Dynasty Warriors 3: XL - Lu Bu Musou Mode 1 | The Battle at Hu Lao Gate

Now, here's where the game gets fun, unique, and interesting. All of the XL musou modes are what ifs and almost every stage is unique. There's a lot more dialogue featured in the stages and it feels more personal, which is great. There's also a lot of cutscenes and they reuse some older ones in new ways which make for pretty interesting scenes. If you had no intention to play DW3 fair enough, but DW3:XL is well worth it just for the Others musou modes.

Anyways, to start off we're playing Hu Lao Gate. But we see a new opening cutscene, there's a new introduction, a new stage layout, and they even changed the weather around the stage so it looks totally different. Nice way to make a battle we had to have in the game feel new.

To get a victory in this stage we have to defeat all of the musou officers that are lords. Yuan Shao, Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Jian in any order. Which is good, because Lu Bu starts relatively close to Yuan Shao and it'd be a shame for the stage to end quickly. We start face to face with Yuan Shu as our first victim, much like in the original version of this stage. Annihilate him and then we can make our way towards Yuan Shao.

Yuan Shao triggers an ambush if we take the narrow path towards him, to which Lu Bu has a unique line towards. Fighting our way to Yuan Shao and defeating him will kill him outright. Kinda thought he'd be a bigger part of this but...whatever. You'll notice our allies are engaged in battles all over. Everyone will slowly be defeated, but Liu Bei's forces cause the most damage. Sun Jian's however are the only actual threat, as they start very close to Dong Zhuo.

That being said, Dong Zhuo should be fine while we make our rounds and slaughter Cao Cao and Liu Bei's forces. Then we can just loop after Sun Jian and take him out. Doing so will result in his death as well, but that comes as much less of a surprise than Yuan Shao. There's not much strategy to this stage, it's sort of just about going nuts as Lu Bu and killing as fast as possible. And there's nothing wrong with that.