The glorious turn-based historical simulation strategy game “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” series has been around for more than 30 years. Years of production experience have already polished it to perfection. The game’s basic structure, such as character portraits, general settings, story progression, and map terrain, basically has no problems and has long been developed to the limit.
In terms of specific gameplay, with internal affairs farming and military strategy as the underlying mechanism, different works in the “Three Kingdoms” series have also tried to develop in new directions. It covers three major modes: real-time strategy, role-playing, and traditional war chess. At the same time, some gameplay details have been tinkered with and changed. Therefore, in the review of the latest work in the series, “Three Kingdoms 14”, let’s focus on what mode this game adopts and what changes have been made.
Minimalist interior design, but not simple
The internal affairs system of the previous “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” 12 and 13 was simplified. Before the release of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14”, the producer Echigotani said in an interview that he wanted to further simplify the complex and cumbersome system and reduce some of the player’s operations. As expected, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14”, which adopts the monarch simulation perspective, has simplified the internal affairs part again. It is no exaggeration to call it the simplest political order system in the history of the Three Kingdoms.
Specifically, as a monarch, the player only needs to delegate the management of cities and strongholds, whether it is developing agriculture, commerce, or training and recruiting soldiers, to the corresponding talents, and no longer needs to do everything by himself. Therefore, in terms of governance, the player mainly searches for talents and treasures, appeases and promotes talents to prevent them from being poached by other forces, engages in relatively mindless diplomatic alliances, develops technology points, etc.
In order to let players further enjoy the pleasure of being a monarch and further utilize the points of the herald, the game has added a proposal section. Proposals are like the king reviewing memorials. Facing the strategies and suggestions of subordinates, he chooses some to execute, and also helps to search for talents more accurately.
This streamlined internal affairs system naturally caused dissatisfaction among some farming players. However, the seemingly simple internal affairs are not that simple. Let’s talk about the appointment part first. The speed of industrial development of each stronghold is completely different when it is assigned to talents with different attributes for management. For example, generals with high intelligence are more suitable for developing business, but they are not suitable for leading troops. In addition, generals can still manage cities after going on an expedition. Many players have criticized this. Can they develop agriculture at home when they are out? In fact, once the appointed generals go out to fight, the income generated by their internal affairs will be halved, but this is not clearly stated in the game. After players are familiar with this mechanism, in addition to considering the talents of each person when appointing, they should also appropriately replace the heads of various local institutions when conducting military strategies.
In addition, the appointment of generals is also related to the most important gameplay of this game, “filling the grids”, which we will discuss in detail later.
In terms of governance and technology improvement, this game adds different styles of monarchs, the so-called “ism”. For example, Liu Bei is the “kingly way”, which is relatively balanced in all aspects; Cao Cao is the “tyrannical way”, which is better at support and fighting. Because there is a point limit, players need to choose whether to be comprehensive or specialize in a few areas. In addition, in this section, appointing generals who believe in the same ideology as the monarch can reduce the consumption of technology points. However, the game does not provide a clear and complete explanation of the technology part, which is rather perfunctory, causing many players to not study it in depth. Instead, it is easy to think that these settings are simply to fill in the generals and upgrade, which is very brainless.
A coloring game with many problems
A major feature of the game’s military strategy is that it changes the past attack and plunder that was mainly based on occupying strongholds to occupying and ruling the entire area with strongholds as the core, which is reflected on the map with different colors for each force, the so-called “painting grids”. When marching, players can paint the areas they pass through with their own colors.
In addition, players can also use conciliatory policies and the internal affairs commissions mentioned above to color areas that are not originally under their jurisdiction. The speed of coloring varies depending on the ability of the commissioned officer. Only when players completely color a certain area, they can be considered to have complete control of the territory, thereby driving the rapid growth of wealth and military strength.
Painting the grids may seem a bit obsessive-compulsive, but the coloring setting makes the military strategies of each force clearer. With the help of the various terrain passes on the map, it is convenient for players to implement more precise tactics and strategies, such as cutting off food supplies, which is known as the BUG tactic.
Food and grass are indeed very important in this game. There is a saying that goes, “Food and grass must go before the troops move.” Every battle must first consider the issue of food and grass. For example, after the troops occupy a certain stronghold, they can quickly color it through free patrols, but the food and grass are consumed very quickly, and it is common for them to be busy coloring and cause food and grass to be cut off. The same is true for the expedition. It is easy for an army to go deep into the territory alone and fall into the dilemma of long food and grass supply lines and fast consumption. Therefore, it is necessary to occupy the surrounding forces through coloring to better ensure the supply of food and grass, and to prevent the opponent from outflanking the rear of their army. In this process, players can deeply appreciate the strategic significance of certain important strongholds, and understand the sadness that Zhuge Liang had to shed tears and execute Ma Su because of the loss of Jieting.
Since food and grass are so important, the reverse is also true. We can take measures such as luring the enemy deep into our territory, making the opponent stretch the battle line, and then cut off the opponent’s food and grass supply line from the rear, and we can almost win without fighting. In addition to cutting off food, other various tactics also have room to play, especially when there are multiple parties fighting each other, the tug-of-war game is full of changes, and the clever strategies come out step by step, which is very exciting. This is due to the semi-real-time and semi-turn-based setting of the game, which ensures the implementation of various tactics, and it is also inseparable from the progress of computer AI. The IQ of the AI in the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” series has always been difficult to describe. Although this game is not perfect, it has indeed been improved to a certain extent.
The battle part of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14” can be divided into two stages – the command stage and the action stage. In the command stage, players need to arrange the generals, troops, formations and tactics. This game still retains the common “personality” settings of each general. In a comprehensive analogy, the attributes, troops, personality, tactics, and formations of generals are basically equivalent to the attack, health, active skills, and passive skills of a combat character. In addition, players can also build arrow towers, traps and other facilities at important locations like “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11”, and carry siege equipment to help in the battle.
The operation of the internal affairs management and command phases largely determines the outcome of the battle in the action phase. Because the action phase is almost automatic, similar to the mode of auto chess, the overall situation is controlled by the pre-war deployment, and there is a certain probability that accidents will occur in the battle. Although the overall mode is auto chess, after the rank is increased in the later stage, the player can release active tactics. However, problems arise at this time. Various exploration and diplomatic reports will pop up frequently in this stage. When they are processed, the battle is over and the command phase begins again, which greatly affects the combat experience of the game.
The details of the battles are also a bit unbearable to watch. In this game, you can’t directly select the type of soldiers, but use formations instead of soldiers, so there are still various types of soldiers in the battle. However, if you look closely, everyone is fighting randomly, and the close-up of the tactics is not as gorgeous as in “Three Kingdoms 9”. Most importantly, in the command phase, the two armies are still fighting, but in fact there will be no casualties. The effect can only be distinguished in the action phase, which gives people a strong sense of disobedience.
The simplicity of the duel system is also a point that people criticize. There are only five rounds of animations showing the value. In addition, duels are automatically triggered and cannot be avoided or rejected. The triggering probability is not low, especially for those generals with “one-horse” personality. Even if the troops are superior, the morale of the generals will drop sharply if they are defeated in a duel, and even the whole army will be wiped out. For some generals with low military power, it is really miserable to lead troops and prevent being forced into a duel. The reason why there is a certain probability of accidents in battle mentioned above is due to this.
In addition, the combination system between some generals gives too much bonus to the power of tactics, which affects the balance too much, such as the brave generals in Liu Bei’s camp. Of course, this is a matter of opinion. Some players like to put together a powerful combination of famous generals, but some players may think that since this game has added the largest number of generals in history, 1,000, most of them should not be allowed to just explore and occupy territory, but should focus on balance to give more generals the opportunity to appear.
A slow pace with an eye on the big picture
After talking about some specific gameplay and changes of the game, let’s talk about the rhythm of the game from the overall perspective. Players should be able to feel during the game that although the internal affairs part is simplified, the overall rhythm of the game is slow, especially in the early and middle stages, the growth rate of resources and troops is annoying, the marching speed of the large map is touching, and the coloring system is annoying. The internal affairs seem simple, but there are actually a lot of things to do, such as squatting, recruiting, and reading proposals.
However, this may also be intentional by the producer. After all, the fun of most works in the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” series lies in the development and breakthrough in the early stage. In the middle and late stages, it is just a smooth push, which is boring but must be done. Just like some open world games, in the early stage, you are cautious and cautious, and in the later stage, the equipment and talents are all up, and it is very simple to push points and brush maps, just like going through the motions. Therefore, after unifying the world in this game, you can find that the rhythm of the early stage is indeed deliberately slowed down. Under high difficulty, the difficulty of early development and breakthrough has also increased a lot, so that players can better experience the fun of the hard work of starting a business in the early stage.
Of course, after development, the late game is still as boring as before. After all, even the highest difficulty only limits the player’s resources. If the computer AI level does not improve substantially, the mid-to-late game will still be a smooth ride. Fortunately, in the late game, you can appoint one or two people to manage a large area, and you can directly launch a general offensive strategy mode, which greatly shortens the boring time in the late game. This also shows from another aspect that the game has a good grasp of the overall rhythm, especially the early rhythm.
Finally, let me mention the optimization issues of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14”. This is also an old problem in the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” series. Especially when the new game was first released, there were constant negative reviews such as freezes, flashbacks, and 30-frame locks. This game is no exception. High-configuration machines often encounter freezes when zooming in and out of large maps. In addition, the default 30-frame lock problem also requires you to find a strategy to solve it yourself. Since it is a long-standing problem that often occurs, it is time for Koei Tecmo to solve it properly.
Conclusion: A culmination? Too early to tell
“Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14” inherits the essence of the 9th generation of gameplay, while combining some characteristics of the 11th generation of works, maintaining sufficient strategy and playability. “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” 9th and 11th generations are both highly praised by the player community, but it is too early to say that this new work is the epitome of excellent gameplay. After all, some of its problems cannot be ignored.
The internal affairs of the game seem to be simplified, but in fact they are not simple. All the player’s appointments and choices are crucial. Although there is still no breakthrough in diplomacy and strategy, and it is a bit tasteless, the overall playability is not reduced. The large map strategic gameplay with the addition of a coloring system, coupled with some gameplay elements that have been proven in previous games, provides a deeper strategic planning and maintains the overall planning sense of the “Three Kingdoms” series of strategizing and maneuvering. However, the details of the battle part are not handled in place, and the single duel is simple and the verbal battle is cancelled, which gives the player a clearly insufficient combat experience. The IQ of the computer AI and the rhythm of the game have been improved to a certain extent in this game, but the optimization problem needs to be solved later. Overall, this is a work that can meet the main needs of “Three Kingdoms” fans, but its style may not satisfy all fans. Players who are interested in the game but have not started yet can look forward to the future PK version.
