Gaming Warlords 
Gaming Warlords
Hello! Welcome to Gaming Warlords!
This website is all about the Dynasty Warriors series by Koei. We are obsessed with everything that goes with this series, and that includes delving into the history of the Three Kingdoms era, on which the aforementioned series is based upon. Please feel free to look around, and sign our guestbook before you go! We would like to hear what you think of this, whether it's positive or negative comments!
All of the links below are internal links to pages on our website. Each include my personal review of each game and, where possible, a number of screenshots.
For those with non-Java-enabled browsers, these links will get you around the site:
Homepage
Dynasty Warriors
DW2
DW3(part1)
DW3(part2)
DW3 - Xtreme Legends
DW4
DW4 - Xtreme Legends
Dynasty Tactics
Dynasty Tactics 2
Related Links
Favourite Links
Planned Updates
Officer Profiles
Gaming Warlords Profiles
Other Stuff
(This page was created because, as someone pointed out, a page on a website that goes on for about 7 or 8 A4 pages long is not very readable and was a bit excessive. So the content has been split into two parts. I apologise if it is awkward, but it has to be on two pages. Therefore both of these parts have been spruced up a bit.)
Here's the rest of the content (you can link back to the other page by clicking here.
About Meat Buns and Musou Recoveries (referred to in the DW3 guide I got from the Internet as Snacks and Wines). Meat Buns are health recovery items, while Musou recoveries which do as the label says, recover your Musou bar (ie, fill the bar so to allow Musou attacks). The Meat Buns vary in strength, the smallest being +50, the next being +100, and finally +200. As you can probably guess, the +200 Meat Bun takes more finding than the other ones, therefore it makes more of a reward then when you find it. The Musou Recoveries are a large pot (you'll know what they look like when you see them) and, as I said before, recover your Musou bar to it's maximum, therefore allowing the player to use their Musou attack. These do not vary in strength. Finally, there is an All Recovery item which, as you might have guesses, recovers both all of your health AND Musou bar. This item is very item when you are low on health and when your Musou bar is empty. They appear as a blue rippled bottle on the battlefield, which on Battle at Guan Du makes it hard to see, but is helped by a flashing light surrounding it (you need to see this effect to see what I mean). This certainly helps when it comes to finding any of the items on the levels, and is something that was not present in DW2.
About Playing Styles. This is not of course in the manual, as it's not something in the game, and not many guides on the Internet cover it, but it's something I feel should be discussed here. Playing styles, as far as I can see, vary slightly with everyone, but here are our playing styles, both quite different:
Full-on Assault: This style is the one I use. Basically, what I do is, assuming I have a strong character, charge into the frontlines and annhilate everything I can. Sometimes I start a level on a horse, and then it changes slightly to charge at high speed into a group of enemies, attacking as I go, hoping to take out some health from an officer's guards (if that's who I'm aiming for). If I'm on a horse, then if I get knocked off it, then I try to get up quickly and attack as hard as possible. This playing style, as I'm sure some of you will have worked out, ends up with me either shouting for help from my brother, or letting out a lot of anger (one of the reasons I like this game is to let out anger - it's a stress-relieving game to me as well as being great fun any other time). After the initial charge, I then race about the level, defeating every officer possible, or assisting my brother/other officers. Then when it comes to getting the Supreme Commander defeated, it usually involves another charge into his army (with exceptions on a few levels), then an absolute thrashing. Sometimes this changes to waiting for other officers (very rare) and my brother to assist before going straight in (again, very rare). This usually only happens when I find I'm on low health. Occasionally (usually on high difficulties), I will find that the Supreme Commander is a little too tough for me to take on by myself, so then I either wait for assistance or go back so far that he/she gives up chase and stops where they are, allowing me to then get some arrows out and shooting them at the Commander, or at the guards (whichever I feel is necessary). That tactic is called the Super Sneaky Officer Trick in other guides. However, that once didn't work for me. I was on Nanman Campaign, Shu side once when I was getting thrashed by Zhu Rong (laugh if you will) as she was using the elephant to knock me down. I was on low health for the third time as a result, and my brother came to help. I retreated, and then said "Attack from a distance!" with arrows. Then some crossbows hit me and defeated me. I was a bit annoyed, but my brother was furious, as it was quite a hard battle and we were so close to victory. The final little bit of this style is something I call "tagging". What this involves is one player smacking the health out of an officer, then then "tagging" the other human-controlled player, who then goes and does the same. This tactic doesn't get used very often, usually only in Hard on the Supreme Commander, but it is certainly effective.But anyway, that's my playing style, now to look at my brother's style
The Conservative Fighter: After looking at my style, you may think that my brother's is one for lazy people. However, as he has pointed out before now to me, at least he doesn't get killed that way. Anyway, he starts the level searching for a particular officer and, more to the point, one that is close to him and can defeat without much effort. Lazy though that might be, at least it works. He will then go through the remaining officers in a hierarchical style, and defeat the next hardest, right through until he reaches the Supreme Commander. As you will see, there is much difference in playing styles here. However, The Conservative Fighter does work in other ways too. Playing this way, you can allow a stronger officer/player to take down an officer's health right down to almost nothing, then get the finishing hit. I find this can happen with CPU-controlled officers, which can be annoying if you need the points from defeating the officer. Another benefit from playing this way is that you can take the power-ups that pop up when the officer is defeated (more about those in a minute).
I'm not going to say which style is better, as both have advantages and disadvantages. Whichever one you choose all depends on whether you are aggresive or if you prefer to allow someone else to do most of the work. Don't forget, there are no definitive ways to play, more guidelines along which you may like to follow.
The power-ups are the items that pop-up after an officer is defeated (as I said before). These are not strictly items as in the Item Bag sense, although these are dropped as well. The power-ups are Meat Buns, Musou Recovery, All Recovery, Item Bag, Weapon Crate, Attack +1, Attack +2, Attack +4, Attack +8 (rare), Defence +1, Defence +2, Defence +4, Defence +8 (rare). The Attack +8, as I said is rare, but to find it, defeating officers such as Lu Bu, Lu Xun, Cao Cao. These officers are not certain to give you Attack +8, as the difficulty level will also determine whether or not you get it (Tip: Hard is the best difficulty level to get Attack/Defence +8). Defence +8 can be found from officers such as Zhuge Liang, Zhou Yu (the strategists, who you can identify by the rank name they are given in the short FMV that shows when you approach them in battle). All of the Attack and Defence power-ups are used to boost your character attack and defence stats (you can see how much of each you have under Personal on the Pause menu - bear in mind that the bars on the Character Selection screen show how far from maximum the stats are. They do not mean that you have maximum attack as such, just the maximum that the character can get. Hope that makes sense to you guys, if not email me and I will try and re-word it. The confusion between these two different stats bars is one of the most annoying things in DW3, and hopefully that will change in DW4 (see another page for that, link near the top of the page)).
Now for me to summarise the review of Dynasty Warriors 3. Overall I think that this version is absolutley fantastic, a major improvement to Dynasty Warriors 2, and a must for every gamer who is also lightly interested in history, and enjoys a good game that will take longer than the average game to finish. One of 2002's most under-rated games on the PS2. In other words: BUY THIS GAME NOW!
OUR RATING: 9/10 (almost perfect, but still with a few glitches). This game gets our Seal Of Approval.
Contact Details
Having problems with any pages here? Contact us at the address below:
jammasterjules2001@yahoo.co.uk
Disagree with our giving a game/site a Seal Of Approval/Try
It Out award? Contact us at the address below:
djdave59@hotmail.com
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jjules@happyhardcore.dj
(Seal Of Approval is only given out to the games/sites we REALLY think deserve them. These games MUST score 9.0 or higher to get the SOA. Should we rate a game 8.0 - 8.9, then we will give them the Try It Out award. The games that get this award are very good, but not quite good enough in our opinion to be obsessed with (like us here at Gaming Warlords). Don't forget that this is our opinion, and if you think we were too generous with a rating, or too hard on a particular game, then email us at the address above, and tell us what you think briefly, what we missed out and what you would rate the game as. As for sites, these are a different matter and you should tell who made the site what is wrong with their site. However please tell us if a link to a site doesn't work or the site is offensive, so that we can look at it and decide what to do about it.)
Copyright JD Whitby, Gaming Warlord No.1, 2003.