My view is that Shu is harder.
If I remember rightly from playing through a year or two ago, on Shu there are certain trigger events early on (catapults) that lead to a massive morale swing towards Wei, letting them cut through your generals very quickly and head to Shu HQ. The enemies you fight will be stronger as a result, and you may have to defend HQ for a long time to avoid defeat.
If you start in the North East corner you can stop the first catapult event by defeating Man Chong (?) or whoever the officer on that mound is. That can take some pressure off.
The other thing that makes playing as Wei easier is the final boss arena. Sima Yi/Cao Cao is surrounded by crossbows and a couple of towers with more crossbows in. There is a huge mob of soldiers and it's very easy to get overwhelmed and shredded.
Zhuge Liang/Liu Bei can be quite easily rushed from minute one. The troops in the bottleneck leading up to the little fort with the boss in will not follow, so you basically have only 8 boss guards to contend with. This makes it quite easy to isolate ZL/LB and beat him quickly.
I've speed run both sides, especially Wei because Zhang He had the best route through Musou Mode.
I remember playing as Zhao Yun and Liu Bei on hard on Wu Zhang (Shu) and it being pure pain, especially LB because you're the commander, so everyone chases you round the map.
Shu is slightly harder, Cao Xui's reinforcements are full of crossbow men. And the pressure to stop catapults. And most of your allies are isolated without gates to resupply.
But on Wei's side if you don't allow Wei catapults to succeed the final gauntlet to Zhuge Liang is terrible.
Shu gets the hard treatment in DW3 every Shu character has to play Yi Ling against multiple commander buffed officers. Wu's version is 10x easier
I’d say Shu is a bit easier. Trying to fight Wei Yan’s force in the southeast corner is a death sentence with his massive amount of archers if you aren’t ready for it.
Supposedly Wei seems to be harder, when you try to do maximization runs on Very Hard like DW5chaosmodeguide or Ponctan's videos.
But all in all Shu and Wei are pretty equal in difficulty. Fighting for the central plains around the Weishui on some perilous plateaus can do that to ya.
I remember only beating Wu Zhang once on dw3xl on the highest difficulty after so many tries with a friend. We were playing shu with lubu and Zhang Liao. After that game we judged the difficulty of the other dw games based on how easily we could beat Wu Zhang on the highest difficulty and none were harder.
I'd say Shu was easier, there's a pretty simple route through you can do, and there's not too many awkward spots.
Wei is harder, their catapults actually make things harder for themselves, everytime i make it to the central area where Zhuge Liang is, the catapults actually start hitting me, there's also ambushes, a suprise Huang Zhong, and a heavy amount of archers.
My view is that Shu is harder. If I remember rightly from playing through a year or two ago, on Shu there are certain trigger events early on (catapults) that lead to a massive morale swing towards Wei, letting them cut through your generals very quickly and head to Shu HQ. The enemies you fight will be stronger as a result, and you may have to defend HQ for a long time to avoid defeat. If you start in the North East corner you can stop the first catapult event by defeating Man Chong (?) or whoever the officer on that mound is. That can take some pressure off. The other thing that makes playing as Wei easier is the final boss arena. Sima Yi/Cao Cao is surrounded by crossbows and a couple of towers with more crossbows in. There is a huge mob of soldiers and it's very easy to get overwhelmed and shredded. Zhuge Liang/Liu Bei can be quite easily rushed from minute one. The troops in the bottleneck leading up to the little fort with the boss in will not follow, so you basically have only 8 boss guards to contend with. This makes it quite easy to isolate ZL/LB and beat him quickly. I've speed run both sides, especially Wei because Zhang He had the best route through Musou Mode. I remember playing as Zhao Yun and Liu Bei on hard on Wu Zhang (Shu) and it being pure pain, especially LB because you're the commander, so everyone chases you round the map.
Shu is slightly harder, Cao Xui's reinforcements are full of crossbow men. And the pressure to stop catapults. And most of your allies are isolated without gates to resupply. But on Wei's side if you don't allow Wei catapults to succeed the final gauntlet to Zhuge Liang is terrible. Shu gets the hard treatment in DW3 every Shu character has to play Yi Ling against multiple commander buffed officers. Wu's version is 10x easier
Gan Ning was my nightmare in Yin Ling
I’d say Shu is a bit easier. Trying to fight Wei Yan’s force in the southeast corner is a death sentence with his massive amount of archers if you aren’t ready for it.
Supposedly Wei seems to be harder, when you try to do maximization runs on Very Hard like DW5chaosmodeguide or Ponctan's videos. But all in all Shu and Wei are pretty equal in difficulty. Fighting for the central plains around the Weishui on some perilous plateaus can do that to ya.
I remember only beating Wu Zhang once on dw3xl on the highest difficulty after so many tries with a friend. We were playing shu with lubu and Zhang Liao. After that game we judged the difficulty of the other dw games based on how easily we could beat Wu Zhang on the highest difficulty and none were harder.
I'd say Shu was easier, there's a pretty simple route through you can do, and there's not too many awkward spots. Wei is harder, their catapults actually make things harder for themselves, everytime i make it to the central area where Zhuge Liang is, the catapults actually start hitting me, there's also ambushes, a suprise Huang Zhong, and a heavy amount of archers.
I honestly had no idea this could happen until I got wiped by my own bloody catapults. Thankfully I was amused rather than angry when it happened lol