I was struck with depressing news in January when Koei Tecmo told everyone that Dynasty Warriors 3 Complete Edition Remastered was delayed indefinitely. We did see some gameplay trailers get shown after that with some insane visuals. However, none of them even showed the year when it was expected, with no release time frame. That changes today. At PlayStation’s State of Play, we got a brand new trailer for Dynasty Warriors 3 Complete Edition Remastered.
There were a lot of exciting reveals from the trailer for Dynasty Warriors 3 Complete Edition Remastered. First was showcasing the English voice acting from the original game, which is coming alongside the remastered version. That means we are getting Cow Cow voice lines and the cheesey goodness of over-the-top voice performances.
The traditional Musou mode from the original game is making a comeback. Musou mode is the story mode that follows the character you choose and lets you play the stages of the kingdom they are in. Granted, it wasn’t historically accurate, like having Guan Yu show up to Yiling, even though the whole fight was based on him not being alive. That said, it made it super easy to level up a character by just doing their individual story and letting you have that character in a playable state to do harder missions and maps once you were finished with their story.
A QoL feature that was introduced in later Dynasty Warriors games is making an appearance here, where you can call your horse to you. Older titles that introduced this mechanic were a bit slow on the horse calls, but Dynasty Warriors: Origins made the horse call extremely quick, letting you just speed off from a battlefield to the next one with little difficulty.
One thing that wasn’t present in the original Dynasty Warriors 3 but will be added in the remaster is evasion. You can use evade now. Not something new to the series since it was added in Dynasty Warriors 6 and was a staple since then, but it was not present initially in Dynasty Warriors 3. They also added evasion counterattacks, which is when you evade at the last second and get a strong attack afterwards to dish out heavy damage. It looks to be designed after the Dynasty Warriors: Origins version of the counterattack rather than the parry counter that was in earlier Dynasty Warriors games.
There are also new side stories added to the game for the first time. Notable ones are Wu fighting in the Wu Zhang Plains, and Shu fighting the Siege of Hefei. Both of those are where the Musou Mode ends for other factions, so it is cool to see it happen from a faction that wasn’t there ordinarily. Free mode makes a return, as you can start any map from any faction playing as any officer. Versus Mode and Challenge Mode both return from the original entry. One new thing, though, is weapon fusion. Weapon Fusion is a system I generally think of as being in the Warriors Orochi series, as all the games in that series allow you to fuse weapons, bringing along the best attributes to a weapon to make it stronger and stronger.
One of the biggest hype moments for me personally is the next section, where they announced the return of couch co op. Dynasty Warriors 3-8 were all couch co op experiences. 9 did get it patched in later. Dynasty Warriors: Origins did not have it, and neither did the DLC. I can have my wife play this game with me now!
They showcased the controls and configuration menu, where you can change the control lineup to be the new controls or the older controls. The bow is back, and you can change it between first-person and third-person displays. One of the difficult things about first-person mode in the original game is that you could have a soldier or general attack you from the back as you are focused on your target in the front.
The big surprise for me that they waited till the end to reveal was that Ziluan is going to be playable as a character in the game. Ziluan is the main protagonist of the Dynasty Warriors: Origins game. He looks to be using the sword moveset, which makes sense. The sword moveset is very similar to the older Dynasty Warriors games when you compare it to the rest of his arsenal.
Finally, they ended the trailer with its new release date.
Dynasty Warriors 3 Complete Edition Remastered will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC on October 1st, 2026.
