I dodged this game, because critics have been so harsh about it. Even after hearing it was transfered to english, I avoided it because of the things people had said about it. But, I had been a dedicated fan of the series since the first one released for (ehem, yep I am gettin up there in years haha) nintendo. I have always loved this series, not because of Dynasty Warriors, like so many (although there is nothing wrong with that)....Or because of these games, but because I had read the stories of the era if the Han dynasty already. Yes, I am THAT big of a history nerd. How many of us actually read this stuff for entertainment. But I tell you now, its one of the most interesting collections of historical tales, with more larger then life heroes, then any 100 action movies combined! I loved them growing up! It had been a couple of years since I read them, when I was later settled down and married... At the time, video games were not really my thing, but my kids loved thier Mario games, and thier Nintedo.And so it was while shopping with my (ex) wife for Xmas gifts for my kids at Toys r Us one year, I saw this ROTK title sitting on the shelf (next to Gengis Khan at that...But this was better lol)....And grabbed it up shocked that they had made a game of Luo Guan Zongs amazing novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms!!!! And it lived up to the novel imo (back then we were impressed by nintendo, LOL wow how technology changes!!!)...from then on, I pre ordered every 3 Kingdoms game ever released as it came out, and became a devoted fan of Koei, and all of its spin offs.( With the surge of fantasy popularity where the hell is a new Gemfire? Had to ask lol)..The only ROTK that ever disapointed me was 11...And after hearing from several critics that this was a backslide from 11, I dodged it. But out of boredom, I looked up a lets play on Youtube...And man am I glad I did!! This is the follow up to 10 that 12 SHOULD have been, and strides forward, not backwards, from what had come before...Sure, its more of what the series has always offered, but this time, they unleashed all they had been holding back....It has awesome CG scenes, deep and complex mechanics, and for once, the game doesnt assume you are too stupid to handle complexity and a plethora of commands to remember. In other words, they didnt try to keep it simple, but they made a game within a game to teach you all you need in a fun and interesting way through its heros mode!!!

Your first steps will be playing Hero mode....Youll need this, but dont worry, its actually the best done tutorial-game mode introduction any series ever did in this genre! It will take you on a tour of the Three Kingdoms saga, playing through some of the most important events of the Era, which will be nostalgic for long time fans (or Dynasty Warriors fans) and will familiarize the main characters of the story for you new people to the series. Step by step you will learn all of the optons at your disposal for uniting china later. As you complete each chapter, you will unlock a ton of extras, from portraits to use in Character creation mode, to legendary characters among other things...

Speaking of Character generation, once again you may create 150 male or female officers of your own design. Setting everything from portrait to weapon style to personallity. It even has an auto-create feature for those of you who want tons of new characters but dont want to spend 20 hrs making them....Although some of us do just that, because with every character, you breath a bit more life into an already complex world of loyalty and hatred, ambition and revenge. You can set parents, husbands, wives, and children up, as well as likely friends or sworn brothers and sisters right from the start. Make your own rivals or your own bloodline for a Dynasty of your creation. No two people ever own the same game, thats for sure. It will even generate names for your characters, for those who dont want weird names but would rather keep the immersion solid with Chinese names ( but there is nothing wrong with weird names either lol, its your world after all)....

The artwork is very themed towards Chinese culture of the first century AD, and is done beautifully, and now the portraits show the head in menus, but the whole body on character sheets, and the character portrait art has never been better. Almost all portraits are new, and not rehashed copys as 11 and 10 had....

The English transaltion seems very solid, as all the text and menus are easily understandable, although the voices themselves remain untranslated, but this works well with keeping the immersion going too!

Once you complete hero mode, the gloves come off, and you then set towards your rise to power, either as a ruler or an officer or a wandering nobody bent on claiming the imperial throne from nothing. You have your work cut out for you, but once you have a grasp of all the various game mechanics (and its deep) you'll rise to power through diplomacy, conquest, loyalty, or treachery.....

As you can tell, I REALLY love this title, and I wish I had come sooner but better late then never...So am I recommending this to you? Well, some of you, yes.

These are niche games. You will either love Three kingdoms titles or you will hate them. The names are the first barrier any fan of the series come too. Names like Cao Cao, or Xiahou Dun will seem foriegn, and hard to remember or relate to. But this passes within a few weeks of playing, this I promise.

Another thing you will need is patience, and a mind for slower paced strategy games. If you loved earlier 3 kingdoms games, youll love this one even more. If you loved civilization or 4X games like fallen enchantress, you will probably like this as well (although this isnt fantasy, the over-the-top heroes and villians kind of feels like a fantasy game lol).

Battles are real time with pause. Each character has skills that can be used on the battlefield. Castle seiges and land and naval battles are all here. And even though its real time-pause, I would have prefered they kept it turn based as it used to be. While real time is ok, some games work better with turn based, and these battles are the only thing that falls short in my opinion. Luckily, the rest of the game IS good enough to give this a pass. Its acceptable, but it could have been much better.

Duels and Debates are also back, in which 2 characters compete, using special commands in turn based fasion, only now you need only go 5 rounds, with whomever having the most health winning at the end of it. These are done in 3d, and look fantastic. Dynasty Warriors fans will love these (even though they are turn based) as they are very cinematic confrontations.

Koei has always know these games wont make them rich. They do these for the fans, not the profits. But to keep up with costs, they are ussually expensive titles. But thats ok. Because 3 kingdoms games are not your average cut-paste 4X strategy games. They are alive with around 1000 characters whom all have thier own personalities, strenghts, and weaknesses. Think Game of thrones story on steroids and youll get the idea haha! For what they pour into these games, they deserve what they ask for to us dedicated to the series. Thats the thing about serious strategy game fans though, We may be few, but we are devoted. These games are easy to jump into if you have previous RTK experiance, but for those who dont, skipping the tutorial is not wise
I'm glad Koei didnt give up on this, its flag ship series, and I am more then glad that they remembered us English speaking fans. My way of thanking them, is by telling you, who are pondering this title, the truth about what youll be getting into....A superior chapter in the 3 kingdoms series. If your a former fan, or looking for an epic, menu driven strategy game will RPG elements such as leveling your characters, and conquering a country....Get this. Its very worthy of the series!

Romance of the three Kingdoms 13 is a superb addition to the series that has lasted over 30 years. It's a wonderful game with a vastly different style from the previous PC English release (RTK11).

Unfortunately, there have been many unjustified criticisms of the game. I hope prospective buyers will look past those reviews. There are people who complain about the graphics. But loyal fans never really cared much about flashy graphics, and in fact it's an advantage as it means the game runs quickly even on low-end hardware.

There are those who complain about the price. But how many games in the world has around 700 playable characters - with individual unique portraits (and some characters have multiple portraits!), biographies and statistics that correlate to history and/or fiction ? Many RPGs have just generic characters (eg: Villager xyz)... Nobunaga's ambition may have more officers but they include generic characters / portraits. In RTK13, one can play as ruler, viceroy, minister, governor, plain officer or free officer ... a virtuous hero, a historical villain or someone who was historically insignificant ... And choose different types of characters - a great warrior/general, a brilliant strategist or just someone not great at all ! There's so much replayability.

Then there are complaints about how RTK13 doesn't have XYZ feature from RTK (insert #). I think the system used in RTK13 is utterly fantastic and encourage new people to play more (see below). For example, some people are complaining they can only utilise resources of one city to attack - which is totally false.

The main advantage of RTK13's system is that it doesn't suffer from ''big empire syndrome''. I absolutely like RTK11 and think it's a wonderful game. But RTK11 (and others) are often most fun when one controls between 1-10 cities. After that ... It's annoying to see delegated cities underperform, while also annoying to micro-manage every single one.

It is ''cool'' to perform ''stun-locks'' (eg: Spear rush, Cavalry stampede or Perturb with Focus) in (RTK11) to beat massive armies. Using 1 city to beat 10 (or 20 !) is indeed fun - but also means the game is typically ''won'''even when you have a build a relatively small empire.

RTK13 is based on a hierachy. Normal officers have almost no power/influence and often do menial tasks. Minister (G) and even Governors also have relatively little influence. But once you play well (especially with a decent officer), you can eventually rise up to to Minister (R) or Viceroy ... and lead the empire to victory. Just before writing my review initially, I coordinated attacks using soldiers from over 10+ cities (250,000 soldiers or so), simultaneously in two different groups, to attack two different cities. My officer controlled once massive army group while AI controller the other (and timed it so they arrive around the same time).

Near the end of my game (while attacking the last other force remaining), my character (I started as a new officer in Ma Teng's army) controlled 172,000 soldiers (with Ma Chao, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun etc) directly in battle, while orderering another two massive armies, one led by Pang De (approx 150,000) and the other Gan Ning (approx 150,000 soldiers), plus other smaller armies (30-50k each) - for a crazy total of approx 600,000 against approx 450,000 - 500,000.

For those who want all the micromanagement of cities and buildings, perhaps they should go back to the other RTK series (and suffer from ''Big empire syndrome''). For those who want a new fascinating experience - I strongly recommend trying out RTK13. Lastly, the main reason why I like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games series isn't about the particular interface of a particular entry of the series - it's about playing the game to build one's own story within the historical framework and with the fascinating characters. And in this regard, RTK13 absolutely shines
*Highly recommended*

Before I begin, I do have to state a few things. I've played ROTK X and 11, but didn't play any before or 12 (since it was terrible according to reviews). My favorite one has always been X, because it felt so easy to grasp on. I also do play on Chinese instead of English. (I just use the Chinese voice/language pack because it feels more immersive to me and I can read it.)

So, I'd pretty much say that ROTK 13 is the best installment in the series yet. To me, as someone who has played ROTK X extensively as both historical characters and my own player-made characters, ROTK 13 literally felt like a "facelift" version of ROTK X. It's so nice and polished that there are only a few things that annoy me.

Since I love ROTK X, I'm going to basically compare ROTK 13 to ROTK X (which is reasonable since to me, there are so many similarities). Back in ROTK X, you had to "draft" your own soldiers into a unit, with each unit being specified to only one type (i.e. cavalry, spearmen, archers, etc...). Each unit had a maximum capacity of 10,000 soldiers only, which meant that each city could only have up to 20 units of 10,000 at its maximum. Every time you went into battle, you would lose troops, and then you would have to re-draft soldiers, overall decreasing the experience that unit had. It was a very painful process to endure and it would take forever for me to finally upgrade my troops to their maximum rank. Another thing about ROTK X was that there wasn't a city that could fully support 200,000 troops, so supplies would always be on a decrease. This was one of the few things that always bothered me when playing ROTK X.

In ROTK 13, KOEI has fixed that problem. Not only do you not need to draft soldiers into a unit, there is no maximum cap for a unit any more. Experience is now given to the city as a whole, which meant that any soldiers you brought into a battle held that level of experience for the type (cavalry, archers, spearmen, etc...). By all means, you could go into battle with a 30,000 strong unit. Although the city capacity for soldiers has been decreased to 100,000, it's a lot more reasonable. The added feature of "injured soldiers" and "returning soldiers" are great as well, which meant that you couldn't cheekily just finish a battle, disband your army, then immediately fight another battle on the other side with the same number you had.

In terms of character control and gameplay, you still play as the character you choose like in ROTK X. The feature of "entering cities" has returned in ROTK 13, and it's something that I've loved in ROTK X. I was really disappointed when that feature was minimized as a role in ROTK 11 onward, and I'm beyond glad that ROTK 13 has had this feature.

Graphically speaking, it's just stunning. Everything is clear to me to see where my troops are (at the bottom left corner there are circles that represent each unit and where they are, as well as you can click on them to snap the camera to their location). The colors used to distinguish each allegiance is pretty clear as well, but I think that the colors for player-made allegiances should be more diverse. The animations are also amazing too, I would daresay compare the animations to that of Dynasty Warriors 7 (which was really good).

What I've noticed as a flaw in the Chinese language pack is that there are times when some of the dialogue is messed up and it says something like "Y#CM6!>?/". I'm sure it can be fixed, and it doesn't come up that often either.

I've seen some reviews where people aren't happy about this game. I'd like to address them really.

So firstly, I've seen people complain that as the ruler of your kingdom, no matter how strong your kingdom becomes, you still can only issue 2 commands as yourself, and then 6 commands from your "trusted officers" that deal with recruiting, training troops, and enhancing cities' farming, commercial, and cultural values. Yes, it's a little annoying at first, but let me tell you something. If you play as a ruler with more than 10 cities under your command and you still haven't set up governors for your cities, you're going to have a real bad time because your cities will be so much weaker than the NPC's. There's a reason why the game gives you limited commands. The reason is that the game WANTS you to assign governors. Realistically speaking, how can you assign jobs to a person that lives in a city halfway across China immediately? Would that even be efficient?

Let's address the issue of dueling next. Why would you try to set up duels anyway? There are ways where your character can get into duels, just like in ROTK X. The system of dueling for scholars and generals have always been random, even back in ROTK X. To me, it's a lot more realistic that way.

I don't remember troops being able to re-supply at all before. So, I don't see how that's a problem. Yes, you can't build outposts any more because they're "discovered" by searching in cities, and I feel that all these mechanics are alright.

If you're not convinced to buy this game yet, or if you have no idea what I just wrote about up there, that's alright. You can be a completely new player to this series because ROTK 13 features a frickin' tutorial. This isn't some basic, dimwitted tutorial that downplays the player's knowledge (like telling you to move right and left or something), but it's a tutorial within the whole story of Three Kingdoms. You get to play as different "main characters" of the Three Kingdoms from the start (Yellow Turbans) while learning all the controls you need. I specifically remember a part where there was an old man that teaches the character you are playing how to control an army in a battle, and when you defeat the enemies in that battle, your character actually tells one of his generals to kill that old man because the old man knew too much about his army's strategies. That's as realistic as can be.

ROTK 13 is the best installment in the series so far. I don't know why the next Dynasty Warriors has been on hiatus for a few years now, but if it was to work on this game, by all means, this game was damn worth it.

As a long time fan of Koei's RTK series since RTK 2, I was naturally hyped when I heard that RTK 13 was launching. But when I saw Steam's review on the game, it was so depressing that I held back from buying. Don't make the same mistake as me.

Finally I decided to buy during the promotion, just to support Koei because if not they probably won't be doing any more RTK games in the future. I was pleasantly surprised by the game and the feeling of being immersed in the beauty of China's history came back once more.

I'll start by addressing the bad feedbacks from Steam which I think are valid. Some of the bad feedbacks are really rhetorical and easily answered with simple common sense.

You can read the 8 points I brought up and I hope that you enjoy RTK 13 as much as I do.

https://thomastheory.blogspot.sg/2016/07/romance-of-three-kingdoms-13-review.html

I have also listed 7 features in the game that makes it more immersive and connects to the story.

https://thomastheory.blogspot.sg/2016/07/romance-of-three-kingdoms-13-7-gameplay-features.html

Great job KOEI!

Excellent return to the series. Welcome back to war time china a period of three kingdoms and almost 100 years of constant warfare and turmoil. This game gives you the choice in which stage you would like to start during the age of chaos.

Create your own officer and forge your own destiny or select the many heroes of this period from legendary king of Wei Cao Cao (cow cow) to usurper and tyrant Dong Zhuo each chapter offers a unique experience.

i enjoy the combat system if i am being honest this game is not total war and does not try to be getting called into a duel half way into a battle is still a very exciting experience.

Another positive is the soundtrack for this game it is very good and i enjoy listening to every piece within the game.

The price point is steep but there is plenty of fun to be had here go on give it a bash join the yellow turban rebellion as legendary slayer Gong Du!

This is a second review of the game based on the English version. I already had the game ever since launch but haven't been able to play it since due to real life. Several patches later, the game now not only supports Japanese and Chinese, but also Korean and English. There are also several new options for customizing the game experience like character growth, how much you want to control your forces, etc. All in all, not bad, but not the greatest in terms of company support but still better than what CA does with TW. In fact, I'll just straight up say that this game is better than Total War in every way except graphics. The combat is done in the same tactical map fashion, but instead of a risk board srategic map, you get a fairly simple and dull map with cities linked by rivers and roads that units have to travel on. However this leads to a better experience overall since the AI is more competent at handling grand strategy, even if it's because there's less options to calculate. In every other aspect RTK13 blows TW out of the waters. A fully fleshed out commander system, the ability to customize armies, a complex and detailed relationship system, a hero mode and several campaign setups. Oh, and my units can actually use siege weapons and get on and off walls properly. That's more than I can say for Total War: CA's Greed.

I'll also mention the fact that this game was $99 at launch and I paid full price for it which honestly made me pretty angry at the time, but since then several DLCs were released and the early adopters were able to obtain all of them for free. This brings down the actual cost of the game to around $75, which is still rather pricey but within the range of most AAA games nowadays. There are also some graphical DLCs which are just available to everyone who bought the game.

As for comparing this game to Paradox games, I'll say that Paradox stil holds the top spot for continued support for the game after launch, but Koei hasn't done a bad job either. There still hasn't been a powerup kit yet, but they've released two new localisations free of charge as well as several important customization options. The game could always be better but Koei has shown that they aren't totally devoid of all morals either.

The game itself is much simpler in a way compared to games like EU4 and CK2, but more complex in others. While I would definitely say it's strategically deeper than TW, it's too different a game to be directly compared to Paradox titles. Frankly RTK13 is a war game with an intricate commander system and doesn't go outside that box very much, like how EU4 is at its heart a war game where you blob to blob to blob. The objective the game is simply to conquer as much as you can. It's not like CK2 where there's a bunch of RPG elements like marriage and having kids, inheritance, etc. In RTK13 you play as only one character. There are barely any RPG elements in RKT13, which is a shame that many others have touched upon. The only real RPG aspects you'll find are in the story events that are taken verbatim from the novel.

As for the game's faults, most of them are minor and subjective, while othres are not.

The fact that this game's entire UI was designed around console controls cannot be overlocked. There are almost no keybinds whatsoever and you can't customize them either.

A minor complaint I have is that they took out the Chinese characters they used for flags and replaced them with letters, which I feel is an unnecessary change. Nobody's going to mistake the character 曹 for 劉, and connecting a name to a character doesn't take much work. I find using letters instead actually makes the game harder to understand because you'll constantly see the same letters on multiple flags. It's not uncommon to see 2-4 Xs in one battle and several Ls or Ws because those are the standard beginnings of Chinese names. On the other hand you'll almost never see an A or E or I or U. Lastly, the characters just look cooler and give the game a more aesthetic feel to it. This is subjective of course. Hopefully in the future Koei will make it an option to switch between the two options.

There are also gameplay annoyances like the inability to transfer troops from one city to another. As a result, once you conquer a city and then another city, the previous frontline becomes substantially less useful. However, you can transfer supply between cities, so the problem isn't as dire as it's made out to be. Depending on your perspective this can make or break the game for you. It's entirely subjective depending on the player and I suspect the developers did not add this feature out of balance concerns.

The only true and substantial complaint I have is that this game simply not well optimized, nor is it a good looking game. If it had just been either one of the two then it might have at least made sense, but that is not the case. In terms of graphics it is inferior to the older Nobunaga's Ambition, nor does it run as smoothly. When scrolling the map the fps is noticeably low. Zooming in and out feels odd and doesn't have a natural feel to it. The angle at which zooming titls the map into a position that feels unnatural for playing the game and I find myself always changing it. Unfortunately the game doesn't remember this and changes it back every time the game zooms out to a higher height.

I am not sure why the game looks so much worse. The duels and debates are still graphically stuck in the PS2 era while the map looks unappealing and barren. Texture popping is a common symptom and the clouds obscure the game rather than add to the atmosphere. On the bright side, at least the game remembers my graphics settings now.

You really can't get what this game is within 2 hours.

Pros- Lots of historic people to choose from to play as

Ranking system that changes gameplay. like going for a regular officer to governing a city to controlling many of the rulers cities and controlling many armys instead of just your in command.

Has events that are based off what happened in history

You can create your own character and make them excel and not excel at what youd like them to.

Unlockables like special characters and portraits for doing achievemnets

Battles can be pretty big

Cons- Lack of later scenarios

Does not explain alto of stats well.

Not being able to control others in Duels against the enemy can be a bit annoyng

While i like the game and enjoy it. i do have a like for the three kingdoms period so i may be a bit bias. if you want to see how it plays check out my video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIZVYvtlsak&list=PLZ-cBfSjD5ve8NQgWM20-_GEoAiJqhpB7

I've been an avid fan of the series for around 25 years now, I grew up on the NES ones and have played most every RTK, some religiously. My favorites in the series are 2, 4 (PC), 6, 11, and now this one. They've all been good in one way or another, but this, above the rest I've played, captures the feeling of these epic wars I've only had it a couple weeks but have poured dozens of hours in already. The RPG element isn't as good as some others in the series, but that wasn't what sucked me in to start with. I'm very impressed with an overall great package. Very surprised to see a lot of complaints.

TLDR: This game has lots of flaws, and sure it's overpriced, but it's still entertaining.

More Extensive Review:

I've been a longtime fan of the ROTK series, starting from the ol' days of ROTK IV. Since I never really played the RPG-style games, only installments that feature Ruler Mode (ROTK IV, ROTK IX, ROTK XI, ROTK XII), my opinion does not reflect the previous ways through which Koei executed this feature.

ROTK 13 requires some micromanaging. Not nearly as extensive as ROTK XI, and if you're somewhat lazy and don't want to deal with all the frustrations of ruling like me, that might be a good thing. I loved how ROTK IX felt more streamlined than other entries and ROTK XIII delivers on that front. Attacks are straightforward, commands/orders are straightforward. If I want to develop my city's commerce, there's a clear amount of time that'll happen and there's no TP to get in my way.

However, cities with a large staff not only take up gold (like in previous entries), but also cannot utilize this large staff to full effect. You have limited slots and even when your subordinates (governors) can assign people to administrative positions and delegate tasks to other people, there's a limited amount of slots for them. A city with over 20 officers isn't going to develop itself faster than a city with 12 or so (from what I can tell) officers.

Granted this was a problem in ROTK 12 as well but hey I'm sure we all expected this game to be a huge improvement over 12. (Not that I actually hated 12. To me if it came before 11 and was marketed as ROTK 4 Remastered it would actually have been a better-received game.)

Unlike in some of the other entries, though, routes between cities are fixed and you have no option of developing long-term bases at chokepoints or various areas. This is a missing feature. There's also a severe lack of variety for unit attacks that this game inherited from 12, even though naval battles make a comeback. Frankly, this is a huge point against this game.

Not to mention the price. Sure Koei has expensive games nowadays and $55 isn't quite as horrifying as $90 but are we supposed to praise Koei for making the price less painful? Especially when ROTK XI is still available as a downloadable game for $20?

This game inherits terrible stats from previous games, and is a far cry from the more 'balanced' stats in ROTK IX imo. The likes of Zhou Yu and Deng Ai suffer from this, whereas Zhao Yun gets stat buffs but loses his amazing skill 'Insight' from ROTK XI.

I mean at least Guan Yu isn't quite as OP as before right?

All in all, this is still a fun experience and the amount of time I've spent on it so far (and likely will continue spending on it) ensures that this game isn't quite a waste of money. But I do feel that it's overpriced especially when compared to ROTK XI, and if you are eager to experience a more traditional ROTK experience then look for the ever elusive ROTK X, or maybe VIII (like I said I never played either so I have no idea), or go buy ROTK XI from Gamersgate now.

At the very least, we now have a ROTK on Steam! Here's hoping for ROTK IX and maybe, MAYBE the return of Dynasty Tactics!