Outside of the battle, you’re left with the planning and managing of your cities. As previously mentioned, it does nothing to rouse your excitement visually, but if you like watching your team in Football Manager as spots in a green rectangle, you’ll have no issues. There are also special actions you can use to either bolster your defences or add extra oomph when attacking. A simple click on a particular unit (spearman or archers for example) can be posted around the map, or sent in to attack. Depending on whether you are invading or defending, your battlefield is populated with blue and red circles that represent both armies. Once you’ve chosen things like your officers and sub-officers, rations and what types of units you want to deploy, the art of war gets interesting. Whilst they may not look particularly special, the battles are fun and relatively easy to get into. The first story arcs are tedious, but when you finally get into the nitty gritty of battle the game starts to pick up rapidly, providing a great deal of satisfaction. Learning how to build an army, battle opposing forces and protecting your city takes time at first, it’s all about building relationships with your officers and leaders around China by buying gifts and showing them with goodwill wherever you can find it.

You’ll take charge of many different leaders and warriors as you become familiar with the tools needed to unify China, weaved in with a pleasantly smart story.

Hero Mode acts as a tutorial to the main game, and lasts for over 10 hours.

The game’s Hero Mode does its very best to hold your hand and take you through the basics, however, it can take a good few hours before you finally start to grasp the core concepts of what you need to do. It seems like this is a common critique when it comes to the Romance series, but it’s something that should be pointed out, especially if you are new to them. There are endless menus, orders and information to soak up when first playing, and many will be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options available. They’ve appeared on practically every console and computer you can think of, but do they still have a place among so many other current strategy games in today’s gaming circles, and is Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII (or RTK13 for short) worth your time?ĭepending on what you want out of a strategy game and how much time you have, RTK13 is an excellent strategy that’ll have you pondering each conundrum with military and political precision. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a video game series based on a historical novel first published in 1925, and while the series may not be as old as its literature counterpart, it’s still been a part of gaming for over 30 years, the first one coming out in 1985.

Romance of the three kingdoms 13 tips