Dynasty Warriors 3

"Unstoppable"

Throughout history some of the greatest tacticians realized the importance of strength by numbers. Any idiot could figure out that having way more soldiers on your side would result in victory. I mean, your army could be comprised of farmers and merchants that didn't know jack about war and you could still beat out your opponent's superiorly trained hulking Roman-Centurions. Both sides would suffer extreme casualties, but the one with the greater sea of human lives would eventually extinguish the other in a blaze of inglorious victory.

But Dynasty Warriors 3 tells this philosophy to go fornicate with itself.

With the three kingdoms of ancient China at war, it's time to kick ass with some of the strongest generals ever from history. Just pick one of 40 playable characters and get ready to submit your will to rad button-mashing manly brawling. Take control of Xiahou Dun, an eye patch wearing badass with a goatee, and hack away at peons in the name of the cruel chaos legion known as the Wei Kingdom. Or fight on the side of the justice loving Shu Kingdom with Guan Yu, the burly man known for having a beard as long as his legendary pike the Blue Dragon. But could either side stand up to the ambitious Wu Kingdom? With fighters ranging from the womanly Zhou Yu elegantly poking men with his sword to the psychotic Gan Ning throwing himself into battalions like a linebacker, Wei and Shu were in for some wild competition. Whoever you choose, you'll be against insane numbers of enemy soldiers, and you'll plow through them with your might. Because in Dynasty Warriors 3, you don't play a single soldier but instead a warrior worth a thousand.

The main staple of combat is simple enough to let anyone take hold of their cutlery and slice through enemy lines. There's one button for quick yet weak attacks that can be linked together for impressive combos and another for a slower but stronger critical hits. Hitting the hard attack during a weak combo can create devastating attacks that clear out a mess of foot soldiers with ease. For example the Wu beauty Sun Shang Xiang can use a variety of close-up combos on her foes, but with the hard attack, she'll throw her chakra around in a circle slicing into anyone in a one foot radius. Among this chaos of both causing and taking damage, your character's musou meter will increase for more potential ass kicking. Once your meter is full, you can unleash your built up wrath upon your foes with a dazzling display of acrobatics, cutting, burning flames, and/or disturbingly unmanly laughter (ok, so that last one only applies to ONE character).

While you'll usually serve up combos and musou attacks for your foes, there are all sorts of other junk that can be used in combat. Every fighter starts out with a bow for sniping enemies from afar and body guards to save you from enemy generals that have you stuck in high-hitting combos. You can also mount horses to dash through the battlefield at breakneck speed or elephants to trample and squash those that dare stand in your path. The field is also ripe with power-ups ranging from doubling your attack or defense for 30 seconds or replenishing your health meter with a hearty meat bun. These will all come in handy while you're plowing through soldiers and getting up to 1000 KO counts.

Unfortunately the PlayStation 2 sometimes can't handle all these soldiers. Imagine being overcome by a horde of Chinese men brandishing swords and sporting bloodthirsty grins only to find that some of them vanish in and out of reality. That's some real scary crap, my friend! You can't fight off the soldiers the game hides but they can hurt you, which just plain sucks no matter how you look at it. While this is a fairly uncommon occurrence, vanishing enemies and slowdown can become a real thorn in this rose.

Enemies with the power to attack from another dimension may sound like a truly damning problem, but you really won't give a damn when you're overwhelmed with the complexity of Dynasty Warrior 3's RPG and strategy elements. I'm not talking about any boring crap like growing rice to feed your men or anything like that. For one thing, each of the 20 battles with multiple versions (as in choose which side you fight for) have different scenarios that can play out. You, of course, will have to do something to trigger these events, and that something is generally kicking some ass.

At the Battle of Chi Bi, Shu and Wu have momentarily joined forces to set Wei's mighty fleet ablaze in a towering inferno rising from the great sea. When playing as Wei, you'll have the chance to stop this attack by either slaughtering Zhuge Liang before he can use ancient magic to summon the winds or stopping Huang Gai's troops before they finish loading deadly explosives on their kamikaze canoes. Or if you're a Wu type of man, you may have to defend allied archers so they may execute the devastating FIRE ATTACK on the Shu encampment in the Battle of Yi Ling.

But why would you want to go out of your way to do this? The answer is simple: morale. Morale is a very important factor in the strategy of Dynasty Warriors 3 because it dictates the strength of your AI-controlled foes and allies. So if you do succeed in using the FIRE ATTACK, the Shu soldiers' morale will plummet; therefore, you'll have an easier time hacking into them and their numbers. But if your allied generals start being defeated in combat, your side's morale will begin to drop making the battle much harder to win.

There are other strategies that can be used too. For example it's always a good idea to rush in and close enemy soldier spawning gates quickly or to take out archers before they chip away your health over time. Or you can target a general first rather than going after his peons. This way you'll have finished off the tough guy already, dropped his underlings' morale, and now have the ability to wipe their asses out for quick, easy, and abundant power-ups. But it should be noted that last tactic will require a beefed up character.

Taking a page from RPGs, Dynasty Warriors 3 allows you to power-up your character. Through countless manly battles, you'll be able to earn new weapons that boost your stats and unlock combos, equippable items that give abilities ranging to higher stats to a more powerful Musou Attack, and finally power-ups that increase your default stats forever. The power-ups will be your most common form of character building, and they are found by searching the field for health or musou increases or taking down enemy generals. It's a lot more fun to raise experience in this game rather than some RPG. I mean, there's just so many times you can run around looking for enemies and putting in the same commands in Final Fantasy VII before you're ready to yell, “NO MORE!” Dynasty Warriors 3 just let's you raise levels through simple yet fun real-time combat, and you can even speed up the process by increasing the difficulty level for better power-ups, items, and weapons. And man, hard mode can really be tough and satisfying! There's just nothing like taking out legions of excruciatingly tough foes in the Siege of He Fei Castle on hard with your mighty character descending from the mountain tops screaming at the top of their lungs with a glorious burst of emotion,

“I DEFEATED AN OFFICER!”

Unless you have it on the English language in which everyone will sound like a bunch of Japanese voice-actors trying desperately to speak in English (because that's probably what they are). Do yourself a favor and set the voices to Japanese immediately. The English track is only good for laughing at the overacted cheeseball lines such as, “Do ME a favor! Red Hare!” or, “A dike? OH NO!”

But no matter what language it's set to, the game's soundtrack will be blaring with rocking 80's guitar riffs that pump you up for the insane button-mashing action. Each side even has their own unique style to their music. When playing as the Wei side, you'll have all these grungy heavy tunes that just scream “badass.” The nerdy Shu Kingdom instead gets the uplifting “we can do it” type songs that sound like they're ripped right out of an 80's sports training movie montage. Wu, however, falls somewhere in the middle with techno-esque upbeat tunes to symbolize their hunger and ambition for power.

Unfortunately Dynasty Warriors 3 isn't very appealing to the eye even in terms of PS2 software. While the player models are quite detailed, they suffer from problems such as your character's legs moving through their polygonal capes. The environments are also pretty bland and grainy with tons of fog and pop-up. When the action gets too intense, the frame-rate screams in pain as everything moves at a snails pace (especially in two-player mode). And let's not even go into the game's overuse of wacky light-bloom effects whenever you smack your weapon into an enemy soldier. Definitely this isn't a title that's not going to grab you with its visuals.

But what's really makes Dynasty Warriors 3 so awesome is its sheer massiveness. With some 40 characters to power up in 20 different battles of sheer entertainment, it'll be a long time before you'll throw in the towel. Hell, I've had this game for 4 YEARS and I still enjoy going back into the Battle of Chang Ban just to defend the bridge with my character crying out, “YOU WILL NOT PASS!” to the now trembling Wei army. Despite its sub par graphics and the underpowered PS2's problems, you'll want to go through the story-based Musou Mode as well as hit the field in Free Mode just to make 40 of the strongest fighters ever and have fun doing it. Maybe you'll even take a friend into two-player mode to work together on kicking some ancient Chinese ass with just the right amount of strategy. No matter what you do you'll know one thing: Dynasty Warriors 3 is one manly brawler.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/21/05