. sieges, presentation). It sucks because that critical/fan backlash made Koei/OF throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, just like they're doing with DW9-confusing poor execution of ideas (and reactions to that) for "well this just can't ever work!".
Auto lock's definitely the bane of pre-DW5 games. Thankfully you can disable it using cheats (via emulator or modded hardware), but it harms the vanilla experience for no really good reason. (Both 3 and 4 are *plenty* challenging w/o auto lock enabled.) 3 definitely had the best cast boost of all, what with many notable figures effortlessly joining in. It would take the next two games to really utilize them, but that's only a consequence of 3's repetitive musou mode.
Sorry for the late responses, my job keeps me pretty busy so when I saw the comments I figured I'd come back to it when I was free, and that turned into 3 weeks 😅
I think it holds up well enough if you don't come immediately off any games post 4E, but coming straight off something like DW5 really makes the lack of autolock disappointing.
They really did a great job with the characters this game. I still use a lot of the DW3 costumes in the more modern games that allow the use of them.
Yeah, auto lock is rough. I'm more open to it now that it's been so long since I've played the game, but I remember when DW5 was released going back to 4 or older was ROUGH. I don't think it's as big a deal though if you haven't experienced the newer games like 5 before playing this one though. Still the removal of auto lock was the best thing Omega force has done for the gameplay imo, and I'll touch on it a bit with the DW5 video since it was the first mainline DW game with it implemented.
I'll have to disagree on the AI, but to each their own. AI wasn't as sophisticated back then as now, so I'm willing to forgive for lack of things like surrounding/ganking you/etc. I just think it would've been cool if they kept the concept of increasing AI aggression and tactics as time went on. Like every time you increase the difficulty the health and damage output still goes up like now, but they become a bit smarter. Seeing chaos play more like something akin to Ninja Gaiden or DMC would've been a cool twist. Unfortunately KOEI decided against that concept for the series, and maybe even for the best depending on how they programmed it, but in theory I think it would've been a cool addition. Keep the comments coming! It may take me a while but I'll try to get around to them all!
I agree. feel like KOEI has had a lot of excellent ideas that didn't transfer well into the game code/probably should've had more time in the "oven", so to speak. DW6 and DW9 both had some really interesting concepts that could have been really, really cool, but weren't executed correctly, and instead of working on them for the next installment, it seems KOEI is more keen on just outright removing them entirely.
Autolock is the worst 😅. I remember arguing with someone like 20 years ago when DW5 released on why 5 was better than vanilla 4 and they just could not understand how big a difference auto lock meant before playing it
@@jayplayspoorly8293 The DW3 costumes are hit or miss for me. Some, like Zhang He, are great. Then there's poor Da Qiao with her cross between porcelain doll and court jester outfit. Peak Da Qiao for me is actually DW9 with DW5 as a runner up design wise.
I actually wish low ranking soldiers had more than one basic attack again but the fact that the average squadron is ~20 peons instead of 5 means that, if they could infinitely juggle you again, it would be incredibly unfun to play against. I understand the reason AI is dumber, but I don't like it. At least in DW6, enemy officer's used techniques like grapples and counter attacks and there strong attacks to break your guard.
I don't agree with the modern difficulty philosophy of higher difficulty means you take more damage and deal less.
The game becoming a 1 vs 1000 power fantasy as opposed to an army vs army game is where it went downhill if you ask me.
Yeah, I agree. The modern game philosophy doesn't mesh the best with me.
the biggest issue I have with dynasty warriors 2,3 and 4 is the forced auto lock on target. it cannot be disabled and it completely ruins the gameplay.
It can be easily disabled in emulator.
I don't remember 4 having the auto lock.
@@noobinthefield9207
am quiet sure 4 also has the auto lock on target.
I only game on consoles, I play DW 2,3, and 4 on original ps2. however, in DW5 they removed the auto lock whicb made the gameplay soo much better.
No it doesn't. Dw2 i think has Advantages over later dws in that your Army will keep Attacking the Enemy Army and not stand and wait on the Sidelines.
How many hours I spent into lockal gamehouse in 2005 and 2006 playing it boosting Lu Bu,Ma Chao,Pang Tong and Gang Ning.Even remeber their names.This,San Andrras,Ps2 turttles,medal of honor,pes 2006 and Scooby Do till I bought pc and shifted to Frozen Throne and Cs go and rest gaming at 2007.Will always be the best memmories and adrenaline u can have.
If Wei has Zhang Liao… Wu has Gan Ning… this game is easily a top 10 ps2 game… Classic, the problem now with the games, they added useless games, sexualized some of the characters and completely made it more childish…. Smh
That line is also in Dw2 as well
@@hurricane7727 voice acting is different