Dynasty Warriors 3 is the third installment of the Dynasty Warriors series in North America and the second within the Shin Sangoku Musou series in Japan. It is a spin-off from the video game Romance of the Three Kingdoms and based around a series of books by the same name, written by Luo Guanzhong.

The game contains a number of fictional and non-fictional elements from the same era in Chinese history that Romance of the Three Kingdoms is set. However, it follows the main events of part of the story which is to unify China under the single rule of a kingdom.