I love the ancient Asian world. I relish in the art, the tradition, and the glory of it all. Perhaps it comes from a love of Asian cinema, such as the movies Hero, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Fearless, and House of Flying Daggers, but for whatever reason I completely enjoy it. I've been familiar with KOEI's titles before, most notably the Dynasty Warriors series, but I'd never dipped my toe in the ocean that is the Romance of the Three Kingdom series, a vastly deep strategy game that covers much of the same information as the Dynasty Warriors series, only replacing hack and slash with strategy. Though it plays like the greatest strategy game or board game, you'll certainly have to work to fully appreciate it.

THE STORY SO FAR
As the box puts it, "Rediscover an ancient civilization with an explosive history in the most stunning edition of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Summon your gifts for the military arts and political cunning. Massive armies and the clever schemes of allies and enemies are yours to manipulate. Conquer the worldly ambitions of men and you will conquer China."

Though it gives you a grand scheme of things, there isn't much story to write about. Typically, the game plays out by giving you the game world/board, and then you are either given a pre-determined list of warring factions, or either you can pick your own leaders. Once you have defined that and a few other required bits of gameplay info, you'll embark on conquering ancient China. As you go about, you'll experience things such as weddings, betrayals, wars, alliances, and other such things. Beyond the randomness of the included story-esque bits, the only other story elements come into play during the Challenge Mode of the game, where you'll be given a list of scenarios based on battles from the historical novel, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms." But even then, there isn't all that much. ROTK (from here on) is much more about the strategy and planning than it is the story.

GAMEPLAY
Be kind to me if I forget to include something, but trying to encompass 48 pages of a manual into an easy digestible read isn't an easy task; the sad thing is though that almost everyone of those pages is dire information that you'll need to learn to even stand a chance. The game, from the first moment you start to play to even your next game several down the way, will probably still be daunting from beginning to end.

When the game is first presented to you, you'll be given a large game board, made up of rivers, oceans, mountains, giant walled gates, and cities/bases. The object, ultimately, is to do everything in your power to fully conquer China and eliminate your opponents. You'll get rid of your opponents by ultimately battling them and destroying them, though everything isn't that simple because you can't simply say I want X-amount of troops and then "boom" there they are (besides, if you did that, you'd probably still lose cause other enemies would have better troops). Besides battling, you'll need to be a good strategist, as you'll need to try and make nice with some neighboring enemies, so you aren't getting gangbanged on all sides by imposing forces.

When you start off you'll only have your base and a few little odds and ins buildings/territories, such as markets, farms, etc. As you're trying to build up your army, you'll need to concern yourself with practically everything. For instance, to hire troops and provide them with equipment, you'll need to raise markets to make money. However, you need food to fight, so you'll need to create farms so you'll be able to get harvests and feed your peasants and troops. Beyond that, you'll need to build a few buildings to house your troops, or you won't be getting any in the first place. You'll also need to build workshops, so your troops will have more than just swords to work with, because horses, rams, and catapults make for a lot better fighting. Of course, troops aren't nothing by themselves, so you'll have to take your generals and train those worthless maggots, because they've got to be whipped in fighting shape quick. And then of course troops by themselves aren't nothing, so you'll need to utilize their services to put up things like guard towers, traps, rolling balls of death. And…I'm…spent! Or not.

Troops aren't simply troops that do nothing but fight head-to-head. Yes, they'll do that too, but they also have special moves that you can utilize to do things like knock enemies back a square, bring an enemy towards you, swipe all enemies in a circle around you, drive through targets, and many other such moves. You can also choose to do tactics like straight unit to unit skirmishes or you can surround an enemy troop with several of your own, and then attack as a single group from all sides.

However, not all battles are won in troop-to-troop skirmishes, because sometimes things get personal, and you'll have one on one battles both atop horses and battles with your words. On top of your horse you'll do battle by attacking, using spirit, defending, or unleashing your fury; basically an advanced game of Paper, Rock, Scissors though you do have some other special commands thrown in the mix, which will have you throwing knives, raising attack power, and more. The Debates are much the same (an advanced game of Paper, Rock, Scissors) where you'll use cards to try and trump your opponent, but much like the duels there are special cards that have advanced properties, like exchanging all the cards in your hand for example.

And in the end, you'll take all of those things (and several more) and use the same and same moves over and over to wage war and hopefully win. You'll start out with much of nothing, gain some leaders, implore some warriors, supply your people with food and money, make deals when you can, wage war when need be, defend yourself adequately and hope the cards land in your favor and you walk away with the win.

GRAPHICS
Overall, pretty crappy and bland. Though the total sense of the world, changed by the passing seasons, is nice looking, everything else is rather PS1-ish and things like troops are simply too small to be detailed, and you'll really only understand what they are (or your buildings for that matter) if you click on them to find what they are. Also, though the opening cutscene is really stylish and pretty, the others are all static, and very below average for a PS2 game (or any game for that matter). You wish a game so deep strategic wise would mimic that with its beauty as well.

SOUND
Much like the graphics, the sound is pretty poor. Bad voiceovers (something KOEI has never done particularly well) and "simply there" sound effects are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ROTK, but hey, at least they are better than the graphics for the most part. However, the game does have a really nice score, which fills almost every aspect of the game, and it fits the time and the setting of the game perfectly. As I said earlier, as someone who loves to fill their life with the sounds and visuals of ancient Asia, I was in heaven with the music.

IN CONCLUSION
Look, obviously there is a very loyal fanbase, because you don't get to number eleven in a series without being successful on some level. However, with poor graphics and sound (for the most part) it certainly isn't winning fans over by finishing number one in the beauty pageant. So the game must win over with its gameplay? Yes, but for every player who discovers the game and falls in love, there is probably a higher ratio of those who simply finds themselves being overwhelmed by all the information at their fingertips and moves they must process to wage war and actually succeed. The game certainly isn't for everyone, but for those into this sort of game, then perhaps Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI will be for you. Otherwise, be prepared to feel stupid, as you quickly die off and everything said flies over your head.

Rating:
Our Scoring System