Complete Edition Remastered review for Nintendo Switch 2 Dynasty Warriors 3 Complete Edition Remastered review Switch 2

System: Switch 2
Release date: October 1, 2026
Developer: Omega Force
Publisher: Koei Tecmo

There is something uniquely cathartic about Koei Tecmo and Omega Force’s Warriors series. When most people think of “cozy gaming,” they think of relaxing on a farm, interacting with cute animals, and doing simple activities at a gentle pace in an entirely non-threatening environment. Personally, if given the choice I would much prefer to switch my brain off and effortlessly carve my way through thousands of enemies like a force of nature, executing flashy and extremely satisfying special moves with a simple combination of button presses. With Dynasty Warriors Origins taking the series in bold new directions, Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered is a fantastic reminder of where it all began, and what makes it so special.

There is always an inherent danger of a feeling of obsolescence in remastering older titles in long-running series. It’s easy to forget or simply not notice the small mechanical changes that are made between games when the core gameplay is practically identical between each installment, and although Dynasty Warriors 3 gave us the blueprint for the entire Musou genre, its successors and spinoffs have refined upon and expanded these mechanics quite significantly. Fortunately, Koei Tecmo and Omega Force have gone above and beyond with Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered, and have delivered an experience that easily stands on par with more recent titles.

The amount of content packed into this game (and for such a budget-friendly price as well) is impressive, with all content from the original Dynasty Warriors 3 and its Xtreme Legends expansion included in the package. These have been expanded upon to make them more accessible, with one thing I appreciated in particular being the overhaul given to Free Mode’s UI, which now shows you what you can unlock in each stage and how to unlock it. In terms of brand-new content, the game has added some side stories for each of the Three Kingdoms, which present new hypothetical scenarios. They’re a nice inclusion, although they’re not quite as fleshed-out as I had hoped, and feel oddly separated from the rest of the package.

But more importantly, a huge number of changes have been worked into the game on top of this to make it play like a more modern experience. The ability to evade and guard attacks is the biggest inclusions that completely alter the flow of combat to feel more akin to Dynasty Warriors Origins at times, but a number of smaller inclusions such as a brief period of invincibility when mounting and dismounting, automatic item pickup, and whether or not you’ll flinch from bow fire (trust me, you’ll want this one set to Always) are all equally impactful, and highlight just how much the series has evolved in the last twenty-five years. Weapon fusion is another fantastic new addition that, as you would expect, allows you to transfer properties from weapons you don’t use, adding a fiendishly addictive loot grind that meshes extremely well with the gameplay loop.

The game offers Normal and Classic options to fast-track the experience to the broadest common demographic of players, but almost every one of these new options can be toggled on or off in the menu individually, with some even having multiple options to suit your preference. This is by far the most customizable Warriors experience to date, and the level of care and attention is truly exemplary. The game also allows you to remap controls, so if you have a preferred control scheme from one of the spinoff series, you can duplicate that in this game quite comfortably.

The option to customize the game’s difficulty outside of the usual binary selection also helps to make this feel more approachable and less archaic. As a general rule of thumb, older games are considered to be more difficult, and that’s certainly true of Dynasty Warriors 3 when compared to more recent Warriors titles, even with the quality of life features enabled. Even the faceless waves of foot soldiers you’ll carve through are both more durable and aggressive, making stages slightly less mindlessly cathartic: if you’re not fully aware of your surroundings they can and will interrupt your combos, and archers pose a genuine threat if you’re unprepared or don’t take them out immediately.

Combat on horseback also feels clunkier and less efficient than combat on foot, so outside of transportation it has little use, although the ability to swap between first and third person perspectives for archery gives this a degree of flexibility that makes it bearable when you’ll need to utilize it. There are elements of the game that toe the line between feeling more difficult and having aged poorly, and though series veterans will no doubt appreciate that the original experience remains largely intact, if you’re coming into this game from a more recent Warriors title, the more dated design can stick out at times.

Dynasty Warriors 3 is not a game that takes itself particularly seriously, and it feels more like a Saturday-morning cartoon than a historical drama. Character designs are delightfully outrageous and have an overtly campy, Silver Age comic book aesthetic to their costumes, making them all visually distinct and memorable. It’s a little disappointing that the retro costumes are a separate purchase, but the new designs still capture that essence extremely well and are closer to their original appearance than the more drab modern equivalents. There is some crossover between weapons and movesets, but each character has their own unique element (usually their Musou attack) outside of this to make them worth playing at least once. The game’s cast is still fairly sizable, but it is worth noting that aside from the protagonist from Dynasty Warriors Origins, Ziluan, nobody new has been retroactively added to the game, meaning that a lot of famous officers who were added in later titles remain as generic NPC officers.

This level of individuality is also reflected in the English audio, which is rather infamous for its quality. Its reputation is well deserved: almost every time a character opens their mouth, the resulting damage to your eardrums is going to match what you’re going to inflict on the enemies on the screen. For better or worse, the English dub of the characters’ voices becomes as integral to their personality as their appearance. It feeds perfectly into the overly-stylized combat and theatrical cutscenes, giving it a satirical edge that makes it truly entertaining although something of an acquired taste. I can think of few other examples in video games where the phrase “so bad it’s good” can be said to apply as aptly as here.

The game gives you two options for English audio, with Type A featuring action voices in Japanese as per the original release, and Type B taking action voices from later installments in the Dynasty Warriors series to pair alongside the original English audio. It’s a thoughtful inclusion, although it doesn’t make a huge difference to the experience. If you would prefer more authentic and grounded audio, there are options for Japanese and (new to the remaster) Chinese voices, with the latter being the most thematically appropriate for the game’s setting. But I would urge you to give the English audio a chance before switching over, because it delivers a unique and often highly entertaining experience.

Unfortunately, Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered lets itself down quite significantly with how it looks and runs on Nintendo Switch 2, making it a game I would not recommend on the system – at least not before trying the demo and deciding for yourself just how many cuts you’re willing to tolerate. Despite the delays to the game being a direct result of a desire to deliver a more optimized experience, the variable frame rate is distracting and detrimental to the naturally fast-paced gameplay flow. The title often feels like it can’t quite keep up with your movements, and although there are a large number of enemies on-screen at any given time, the fact that they animate at an unstable frame rate (almost always lower than your own character) is extremely jarring. It apparently operates between 30 and 60 frames per second, but looks and feels much lower at times given the constant shifts between the two, and it never delivers a consistent experience at either end of the spectrum.

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered was remade from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, and this is the most immediately noticeable difference between it and the original release. While a dramatic improvement, environments are often lacking in texture and detail and feel notably flat, particularly in handheld mode. Considering the game’s variable frame rate trending towards the lower end of the spectrum, this makes the game feel particularly lacking visually despite the overall improvement that it is when compared to the original.

Koei Tecmo has stated that it is considering adding performance options in updates to the game in the future, and I can only hope this is something that is implemented sooner rather than later, because the game would benefit enormously from the option to cap the frame rate at even 30 frames per second for a more consistent experience. Given the superb performance and optimization for the Nintendo Switch 2 we’ve seen in other Warriors titles such as Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment and Dynasty Warriors Origins, as things currently stand, Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered is something of a disappointment in this regard.

There is often a very fine line between what constitutes a remake and a remaster, and in my opinion Koei Tecmo has been overly modest with their naming conventions. The level of care and attention given to Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered is more than I would have ever expected from a simple remaster, and the staggering number of changes and quality-of-life features that they’ve added on top of the expected visual overhaul – most of which you have complete control over – do an excellent job of modernizing the game that kicked off the entire series. As soon as this gets the performance patch it so desperately needs, it’s an absolutely essential experience on Nintendo Switch 2.

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.