Dynasty Warriors (Sangoku Musou): Play 3 and 5, skip 2 and 4. DW5Empires is good, from what I've seen.
Also there are the Samurai Warriors (Sengoku Musou) games. 1 was decent, the expansion made it better, but 2 kicks ass.
And then there's the new one in Japan, Orochi Musou. It's a crossover between Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, due to a time distortion caused by Orochi (the one from the Izumo legend) and Da Ji (China's legendary demon fox woman who brought about the end of the Tang). It uses a three-man partner-swap system, which is interesting. The gameplay looks good, too, from what I've seen on YouTube.
Now, that being said, why is there no decent fanfiction of the Koei games? All I've ever seen are high school fics and yaoi. *shudder*