Total War: Three Kingdoms
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is the first in the multi award-winning strategy series to recreate epic conflict across ancient China. Combining a gripping turn-based campaign game of empire-building, statecraft and conquest with stunning real-time battles, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS redefines the series in an age of heroes and legends. China in 190CE Welcome to a new era of legendary conquest. This beautiful but fractured land calls out for a new emperor and a new way of life. Unite China under your rule, forge the next great dynasty, and build a legacy that will last through the ages. Choose from a cast of 12 legendary Warlords and conquer the realm. Recruit heroic characters to aide your cause and dominate your enemies on military, technological, political, and economic fronts. Will you build powerful friendships, form brotherly alliances, and earn the respect of your many foes?
Steam User 130
> Send a spy to spy on an enemy faction.
> Spy gains a position in the enemy faction's noble court.
> Spy begins liking the enemy faction more than my faction.
> Spy resigns and becomes loyal to enemy faction.
> Ex spy becomes enemy faction's leader.
> Declares war on me.
10/10
Steam User 74
This was, in my opinion, the last great Total War. It fully embraced its setting, and introduced new and innovative gameplay elements while keeping true to the soul of Total War. Many will criticize the fantastical elements of Romance mode, or the neglect of Records mode, but in my opinion Records mode is a historical experience on part with legacy historical Total War games, and becomes an all-time great with the mod TROM. Trom is to Three Kingdoms what Stainless Steel was to Medieval 2, or LME4 was to Napoleon Total War.
Some of the things I love about this game:
1. The retinue system. The retinue system introduces a happy medium of army stacks being tied to generals to avoid stack spamming by the AI, and the flexibility of having the option of breaking out sub-sections of an army to accomplish side-tasks.
2. Simple campaign mechanics like an actual population mechanic, a food mechanic, and an army supply mechanic makes this one of the most historically authentic campaign experiences in Total War.
3. The emphasis on characters brings back the old magic from Medieval 2 Total War, but it's built-in to the game.
4. Massive scale. Ultra unit scale in this game is 240 men per infantry unit. That's the biggest vanilla Total War unit size I've ever seen.
5. Diplomacy. It's extremely well done and enhances the gameplay, rather than being a chore.
I think the main thing that Western audiences won't like is the setting and the Chinese names. To this I really urge people to try and embrace the setting rather than being turned off by it. The Han Dynasty was one of the greatest empires in the history of mankind, and the names become way more digestible.
This really should have been the foundation that future total war games were built on, including Warhammer 3, with all of the major features that define Three Kingdoms. But Creative Assembly is allergic to progress and evolved backwards instead.
Steam User 70
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS has the best diplomacy system of all Total War games.
I was able to win just by having a food monopoly starving others and simply purchasing all their lands in exchange for food. I always wanted to have this kind of victory.
Steam User 62
Decent enough that I had clocked over 1k hours, kinda without knowing.
I still feel like I have much to learn about the history and the characters that are presented in this game.
History games and history itself is what I like I guess, more than the gaming part of it.
In that sense, gaming is more of an interactive tool to learn about history.
From this perspective, though obviously romanticised, hence not entirely a historically accurate sim of this chain-of-events that happened nearly 2 millennia ago, presented in part as it did in this game, has been quite an enjoyable ride for me.
I hope anyone who is kinda like me could enjoy it as well.
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS gets my recommendation.
This was my 2 cents, pls do as you will.
Steam User 73
Why did they actually abandon this game, like why?
Steam User 68
My favorite total war.
I started playing total war with the warhammer ones.
I don't even remember why I bought this one.
Things I liked that are specific to Tree Kingdoms, or change from warhammer:
- Art style
- UI
- Duels between generals
- RPG elements that affect tactical gameplay (night attacks, weapon options, flaming projectiles)
- Reform tree (research but so vast you can make a different playthrough depending on which paths you chose)
- Cavalry weight: cavalry and mounted generals actually being able to push through infantry (somewhat) is such a breath of fresh air in this series
- Building up cities is very satisfying
- 3 faction types: despite everyone being from the same period, warlords, bandits and rebels add variety
Don't ask about the 7 princes thing, or the jungle tribes. Apart from these two that, in my opinion, aren't pertinent, the DLCs offer interesting additions.
CA please make more romanced historical settings for total war, with this game's pattern. I've seen how the Troy and pharao ones play, and I'm not impressed.
Steam User 43
I'm writing this partially as a message to my future self, because I am rapidly becoming a huge fan of this game, however, I have seen what huge fans of this game look like, and they don't seem happy, either with Creative Assembly as a whole or how they've handled this specific game. So, in case that happens, and I become someone furious at the lack of a Northern expansion or the balance of the indigenous southern factions, let me just say that I love this game. I've played 30 hours, I've finished a campaign, and it's the most fun I've had with any Total War game. For the first time, Total War is about people more than armies, and anchoring this game around the magnetic personalities of the cast of Romance of the Three Kingdoms gives this game an astonishing amount of character and life that colours so much of the experience, with unique mechanics that reflect Cao Cao's scheming or Liu Bei's bonds of brotherhood. Placing the human faces of one of the most popular and influential works of fiction in human history on Total War mechanics does so much to enliven them, especially when they do superhuman feats of taking on entire regiments by themselves, or seeing an ocean of armies part to allow two master swordsmen to duel for the fate of all China.
It has a lot of the same problems and limitations as most Total War games, but there are a lot of mechanical changes that I do like. Total Warhammer 2 had even more asymmetrical factions but I found in my brief time with it that I was often frustrated at how often fights between individual units would drag on, where it seemed like however I positioned my units, however deftly I tried to flank, or how many gaps I would leave in my lines, the statistically better unit would win time after time, and it eventually led to play where I would just line up my armies, march them forward, and let them fight it out in a big line, because I felt so little effect from any attempts at ambush or cleverness. Here, it feels like positioning and tactical play matters so much more. I've won battles handily that the AI insisted I had absolutely no chance of winning through careful positioning of missiles, spearmen, and a lot of running horsemen around to charge into people from the back with my bro, my homie, my absolute Guy, Xiaohou Dun. I've gotten cocky and turned convincing routs into embarrassing skirmishes that would force me to pull back and reinforce. At least on Normal difficulty, this was not a game about composing the perfectly balanced army, it was a game about being clever in the moment, about the kind of tactical moves and big plays that someone like Cao Cao would pull off in the novel.
It's a game about making you feel like a mastermind just like him, about feeling like these larger-than-life figures, and also, the quiet sadness of these people dying and falling out of history, replaced by people you don't recognise, of the emptiness that comes when you defeat your most bitter enemy. It is the game that, for me, has come the absolute closest to fulfilling the intoxicating promise of Total War.
I could be wrong about this. Maybe in like 5 campaigns time, I'll see through the lines of code and into the artifice that underpins all of these kinds of games. Maybe the majesty and the fantasy will be gone by then. But that's why this message exists, future me. That even though you may not be loving the game now the way you did back then, the love that exists now burns so, so bright, and I don't want you to forget it.