Smashy Smashy (Dynasty Warriors 3 (PS2))

Member Name: winsy

Product:	Dynasty Warriors 3 (PS2)
Date:	11/04/04 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, Loads of people on screen, Great value

Disadvantages: Repetative

Never before have i seen so many people to beat on screen at once. Dynasty Warriors has been around for a little while and this incarnation (Number 3) is definately no exception to the rules. A fairly basic hack and slash fighting adventure game set in old medievil chinese dynasty. There a large selection of characters to choose from at the beginning and many more to unlock around 40 i think. Theres around 20 levels all basically large scale or small scale battle settings thats involve 2 forces and a number of troops, and a certain type of scenario. For example you may have to chase down a specific generall in a certain amount of time, or you may have to invade an enemy castle and so on.

Playing the game is fairly straight forward, it involves 2 types of attack button, square (normal attack) and triangle (charge attach) then theres is also a special attack which you can perform after either taking a certain amount of damage or hitting a certain amount of enemies. This is called Mosou, its a very powerful attack thats performed with the circle button and when surrounded its deadly. You can string together a number of attack in a combo style and you can hit multiple enemies with ease. This makes for a very easy yet tasking game that is simple to fight off loads of enemies that surround you but if theres two many or for example troops with bows and arrows aswell as foot soldiers it can get tricky, but tou can usually find health which is in the form of little white pellets, they look like onions even though they are called meat buns. But anyway they can be found by killing certain enemies or by smashing pots and boxes scattered around the map. You can fire arrows with a very simple aiming system that lock on the the nearest enemy with your line of vision. Theres a bar for your health adn mosou level, a map system to see were you are going and were troops are. When attacking an enemy his health is displayed at the top of the screen however you can make the ene
mies health appear above there heads. When fighting you can hurt your own tropps which is good as you would kill alot of them if you could, however on some horses and all elephants (oh yes there elephants you can ride) will hurt any troop they run into. The addition of these 4 legged tropps makes is nice and fast to search a map for hidden items ie new weapons which can be tricky to find and theres loads to get, 4 for each playable character i think. Then theres alot of items to find which upgrade, speed heath and so on, typical adventure/RPG atyle gaming.

This games basically is an action RPG, thats fully of out and out button bashing that will amuse anyone as it very simple, but it does have some complexaties, you can kill generals in the game to find items, weapons, attack upgrades and so on. You have a death counter in the bottom so you can admire the amount of bodies youv'e notched up, which at the end helps your score and helps to upgrade your bodyguards, which is nice as you can change there weapons depending on how you want them to fight and son on, so you dn't take all of the stick as your bodyguards will look after you. The game is like most RPG and does obviously have that experience upgrade system with a little bit of user interaction in the there.

There are a number of different modes to play, free mode, which is just pick a character, pick a level, beat people up and improve a character. Then there Mosou Mode, the story mode if you like with a number of levels and the most things to find and unlock. There a challenge mode invlove how fast you can kill 1000 people in one battle, thats alot of deaths this game is big. The story mode only has around 7 levels for each charcter which is alot in the long run altogether for one character its not much, but with each character they do things a little different play through different levels and do thigns differently as the character are split into seperate forces, but even the character
s of the same force do different path through the story mode. Oh yes big issue here two you can also play 2 player co-operative in any mode i think, which is brilliant, fighting side by side with a mate, and it quickens up the process so you can tear through the game with a pal and have a good time doing it :)!

The end sequences stink, they involve a silly little dacning women with some horrible chinese music, but they can be funny if you've got that sense of humour, get me.

This game is a fun game which is rewarding, getting all the wepaons, unlcoking each character and so on, tis a great game, thats great value. Ok its very repetative, square, and triangle over and over again, but its fun, its simple and its would appeal to alot of people. Plus some of the fighting looks great when you are hitting people for six, and smashing in around 10 people with a few little swings of your large bomby knocker LOL.
Plus the fact of the matter is if you want to get every item and every weapon which i do, then you will have to play this for along tiem and it will take you along time, on easy its not so bad, some of the levels can be taxing on medium and hard, but its not that bad, the simplisity of the game makes its that bit enjoyable rather than frustrating except for those hard levels, i got stuck on one so i had to knock the difficulty to easy just while i got used to it, was the first i played it trhough, once you crack the fighting system its like a walk in the park :).

By now aswell this game is only around £15 - £20 in most shops there Dynasty warriors 4 which is probably worth getting if you want to look into this gaming series, but i only paid £17 for mine in my local newsagents so i had to get it after playing the demo i enjoyed its simplistic fight fest. I would imagine number 4 is even better with the same sorta of system but with bigger levels more people and so on. Id certainly recommend this game if you like war stratagy and yo
u are looking for something with large scale simple fighting.

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