The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is perhaps one of the most famous pieces of historical literature ever written. Written in the 14th century, the novel retold the fascinating period in China that saw deep political intrigue mixed with larger than life generals and strategists. Its romanticised telling of events is what has made it so attractive to movie makers and game makers alike.
This is perhaps why there have been 14 of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms strategy games, not mentioning the long running Dynasty Warriors series or its titular Total War rendition. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV was released in February of last year, but its new Diplomacy and Strategy expansion, hopes to bring out the character-driven intrigue of the source material.
Learn to Rule
Being a strategy game, it’s important to get through detailed tutorials that will set you on your way. There are four of these for the base game, which will cover how you manage your cities and government, as well as the core mechanics that drive conquering and attacking other kingdoms.
These tutorials are okay, but slightly restricted not just by what you can explore, but how long you have to do everything. You may become frustrated at some of them, as not completing an objective in a certain number of turns, will force you to restart.
For the new Diplomacy and Strategy expansion, you will be given two additional tutorials which are marked to show newcomers what has been added. These two tutorials will take you through some of the new features that the DLC adds, such as the ability to form alliances and trade with other kingdoms. You will also be briefly introduced to new factions, most of which are outside of the source material, but adds some extra flavour anyway.
Unite China
The majority of your time spent with Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV will see you battling with enemy provinces or attempting to conquer neutral land. This is done cleverly by having you paint the land behind you, meaning conquering a settlement isn’t necessarily the full objective. The land around it will stay neutral unless you employ a city overseer or get your army to conquer the lands, without doing so will net you penalties for that area.
Enemies can do the same, painting areas that they move into. This can make battles interesting as its easy to cut off enemy troops from supply routes by painting the land around them, isolating them, and breaking their morale. It makes battle play out like a board game, where you will be constantly thinking about your army’s routes and positioning, made easier by innovative movement mechanics that allows point to point planning.
Kingdom of Admin
When you aren’t marching armies and conquering land, you will be in the game’s interface trying to boost your numbers where you can. Things like your economy or supplies are very simple and displayed as statistics and numbers, which can be off-putting for people wanting something more exciting or engaging. Appointing generals in different roles depending on their stats is pretty much all you do, and it can get repetitive and tiresome quite quickly, despite their being huge amounts of officers to find and employ.
Whilst the interface is simple enough to read and understand, navigating it is a different story. You will be using a confusing mixture of buttons even when doing the same action. Ending your turn is done by pressing Square, and then X to confirm, which also happens in other confirmation actions. When manoeuvring in multiple choice menus it can also be difficult to understand what is highlighted and what isn’t. You will soon get used to selecting the wrong option from time to time.
Art of War
ROTK XIV looks fine and is complimented by some nice artwork that represents the characters. At the beginning of scenarios, you will be greeted by opening cinematics that will introduce you to the setting of that campaign and these do their job well.
Other than that, RoTK XIV is mostly numbers and menus. The different colours that begin to engulf China can be satisfying to see grow over time, especially if its your kingdom’s colour, but there’s not much else to be impressed with aesthetically.
The Romance
The tried and tested stories and scenarios from its source material are there, with more introduced from the expansion pack. Battles like the famous Chi Bi conflict have been added in, which fans of RoTK will enjoy. Unfortunately, the writing during character interactions is awful. Every bit of dialogue is terribly wooden and resembles conversation between badly programmed AI.
The reason that this story has been told across so many different mediums, but with the story unchanged is testament to its political intrigue and characters. Unfortunately, that is the weakest point of this game and can make the long and sometimes slow paced campaigns, drag on with very little satisfaction.
Additional Content
With the expansion pack being mostly focused on more character and faction interactions, this means that nothing worthwhile is added to the base game in that respect. Dialogue continues to be very poor, so any alliance or political actions that the DLC allows you to take, just isn’t very interesting or fun.
The editor and the additional war chronicles modes may add some longevity to fans of the base game, but for newcomers there is nothing to find in these places that really improve the core experience of the game. Instead, you may be left put off by the amount of content for a game that can be a struggle to get through once.
Verdict
ROTK XIV and its Diplomacy and Strategy expansion pack, are proof of the series pull considering how long it has been around for. Whilst the source material can elevate mediocre games thanks to its storytelling and historical setting, ROTK XIV misses the mark when trying to retell these stories through its characters and moments. The result is a sub-par strategy game.
