Play.tm reviews Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI

<strong>[ Review ]</strong>

<p>The reviewer gives it a score of 70% but is honest about why.  It's not that it's a bad game but rather the game overwhelmed him.  I wish more reviewers were this honest.</p><blockquote><p>I'm not built for a game like Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI. I doubt many of us are. These days, your average game is basically an interactive screensaver you watch and pay forty quid for. It's all down to publishers demanding their investments to have as broad an appeal as possible, so developers have to make games so gentle and friendly it's like these patronisingly gentle creations are holding your hand and walking you into the first day of gaming nursery school.</p><p>Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is not like this. If anything, it probably <em>hates you</em>.</p><p>.....</p><p>And that's where Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI begins, really. To play the game there's ultimately no way of avoiding the sizable investment of your precious, finite time into understanding the many complexities being demanded of you. This is a strategy game that includes so much detail it wouldn't be surprising if there was a kitchen sink button hidden within all the menus. To simply get far in the campaign you've got to be completely aware of city building, morale, food, finances, social order, training, military strategy, justice, army management, officer recruitment, traps, lying, truce-building, rumour-mongering, general deceit and trade. A weak link in your management can really set the whole thing crumbling, or leave you waiting for turns to get back into the right routine. Mistakes cost, but with so much to work with it's almost always too hard to get by without forgetting <em>something</em>.</p></blockquote><p>Take a few minutes and read the <a href="http://play.tm/story/21171" target="_blank">full review.</a>
</p><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><p> </p><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://play.tm/">Play.tm</a></p>

A pity that KOEI didn't incorporate the expansion and supposedly has no intention of releasing it in the English version. Those in the know say that it makes the game a *much* better experience in all ways.

I've been meaning to try the demo for this for a while. What's the current hivemind opinion on it?

I like the idea of it going against the current trend of "friendly" games as that reviewer said. It could be the cure for my Spore ills.

The demo is only 280mb so you might as well give it a try.

Nice. I expected the usual DVD-filling download.

I played last night. Still the solid KOEI stuff. It has some notable differences from the previous entries I have played (that is, 4 for Windows and 6 for PS).

For starters, there is no longer a separation between "strategic level" and "tactical battles". No more single-turn road movement from one city to another, just a hex-based 3d map of all China where cities, moving units, traps, fortifications and even city upgrades are present. So the good old tricks like stripping all the safe behind-the-lines towns of troops and resources pouring them into frontline towns are no longer perfect. It likely also means no more separate castle sieges (which were very fun in many KOEI games), a besieging army just comes to a town and starts bashing it until its hitpoints are down, while the unassigned troops inside shoot back at them.

There is a kind of int-based duel included, called debate, which is essentially a primitive CCG not unlike Arcomage.

Characters have more skills and relations than ever, in additional to family relations they can have "liked" and "disliked" characters, "close friends", "sworn siblings" et al. You can create up to 150 characters yourself, and apparently can add any number of them to your side in campaign, unlike the earlier installations where you were limited to like 3 or 5 (causing all sorts of weird tricks like making bunch of characters children of those you select and setting their birthdate as to make them come into age at second game turn . But it seems officers cost upkeep now, so having 150 of them at turn one would ruin the economy. Keeping prisoners costs cash too.

My biggest gripe is teh grafix, or rather, a circus show of special effects. Every combat action somehow must be accompanied with apelike jumps (of 10000-strong armies, none the less!), pissing fire and shitting lightnings. I guess console kiddies can't focus their "attention" on a game unless flashing lights hypnotize them, but an adult gamer would only benefit would that crap be removed from a PC version. These "crouching gandalf, hidden saruman" FX can be mildly tolerable when used by one lonely superhero against another lonely superhero, but when huge armies do that, it is just retarded.

Still, despite the retarded FX, this is a very deep and strong strategy title easily on par with classic early 90s KOEI games, and I expect many an evening to spend over it.

Seems like something I might want to play.