I was first introduced to this game by a friend who was obsessed with Dynasty Warriors and felt that she had to share it with me. Being the first Dynasty Warriors game to have a multi-player mode, she thought it best for us to play together, so I could get a chance to fight, and she could help me if need be. Since she had already chosen her strongest character, Sun Shang Xiang, I was left to choose from weaker characters who only had their first level weapon. Needless to say I died… a lot. With this experience I couldn’t see what was so great about the game; I actually found it a bit annoying.
It wasn’t until my brother lent me Dynasty Warriors 4 that I broke down and bought the 3rd game. Enlisting my sister as the second player, I took another go at the game. It was at this point that I found what was so appealing about the game. While I had previously played only in Free Mode, my sister and I now played in Musou Mode (the actual story). Since the game is taken from the era in China called The Three Kingdoms, it is not surprising that when one starts, he/she gets to choose characters form one of the three warring kingdoms: Shu, Wei, or Wu. The first step is to decide which of these kingdoms to fight in. After a few moments the winner ending up being Wu, since it was the only one with a female, and it had the prettiest people. That’s right, Wu had pretty boys.
The controls weren’t as hard as I thought they were when I had first played. The main problem was remembering what the trigger buttons do. A note to all who plan on playing this game: you have to hit the L2 button in order to see the enemies’ health bars. Without these bars floating above their heads the regular foot soldiers will look just like yours, and you won’t know who is an ally and who is not.
The game had some standard fare for a fighting game. Weapons, items, and characters all had the ability to level up…you even got more bodyguards. While not unique to this game, these features did increase the game’s re-playability.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the game sometimes makes it so the enemies are invisible. Your character could be running through a deserted area when he suddenly finds himself in the midst of 20 enemies. This doesn’t mean you were ambushed, rather more like they decloaked around you… and they can hit you, but you can’t hit them. Since there is no “cloak” or “decloak” function in the game, I have to wonder if this is perhaps a glitch.
While the attacks, characters, and overall graphics are of high quality, the same cannot be said for the voice acting. I can best sum it up by saying that it is atrociously bad in a strangely humorous way. For example, during the Nanman Campaign’s opening cut scene, a peon appears before Nanman King. His message, “Meng Huo there’s a problem” is delivered in such a sniveling, whiny voice that my sister and I missed the rest of the message because we were laughing so hard. While bad voice acting usually makes a game unbearable, here it somehow gives it better replay value. Seeing Sniveling Dude before the level makes the rampaging elephants and characters that have to be killed repeatedly during the mission, almost bearable.
Other problems that occurred during the game were either the inability to remember everyone’s names, or not being able to remember how to pronounce them. Keeping with military tradition, we gave many characters nicknames. Most of them were based on a distinctive feature of the character. For example, Hat Boy is the only person who wears a hat, the Fan Girls are two sisters who fight with giant fans, and Pipe Cleaner Man has what looks like a large pipe cleaner on top of his helmet. These names are far from manly but when you’re trying to tell your partner who you are fighting or who you’re supposed to be following these nicknames are rather efficient.
http://kongming.net/dw3/portraits/
Overall this game is very entertaining and enjoyable to play. The replay value is increased by the ability to unlock new characters, weapons and items. When you finish a character’s story make sure to watch the ending, especially if you and a friend play as the Fan Girl Sisters… it’s awesomely hilarious.
The conversational, NGJ-style of writing present in this review reads as a good fit for presenting this particular evaluation. Readers should get an idea of not only how you're coming to the game, but how they might as well. Nicely done.
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