Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends

Well, it's a dry time in gaming for the US markets, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything coming out. Shipping on the 15th of January will be Koei's latest offering, Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends. I got my hands on a copy of the Japanese version, which I'm going to assume is going to be pretty much like the US version (since all the other versions of Dynasty Warriors have been pretty much the same from Japanese to US versions). The Japanese version is known as Shin Sangoku Musou 2 Mushouden. In Japan, there was a distinction made between the game US markets got as Dynasty Warriors which was a 1-on-1 fighting game (basically the Vs. Mode of DW3.) so, that's why this is "2" here, and "3" in the US.

What the new add-on pack to Dynasty Warriors 3 brings is 7 new playable characters in Story Mode. They aren't really "new" new, you could unlock them for use in the "Free Mode" of Dynasty Warriors 3, but they weren't playable with a storyline. (They were all the characters from the Black colored clan...the Barbarians, and with a keypress command, you could unlock a final movie for them.) In Xtreme Legends you'll get new cutscenes for the characters, in addition to two alternate endings, which will unlock if you have beaten the original DW3 with the proper characters. In addition, Dynasty Warriors 3 stopped with your character obtaining their 4th weapon, Xtreme Legends adds a new 5th weapon that you can pick up for your new characters. If you boot with Xtreme Legends and swap in the original Dynasty Warriors 3, you'll be able to gain the 5th weapons for all the playable characters from the Wu, Wei, and Shu clans who were all playable in the original.

Save data does cross over, so any unique and rare items you picked up will be available to your characters in Xtreme Legends. If you powered any of the new Story Mode characters up in the first game, they'll have their stuff back in the new game. For example, I had picked up one character's 2nd weapon, and once I started playing the new missions they already had it equipped and had access to all the accessories I had picked up with the other characters in Dynasty Warriors 3. The missions will proceed differently than before, they didn't change the maps; they just rewrote the way the event scripts go. Not really much of a new feel, just sort of a reworking of the old events.

If you haven't played Dynasty Warriors 2 or 3, here's a brief rundown on the way the game works: You're in the middle of a war. You play one of the heroes of China during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era, the most romanticized period of Chinese history. Your character is from the Wei, Wu or the Shu clans. You walk around in battle and try to take out as many enemies as possible, sometimes ranging into the thousands. Think of a 3D, large-scale Double Dragon or Final Fight. Your bodyguards have been reworked, as well. You can now obtain items and weapons for them, giving them the ability to get beefed up, and you can also change their colors and gender. In addition, while you're in Free Mode, you can customize your bodyguards to be other playable characters. This helps out because if you didn't have a second player to jump in for the original Dynasty Warriors, you couldn't execute the Double Musou attacks; one of the coolest looking attacks in the game. Massive damage if you managed to pull it off correctly. There are also new challenge modes.

If the US version is like the Japanese one, what you'll end up with is a password at the end of the ranking system that you'll enter in, your score will be matched up with others who have played the game. You can then find out where you rank against everyone else who's playing and has put in his or her password. The new challenges are a Speed Challenge where you'll just have to cross a finish line as fast as possible, Comet Mode, where you're trying to knock enemies off a bridge, and Combo mode, where you're trying to execute the most high-hit combos you can. The 4th mode combines all the other 3 modes.

So, bottom line, at $30, is this worth it? Not to anyone but the hardcore fans.

See, here in Japan, they released another version of the game that packed the two games together. I doubt they'll do this in the US, but not only did that kind of screw over everyone here in Japan, but it also cost 8900 yen. (At the current exchange rate, that's over $70 US.) The disc swapping is highly annoying, and it would have been nice for Koei to figure out a more elegant and cheaper solution for the people who love their game enough to buy this pack. As it is, I can't recommend purchasing this game to anyone, unless (like me) they happen to be a HUGE fan of the series.