Dynasty Warriors (Franchise)

Dynasty Warriors (真・三國無双, Shin Sangokumusō; lit. "True Three Kingdoms Unrivaled") is a series of Japanese hack and slash action video games created by Omega Force and Koei (now Koei Tecmo). The series is a spin-off of Koei's turn-based strategy Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, based upon the Chinese novel of the same name, which is a romanticised retelling of the Chinese Three Kingdoms period. The first game in the series, titled Dynasty Warriors in English and Sangokumusō in Japanese, was a fighting game, a separate genre from the rest of the games in the series. Koei later created a new game as a spin-off and added the word shin (真; true, genuine) to the beginning of the title to differentiate it from its predecessor. When the game was localized for the North American market, the name became Dynasty Warriors 2. Since then, all English titles have been numbered one larger than their Japanese counterparts. Because the original Dynasty Warriors game belongs to a separate genre and has a different series title in Japan, Koei Tecmo does not consider it a formal entry in the Dynasty Warriors series.[Note 1] This is evidenced by Koei-Tecmo's celebration of the series' 20th anniversary in 2020, two decades after the release of Dynasty Warriors 2.[1] In 2008, it was Koei's most successful franchise,[2] and as of 2025, the series has sold more than 24 million copies worldwide.[3]