They’ll suggest a course of action via icons in the lower part of the screen, like training your soldiers to increase proficiency in spears, horses, and bows, or taking steps to improve commerce. So is trusting your advisors, which will in turn improve your relationship and rapport. The streamlining simplifies commands and delegation is important here. You can engage in debates with the advisors of foreign leaders to try to get them to do what you want as well. Need to go on a diplomatic mission? The game will tell you how many days you need and actually go with your step by step through the process. Now, everything is in real time and the days tick by, making things feel more natural. In previous iterations, you were given the opportunity to make your commands city by city, then have your turn come to an end while other warlords made their moves. The evolution of the interface and turned based elements confused me initially, but I liked how the game has embraced real time. While the core concepts remain similar, the execution in XIII was vastly different and there were lots of nice changes. It gave many obscure characters a face, especially since the cast of hundreds in the books can be hard to keep track of. Not only that, but the portrait art for the series has always been fantastic, and ROTKXIII has some of the best art in that sense. Saving Guan Yu and Zhang Fei from dying when they did (and hence avoiding the fall of a grief-stricken Liu Bei going after Sun Quan, only to face disastrous consequences) was one of my favorite parts. Through the ROTK games, I was able to rewrite their fates. Some of my favorite characters died under tragic circumstances in the novel.

I mentioned this in my last article, but I loved how the game let me rewrite history. The epic novels were an important part of my childhood, so the possibility of rival warlords like Cao Cao and Lu Bu serving under Liu Bei blew my mind. What’s great about the games are that you can recruit some of the best generals and tacticians in the different factions, from warriors like Xu Chu and Zhao Yun, then unite them together under your banner. In terms of the Three Kingdoms saga itself, think Game of Thrones fused with the works of Shakespeare, only set in China around 200 C.E., and you’ll have an idea of how important and influential it is in Asia. The Romance games are almost like Pokemon with famous historical figures from the eponymous Chinese saga, mixed together with the PC strategy classic, Civilization.

Steam romance of the three kingdoms 13