Total War: THREE KINGDOMS Reviews

Great game! Engaging, at time frustrating :) but overall great way to spend evening away from daily tasks and routine. This coming from 40 years old! Highly recommended.

I am not someone whose played much Total War, dabbled in WH2, this, and WH3. That said, I really enjoy this game's format and presentation (albeit, I am also a huge RotTK fan, with and without Koei's involvement). The characters and duel system, being able to build them up. I wish it had a more free play mode, like the WH alternatives, but I enjoyed most of my time learning and playing this.

It's a great addition to the franchise. The faction and campaign mechanics keep the game interesting. It's more about building up a legacy, characters and diplomacy than conquest and large-scale battles. If everything works well, this game offers a very rewarding experience. That said, I have to say I'm not entirely sold on the game design: (1) The UI is clunky. Most of the time, you're switching between different subscreens to decide where to assign characters, what to build, or who to trade with. All the info you need is a bit hidden, so you have to keep switching screens. It also doesn't help that for non-Chinese speakers the names of territories and characters seem extremely similar. Factions are named after the leader, and when the leader dies, so does the faction's name, which creates total confusion for players trying to understand complex alliances. If you know your Chinese history and can relate to the historical characters, you'll get way more out of this game. (2) Most of the time, it's not about planning and executing military campaigns (which includes fighting battles), but more about comparing numbers and working out which decision gives you a better reward. I don't find it fun to think about whether it's better to put a high percentage on a low number or a low percentage on a high number just to see your income rise for a little bit. That's not what Total War is about. I find it really annoying having to constantly look at numbers going up and down and managing all my characters in the later stages. I'd say there's too much focus on characters. (3) The graphics are neat and the art direction is laudable, but the visual design often gets in the way of the gameplay. It's not always clear what the icons are supposed to show, and working out which unit is better is a bit of a pain. You have to switch between views on the campaign map to get a good idea of alliances and faction power dynamics. The animations in battles are ridiculous and not realistic at all. Units just jump around, tossed around like funny rag dolls. Just to be clear, this game is a mythological Total War title, NOT a historical one, and it's in the same vein as Troy and Pharaoh. It's a question of taste, really, but the difference between a rewarding gaming experience and historical accuracy has been done better in other games, like Shogun 2 or Attila.

If you are a fan of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms books, movies, TV shows or anything, and love RTS games. Then I can only urge you to play this game. Once you get past the learning curve, I also suggest modding as it enhances the experience tenfold.

The bastard of Total War, and not in a good way. As someone who beat Shogun 2 on Legendary, I feel like I know when a CA game is tight or not. This is one of those games that plays better in your head than it does in real life. Three Kingdoms is an arcade brawler. It has very little strategical depth. Unlike the previous games, you no longer build the corresponding building to unlock certain units; in my opinion, this was a mistake. For 9/10s of the game you will be using peasant militias. By the time you unlock your elite units, it will be too late/the campaign will be over. Diversity, strategy, and counters are very, very marginalized in this edition of Total War. Bugs are common and rife. On my most recent playthrough Yuan Shao took a commandary from beneath my feet, so my three armies were ''locked'' in his sphere of influence. Even though I had a military alliance with him, this made him aggressive towards me. I had no choice but to abandon my playthrough. Likewise, the game will also stagger when processing turns, and sometimes will lock up altogether, forcing a hard restart. As I'm writing this, the fourth turn of my current campaign has locked up... -again- ... on Liu Bei's turn. Edit: No, wait. This is the fifth time. One of the characters is completely unplayable because his turn 3 always freezes without fail. Other characters play fine. In battle, units rub shoulders and don't clash. If you zoom in, you are stupid, because it looks awful. The AI is braindead levels of stupid. It will force march its way into your territory, stare at your commandary, and if you pursue it; it will stand there and let you attack it at a serious advantage. (Very Tired in battle.) This applies to every faction, every enemy, every Warlord. You basically fight a punch mole; not the legendary Cao Cao or Sun Ce. This is really poisonous to the game's vibe, as in your head you're role-playing for the fate of China, then the actual enemy is sat in your territory just waiting for you to take advantage of how lame it is. F*** this. TL;DR: Don't buy it. What an absolute waste of time. I reinstall this once a year forgetting all the issues it has, then promptly remember them. CA garbage.

5/5, this is my favorite Total War game. Amazing art, fantastic balance and design, with strong economy, diplomacy, political campaigns. I think the only two problems the game faces, is in comparison to something like Warhammer, the unit roster lacks a little variety. And, it suffers from an UI and presentation information where too much information is presented at times, and at the same time not explained very well. If you push through that, the actual game and design is amazing.

sadly the game AI is a joke, they replenish 10x faster, always know when to attack and game dont explain how anything works, totally disappointting as apart from name, its nothing to do with the three kingdoms, story says do this, then nothing, it just stops, and when it looks like it is playing out, the AI ruin it, after 100 hours, i cba anymore, and when youtube vids just show how to expolite tje game, and not play it, then that says it all

Loved the game, wish it was supported to the expected level to reach the romance time period. This is my most favorite total war and hope its revisited and expanded on.

I played most of total war games before trying this out, very impressed that the base game works well. This game is great for newcomers of total war, especially those from warhammer. There's some notable features that you should check out first: [u]Diplomacy[/u]: strong point of the campaign gameplay and extremely important, you have much more options in making peace, requesting/giving aids, forming non-binding coalition. Keep in mind that the AI is also active in diplomacy, expecting them backstabbing, forming alot of vassal, coalition/alliance if you dont act fast [u]Campaign gameplay[/u]: The map is big and settlements are connected to each other, so don't expect alot of choke point and easy movement like other total war games. This make your armies deployment much more strategic, and you absolutely must pick your fight, not just defending but also where to strike so the AI cant react quick enough Buildings have good variety and allow you to go ham for economy/food production too [u]Battle gameplay[/u]: Easy to understand. Like shogun, you don't need huge roster, you only need to use the unit type the correct way. Also like warhammer, there are single entity heroes, and elite units with big stats and those have major influence in turning the tide of battle. It's a mix of both, so don't expect fighting with pure tactics in mind like Attila or godlike hero/magic cheesing like in warhammer. However i would prefer a more tactics oriented gameplay and some features im not fond of: [u]Retinue system[/u]: an army consists of 3 commanders and their own retinue of 6 units. this allows more flexible in managing, combining army roster but still inferior to the old game where you can move units out without the need to have a commander/general. Another issue of this is you are locked into managing 3 more generals instead of 1 each army, especially when you have to consider their loyalty, their office title as well as microing them in battle. [u]Record mode[/u]: this is for more "realistic" gameplay, but it's like an afterthought. the core gameplay is romance of three kingdom inspiration, so you would handicap yourself with less intended features in this mode instead, much more boring even though you wont have to face general with hundreds of kills. This game has pretty good replayability, semi-sandboxish experience. CA stopped supporting this game tho, keep that in mind

Re-play-ability with many factions. Ever increasing handicaps can be applied to make the game as challenging and fun as you could wish. I like the interaction of character and family relationships, the struggle to keep your court functioning smoothly while waging war against your enemies. How you treat defeated enemies can impact relationships both in your court, also in diplomacy.