Total War: THREE KINGDOMS

50 series gpus have had a soft incompatibility with this game for months. The UI will flicker and disappear during battles making it impossible to see where your troops are going. You have to work around this by enabling smooth motion or limiting your framerate by 40-50 fps. Game is good otherwise, but wow this should've been fixed already.

600+ Hours in this game (and many more in other TW titles) and never played legendary before. Wanted to try my first legendary campaign ever last night. Played Liu Bei from the 183 start and had my army wiped out and LOST the campagin in 7 turns and less than 60 minutes.... Fastest campaign ever finished in any total war games LOL
10/10 will try setting another personal record of fastest defeat again

I want to apologize to the publisher and developer because I played this pirated game for about 300+ hours from 3 years ago, now I have money and bought this game with full DLC. Thanks pal.

"any princeling born after the fourth year of Jian'an can't rule... all they know is tea house, charge they troops, sword dance, be with concubine and male companion, eat hot pork & lie"
-Kong Rong, Han dynasty poet and descendent of Confucius, 208 AD
10/10 truly an amazing game

I can’t believe I didn’t find this game earlier. I’m totally new to the Total War series and it took me a bit to figure everything out, but now I’m completely hooked.

I keep telling myself “just one more turn” and suddenly hours are gone. The mix of battles, diplomacy, and all the little political stuff is just insanely fun. The characters feel alive, the map is gorgeous, and every decision feels meaningful.

It’s been a very long time since a game pulled me in like this, and now I can’t stop thinking about my campaign and next moves even when I’m not playing.

If you’re thinking about trying it: do it. I wish I had started playing way sooner...

Should you play this game ? Is this the best total war to choose ? The answer is yes.
I’ve been asking myself the same question 2 months ago, as I wanted to play a new total war (last one was probably Attila and Warhammer 2).
And thanks god I made this choice.
This the most refined total war game out there and clearly hundred time better than Warhammer III that is receiving plenty of DLCs. I love fantasy, and I also tried WHIII, but this game is overrated, and I was deeply disappointed. Any player that ever touched Three Kingdoms can tell: this is pure diamond.
You may hesitate since it’s ancient China and you may not be familiar with this era. I was totally ignorant about this period, and I was so into the game that I started to be interested to the lore (it’s so cool).
GOOD POINTS
First, this game is beautiful, in many ways:
- Interface is great
- Construction buildings look cool when you click a commandery
- Character artworks are very nice
- Map looks awesome, there are a lot of visual and sound details when you zoom in
- Battles look so great, nice screenshots to take
Second point, there are plenty of interesting mechanics:
- Many faction leaders have special buildings, capacities, attributes and units that can be very cool, unique, and enjoyable, making every game different in its own way
- Despite some weird and rare cases, diplomacy is overall very nice, lot of possibilities, and AI is doing fine
- Characters have a LOT of distinct attributes that affect their administrative, battle and campaign skills, so there are plenty of possibilities (Stats, capacity tree, items, traits, roles)
- To complete the previous point, you can even give special titles to your characters, which is very cool and boost them as well (example: General who gives tranquillity to the north, orator, etc).
- Court, relationships and administration is interesting, and scales as you rank up. At some point, you can regularly choose special events/boost for your faction.
- There is a spy system that is cool and give plenty of possibilities (such as your spy becoming the faction leader of the faction he was sent in)
- Research tree is fine and allow a lot of different possible choices that are decent
- Your goal is to be emperor. If the original emperor is still governing, an additional imperial system exists and affect slightly your faction (ex: you can be marked as imperial enemy by the emperor)
- Food and money are balanced and never seemed frustrating
- There are actually a ton of little mechanics that are cool, but I won’t detail it here (resources, assignments, seasons, faction leader tendencies in diplomacy, satisfaction, xp and weapon, rank scaling possibilities, unique features, etc)
There are a lot of things to consider, and even with +300h I’m pretty sure I’m missing some stuff to optimize everything. It can be overwhelming at start but keep it up and you will have a blast.
About battles:
- Best battles in the entire franchise in term of gameplay
- Units are reactive, the interface is easy to understand and managing unit is pleasant
- Units are not randomly stopping to do what you asked them (it happens for me in WHIII and ruin the game really)
- You can burn stuff like forest, and can be game breaker
- Generals are cool as they have special abilities, and if you don’t like this kind of gameplay, you can just change the game mode, so your general is just a unit as in total war Attila (and other historical title I believe)
- I said it already, but it’s so good looking
About units:
- There are some very cool units, with some elite units that are unlocked by research (every branch has its specialized unit), or by being emperor for example
CRITICS
Visually:
- If you get interested in this era, you will notice that non-principal characters lack a bit of diversity, which can be disappointing
Mechanics:
- As always for many games, mechanics could be improved, more complex, more in depth (research tree, spy, court, events etc)
- Both campaign and battle difficulty are not really how smart an AI is, but rather how cheated he is, which is sad. Instead of fighting a smarter enemy, you fight a dude with boosted statistics (battle) or biased against you for some mysterious reasons (diplomacy). Also, AI are kind of ignoring diplomatic maluses, and can be best friend easily with other factions compared to you (at least in higher difficulties)
- Spy system could be improved to be more complete on some little points
- A lot of things are not really explained and you kind of discover them at some point randomly (can be a good point in a way)
About units:
- Even if there are cool units, there are not that much different units compared to what could be done, and that can make different campaigns feel repetitive on this point
GOOD NEWS
All these critics ? Can be fixed.
Indeed, I highly recommend using a modpack called TROM+TUP (there are also other mudpack that are great for this).
This mod will introduce new art for secondary characters, add some other characters, increases mechanics in the game (skill tree, attributes, etc), allow a better control on the game, and most important, it adds many units that are VERY COOL and different, with a unique recruitment system. Playing base game and playing with this mod are both cool, but clearly this modpack increases significantly the play time, making you re-discover the game. Strongly recommend trying it out after some vanilla campaigns.
Anyway, this is the coolest total war in the last years, it feels still pretty recent even if he was released 6 years ago. And I think it is way more fun and pleasant to play compared to Warhammer III. As long as a new historical big title is not out, this game is clearly the best you can play

47.5 hours later and I can confidently say: I hvae NO idea whaat I was doing at first 10... But somehow ended up conquering half of China anyway.
Total War: Three Kingdoms is one of those games that throws you into chaos and just watches you panic. At the start, I was clicking buttons like a lost general who forgot his own battle plan. Diplomacy? Confusing. Economy? Questionable. Army management? Vibes.
But somewhere along the way. it clicked.
Suddenly I'm negotiation like a politician, setting up alliances I fully intend to betray later, and positioning my troops like I actually graduated from ancient warfare school. The battle system? Chef's kissss. Nothing beats watching your perfectly planned strategy either unfold beautifully... or collapse instantly because you forgot one tiny detail.
The colors, the map, the battles. it's like painting a masterpiece while everything is on fire. I love how overwhelming it feels at first, but once you start understanding it, the complexity becomes the fun. You go from "what is happening to" to "I AM the one making things happen".
10/10 would lose sleep again
my first total war game
.. just one quick new campaign to see a different faction. Just one...