Romance of The Three Kingdoms XIV is a turn based, historical, strategic war game set in the Han dynasty era of China. Produced by Koei, it is the latest addition to a long running series with the previous titles plus a few spin off games. One such game has you play as a soldier in an army raising your rank, which sounds quite interesting. Romance of The Three Kingdoms XIV however goes back to its war simulator style being the leader of a kingdom vying for the Emperors throne, as a rebel faction trying to fight the corrupt leaders or as a Warlord looking to do both.

The premise of this game is similar to all of the other tactical war games though I do enjoy this one a lot more than the rest. You should start with the tutorial, it gives you the very basics of the game with an in game help menu filled with a lot more information. I do wish that the tutorials covered the political side a little more, it was fun figuring it out, but took up a lot of time. The campaign is a series of historical events taking place during and around the Han Dynasty with the choice to play as an array of different armies or throw in your own original officers. As you play through the different campaigns you can unlock historical events that give you a bit of an interesting look into the events that happened during that time, only if you complete all the prerequisites which can be a lot, though you do get some nice little bonuses so they are definitely worth it.

I do enjoy the battle system in this game, it makes you feel more involved and more in control, not just have an army and point them at the enemy. You have different tactics that you can use to give you an advantage in different situations, the officers that lead them have their only abilities and perks that help with support, de-buffing, offense and defence. This makes it interesting because of the fact that just because your squad of soldiers is larger in number doesn’t mean they will win, so you have to pick your battle plans for different circumstances and pray it turns out like you imagined. During these battles there is also times where your officer will fight the opposing officer in a one on one fight, this takes you to a cool little cut scene of the two fighting on horseback where the loser gets a nice little chunk of morale taken away, this is helpful as morale plays a big part if you lose all of your morale the entire squad is immediately eliminated.

Along with the battle side of this game comes the other and just as or more important part and that is the political and economic mechanics. There is a lot involved in this section so I will try to sum up as much as I can, starting with your government. You have your leader whose position can’t be changed, but can be made and overseer just like your other officers you can then place officers in different areas of your political structure based on their policies. These are battle, support, schemes, domestics, personnel and warlord which can only have one officer who also becomes your second in command, the one who updates you at the start of your turn and gives advice on the decisions you are making.

You can place an officer to be the overseer of the cities you concur which provides you with the areas to level up commerce, agriculture and barracks, the higher the level the more gold, supplies and soldiers you produce at the end of the month. Switching people around to gain levels in all areas is a good way to stay ahead, as you can quite quickly run short of one or all of these commodities.

During your strategy phase you have a certain amount of action points available, this can be increased with in the personnel section if you have someone with that policy. You can use these action points to send officers to be overseers, search your cities for gold, items, ability scrolls, or more officers, there is also the schemes section that you can use these points to hinder your opponents and a diplomacy section to strengthen ties with other kingdoms and form alliances.

Lastly, you can use these points to accomplish actions that your officers suggest like re-enforcing a squad, raising their morale, lowering opponent morale or just helping out your overseer’s cities. Using these points and activities also uses an officer so once that officer is used they can’t be used for anything else until they have accomplished what they were tasked, this adds to the critical thinking needed to plan your moves carefully.

All historical events and other cut scenes are made up of a slideshow like depiction of the events, with all the artwork being quite beautiful, the only exception is the one on one battles between officers which is one of my favourite parts. The landscapes are varied between mountains, forests, plains, swamps, toxic swamps, desserts, rivers and oceans. These can be hard to really appreciate as the default setting has all lands occupied coloured to represent the colour of the kingdom that claimed it, this can be removed in exchanged for the coloured borderlines only though I prefer to have the coloured lands, I find it helps me keep track of who owns what.

The music behind the game is your classic Chinese instrumental array that combines with the sounds of marching, war cries and the sound of clashing steel, this adds a nice ambience, for me this becomes more like white noise as I become too focused on what I’m doing but still adds to the experience.

Besides the lack of thorough tutorials and sometimes complex button layouts this is a very enjoyable game and one I haven’t seen since the likes of classic Age of Empires, and will definitely be playing this game when I need that hit of strategic game play, which I need a lot. With one more little detail that had me quite surprised and impressed was if you were to make your own original officer, you can add in parents and siblings, which is cool but I recently discovered that if your character meets the person you named as family they will actually address you as if you were their child or parent it’s a nice touch, thumbs up.

Written by: Adam Brasher