Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends (真・三國無双3 猛将伝, Shin Sangoku Musou 3: Moushouden; lit. "True Three Kingdoms Unmatched 3: Fierce General Legends") is a spin-off of Dynasty Warriors 4. Players can import previous versions of their characters in this game if they have an original Dynasty Warriors 4 disc.
Changes
- The game introduces a new feature called Legend Mode. This trend continues with alterations in the following Xtreme Legends expansion.
- Two new difficulty settings (Novice and Expert) are included in this game. Expert setting causes all playable CPU officers to use their Level 10 weapons in battle by default, akin to the prior Xtreme Legends installment making all CPU playable officers wield 4th weapons on Very Hard by default in the same way (along with said officers having innate elemental activation at anytime on all activation attacks regardless of Musou gauge amount).
- Characters can now acquire Level 11 weapons by perfecting their own legend stage under the said Expert difficulty setting with specific requirements. Each one offers the maximum base power of 60 while having 4 items already attached to them, acting as the prior bonus attributes from the previous installment's weapon system.
- Both Level 10 and Level 11 weapons can now be carried over into challenge mode (though initial base stats and items not already attached to the Level 11 weapons themselves are not included).
- Both Level 10 and Level 11 weapons can also now activate elements without a full Musou bar for any non-physical attacks such as energy blasts, quakes and shockwaves.
- Elemental activation from orbs can also apply to True Musou Attacks that have any shockwave, stomp or beam hitboxes of the disjointed variety (carried over into Dynasty Warriors 4: Hyper), though they still do not carry the automatic fire element universal to all other True Musou Attacks (meaning they cannot directly activate 2 elements at once, and only from the currently equipped orb).
- This elemental activation ONLY works with an active full Musou bar while the non-physical True Musou Attack is active, but is only possible with either an Imperial Seal active (unlimited Musou for 10 seconds default) or with a Level 10/11 weapon with innate elemental activation without need of a full Musou gauge.
- Total weapon experience earned in a stage now appears in the results screen.
- Nine new rare items are introduced. Previous rare items can also be obtained by playing through specific Legend Modes. Sometimes, these are easier to achieve than the original requirements. The same also applies to Level 10 weapons being obtainable in the same fashion.
- Xtreme Mode, a mercenary-like adventure where anything goes, is introduced. The main goal in this mode is to survive as long as possible and conquer the other provinces.
- One new challenge mode stage is added; Arena Mode, AKA Rentō (連闘; lit. Chain Fighting), where it takes place on a special sealed-off plateau built within Ru Nan Castle's central section. Duels will occur continuously while the AI becomes more adaptive and difficult each time.
- Likewise, the challenge mode maps have different states of day different from the base game versions:
- Endurance: Day->Sunset/Dawn
- Time Attack: Night->Day
- Bridge Melee: Night->Day
- Demolition: Night->Day
- Likewise, the challenge mode maps have different states of day different from the base game versions:
- Ability reset is added back in, along with weapon reset being available, allowing the player to reset weapon levels and obtain unique ones all over again.
- Improved and tweaked enemy AI for higher difficulties, mainly for playable officers as opposed to generics on both the allied and enemy side:
- CPU playable officers can now occasionally use R3 taunts to guard break, though this can be exploited against them by leaving them vulnerable to attacks during startup.
- The AI however, will even use Zhang Fei and Lu Bu's R3 taunts in response to any opposition blocking against them, despite their taunts having no defensive bypassing whatsoever.
- CPU officers will now actively guard against a larger majority of attacks, as well as against incoming arrows launched by the player while in bow mode or any other projectile attacks if they have their aggro attracted, if the player takes too long firing in between stunning charge arrows or if they're knocked down from a shot. Originally in the vanilla version of Dynasty Warriors 4, generals used to strafe diagonally towards their target whenever an arrow in bow mode was being fired.
- However, if an arrow is fired at a target aside from them, then the general's AI will likely not block it if they are in the projectile's path.
- On higher difficulties, the CPU playable officers will also act more aggressive than usual, even when the player/their target is knocked down (where they will occasionally move forward a bit then shift-move backward in small nudges as they rinse and repeat to be on the ready when their target will stand up). They will actively juggle their opposition whenever, and will attack whenever, all without performing the concentration movement.
- CPU officers will now use their Musou Attack quite often, via a debug showing that a majority of specific hit states inflicted upon them will raise up their invisible Musou Gauge to a certain degree, allowing them to often use Musou Attacks back-to-back in very specific scenarios unlike the player.
- This debug however, does not apply to duels as their Musou gauge functions the same as the player's.
- CPU officers will often use short-hop jump attacks to intercept actions and start juggles.
- Dueling mode now reveals the CPU officer's Musou gauge in the same scheme as the player's as aforementioned. Thus, they will use their Musou Attack in line with the player's Musou Attack, parry, normal attacks, and jump attacks.
- However, jump charge attacks if used at a safe enough distance from the enemy officer in a duel, can also be used to bait their Musou Attack if the player mashes the jump button during their jump charge animation, tricking the AI into believing they are still airborne.
- CPU playable officers will also react differently depending on whether the player's Musou gauge is filled up to max or not. Though unlike in Dynasty Warriors 3, they will never reverse with their own Musou Attack even if hit during continuous grounded-hitstun for over 6 true combo hits.
- CPU playable officers can now occasionally use R3 taunts to guard break, though this can be exploited against them by leaving them vulnerable to attacks during startup.
Bugs and Glitches
- AI Glitch - Start a stage on Expert difficulty, perform an intermission save and quit to the title screen. From there, change the difficulty to Novice and start a new stage without reloading the current intermission save file. One the stage is started, perform a soft reset (Select + Start), then reload the aforementioned intermission save file. This will result in the game accepting the stage on Expert, even though the enemies will act the same as Novice (playable allied and/or enemy CPU officers will have their Level 10 weapons by default as usual if you've done it right).
- This glitch likely works due to the fact that if you intermission save a stage on Expert to turn it down to any other difficulty, any present playable AI officers will still wield their Level 10 weapons by default, which can cause the game to get confused.
- Walking on Mountains - While this is a common glitch in all versions of Dynasty Warriors 4, Zhang Jiao's Legend Mode in particular can make this notably easy to perform compared to on other stages. Get on a horse and stand next to the northwestern entry point. Make sure the mountain side is to the horse's right and dismount. There is chance that the player will end up on the northern mountain side, thus they are able to skip a large portion of the map.
Trivia
- Many of the Level 11 weapons despite having designs original and different from the prior Xtreme Legends expansion's fifth weapons, happen to directly reuse design aspects/assets from the prior Level 10 weapons. To list notable examples:
- Several sword weapons either reuse the same exact grip, pommel, and/or hand-guard designs. Others instead have additional design elements added on top (such as for Zhang He, Cao Cao, Sun Jian, Sun Quan and Yuan Shao's Level 11 weapons especially).
- Xu Zhu's weapon shaft color is the exact same across his Level 7-to-9, Level 10 and Level 11 weapons save for minor elements. Meanwhile, both Zhao Yun and Jiang Wei's shafts on both their Level 10 and 11 weapons are the exact same, including the tassels.
- Yue Ying's Level 11 however, shares a different-colored tassel than her Level 10, while also still sharing the same shaft.
- Xu Huang's Level 11 shares the same exact shaft as his Level 10 and even the same central-axehead-base, though only his Level 11 weapon has a tassel despite the weapon image artworks showing otherwise.
- Yue Ying's Level 11 however, shares a different-colored tassel than her Level 10, while also still sharing the same shaft.
- Cao Ren's Level 11 weapon reuses the same engravings on the blades of his Level 10 weapon.
- Guan Yu's Level 11 weapon however, via the theming of the colors of the specific dragons referenced, has the same shaft as his signature Level 7-to-9, albeit the said shaft is of a shorter length to accommodate for the much larger blade (largest of all of his weapons' blade sections).
- Artwork for Zhang Jiao in this game somehow has him reuse the model of his prior 3rd weapon's design from the third installment. This also carries over into the Empires installment.
- Akin to the base game, the battle messages for Level 11 weapons by proxy are different in both localized and East Asian/Japanese versions:
- The localized versions akin to the base game, claims that the player's character has "gained the final weapon [insert weapon name]!" akin to an item.
- The East Asian versions however, state that the player has "further grasped/perceived the extremity of martial arts, [insert weapon name]!" instead of claiming they've received a weapon. Stylized in Japanese as "[Player character], 更なる武芸の極み[insert weapon name]会得!" ([Player character], saranaru bugei no kiwami [insert weapon name] etoku!)
Gallery
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Japanese cover
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English ad flyer
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Japanese ad 1
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Japanese ad 2
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Wallpaper 1
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Wallpaper 2
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Shu ending image
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Wei ending image
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Wu ending image
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Other ending image
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External Links
- Official North American Website (English)
- Official Japanese Website (Japanese)
- Official Korean Website (Korean)
- Official Taiwanese Website (Traditional Chinese)
- Official PlayStation Website (Japanese)
- StrategyWiki Page (English)
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