<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> 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.

Last Updated: 6.7.2003

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

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(THIS PAGE IS NOT QUITE FINISHED - PLEASE VISIT IT AGAIN WHEN I ADD THE REMAINING DETAIL!)

Dynasty Warriors 3 - Xtreme Legends

I have heard from some people that this game is not worth getting. This is surely a joke. If you are one of those people, then this page is intended to prove you wrong.

I will say the inevitable, and say that this game is well worth the £25 it is selling for. Most people reading this who have actually got the game will agree. Below are my reasons why it's worth it:

Musou mode now accessible to the Other Forces. This is possibly one of the most important features of the game.
Loads of cool new FMV's and short clips in the levels. I personally think that some of these are well funny and cool.
All of the characters now have alternative costumes.
The levels have been re-jigged and made more interesting than before, some of the levels taking place at a different time of day than in DW3.
Many more items are available (more on those later)
You can now create your own bodyguard unit, and pump up their stats however you choose. Also, this time you can choose male or female bodyguards, instead of the standard male guards. You can also name them as you choose. They also have their own items.
Single-player allows the player to use a Warrior Bodyguard (in other words, one of the playable officers can be used to serve you as a bodyguard instead of having the standard group).

That's about all of the improvements. The rest of the game is basically the same, using the same game engine as DW3. This is basically an expansion pack for one of the greatest games ever. Most of the in-depth I did on DW3 stills stands. However there are some changes to it:

The Top Five Items have changed. See below for more details.
The game no longer fully qualifies for a full-blown Seal Of Approval. I personally think that it is more deserving of a Try It Out award, but not many people here agree with me at Gaming Warlords. So this is being disputed at the moment...
Playing styles have changed for both me and my brother. In fact most of the staff at Gaming Warlords have changed how they play the game. Look further down for details

Right then, here is the updated Top Five Items list:

Number	Item	Comment
1	Peacock Urn - Health	This will probably never change. It is the most useful item in the game due to the fact that health is more important than anything else
2	Tortoise Amulet - Defence	The second most useful item, as a lot of health points isn't very useful without the defence to back it up. There's a computer-related joke here, but that's not for discussion here.
3	Dragon Amulet - Musou Max	A useful item in that your Musou attacks are very useful, but you still need a large Musou bar to make the most of them. That's were this item is quite useful.
4	Defender - Double Defence when near death	A new entry in my Top Five. This has come around after finding Very Hard to be, well, very hard to play on. I failed MANY levels on Very Hard, and this is in co-operative mode! Anyway, when you are nearly dead, this is the most useful item on the planet. But for all round use, it isn't quite as useful as the rest, as the other difficulty levels are a lot easier and so you run out of health a lot less often.
5	Elixir - Musou Charge	This item has been relegated to 5th because the Defender has proved its worth more than this one has. There is one thing though: The manual and everywhere else say that this item goes up to +20. We have evidence suggesting otherwise, as we have Musou Charge +25! Have a look further down for a screenshot to which proves it! This stops the item being replaced in the list with something else.

OK, that details the new Top Five Items. Below is the screenshot so you can see for yourself how high we got the Musou Charge to (call us sad if you will but we had a party when we got it!):

Right, onto Playing Styles. This has changed a fair bit since DW3 launched onto our PS2:

No longer do I play in Full-on Assault style. My style takes the form of The Conservative Fighter (both quite detailed in the DW3 page), mixed with a new style which we call Diplomacy. This takes the form of charging into battles with the enemy, but this occurs after much consideration which enemy to go for. This style is called Diplomacy, though, because it usually involves allying with other officers on the battlefield.

Here's another new style: Musou Master. This is basically the same as Full-on Assault, but with just one major difference: Musou attacks are used almost constantly. Well maybe not that much, more often than normal attacks anyway. To play this style though, you need to have Musou Charge on your weapon (ideally +28 or higher), as well as Musou Charge on your item list (ideally, this item should be at about +15 or higher to get the amount of power you need). Another item that is essential is Musou Max (for the best effect with this item, it needs to be maxed out to +60), for obvious reasons. An optional item would be Attack (+20 gives you the best effect) to REALLY play it well. This style sees lots of incredible battles, but I don't suggest playing this way on the last levels in Musou mode (such as Siege of He Fei Castle), as they are incredibly hard and you need to be quite versatile in your battling.

Regarding bodyguards, you can have a choice now. Single-player lets you choose a Warrior Bodyguard instead of the standard group of bodyguards. This can be quite useful, because the Warrior Bodyguard (whichever playable officer you choose) is quite powerful, and it allows you to use the Double Musou attack. Two-player, however, does not let you make use of this feature, and you have to choose Normal Bodyguards if you wish to use two-player modes. However, more interestingly, there is now a Bodyguard Edit feature in the game, which allows you create your own bodyguard unit. This allows you to name your guards and determine which gender they are (two choices available at the beginning, more unlocked later in the game). Once they are created, when you are at the pre-match menus, you can choose how their stats are spread out (Attack, Defence, Life/Musou or Custom are available for you to choose here). I always use Custom, as I can spread it how I want. My brother also uses this growth type because he too likes to put his guards' Growth Points where he wants to. Growth Points are gained by the bodyguards when they reach certain amounts of points. However, to get these points, at least one guard must remain alive at the end. This varies in difficulty as you change the game's difficulty, but you can help the guards by putting them on Shield. They then don't do any fighting, but at least they survive more often. The trick to getting lots of points is to play on low difficulty levels, and to put their Fighting Style (or whatever it's called) onto Attack. That way they will do some attacking, which gives them more points than just plain survival. I didn't like this feature at first, as my guards would always die. But this was because I was playing on Hard, so I had to change the difficulty level to get my guards up to a decent level first. Now I love this feature, and find it a welcome change to be able to defeat hundreds of enemies per minute instead of just a few (like I do in Very Hard).

The new FMV's are generally quite cool, and helps to build the storyline as the ones in the original do. MY favourite is the one with Lu Bu and Diao Chan at the top of a hill, and Lu Bu says something to Diao Chan. I find it to be quite funny, the way Lu Bu says it. My brother, Gaming Warlord No.2, likes a different FMV, but I don't know which one right now.

OK, time for a rating. The original got 9.0, failing to score higher because of pop-up, and disapperance of enemy often. This game doesn't exactly get rid of this problem, but then to be fair it uses the same game engine as the original. The additions are very useful, and certainly make the game worthwhile of anyone's £25. We give this game a rating of 9.3/10. Again, not perfect but it's the closest effort we have seen so far. This game gets the 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

To give us your views on anything on this site, use the below address:
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.)