with one general for cavalry, one for
infantry, and one for archers and
catapults. Which is not to say you
can’t make unbalanced or hyper-
specialised armies, it just feels wrong.
Generals have personalities that suit
their roles, expressed as they banter
with each other during battles. They
even gain traits and develop rivalries
and friendships with each other the
longer they spend together. You want
to build them and arm them like
party members in an RPG.
Units don’t have as much
personality. A lot of them look similar,
or fill similar roles. Now that the
Warhammer games exist it’s always
going to be hard to compete on that
front, because no matter how
different two kinds of rider are
they’re never going to be as
immediately distinct as orcs or
vampires. On the personality front, it
doesn’t help that units will
sometimes stand in place and let you
shoot them for a bit too long before
doing something about it, or ignore a
target you left open and charge the
wrong one. Of course the AI has
never been the shining high point of
Total War so if you’re along for the
ride you’re used to this by now.
While generals have attack
animations right out of kung-fu
movies, when ordinary soldiers
collide there’s a lot of
milling around and
swiping at the air
going on. Of course
there’s none of the
over-the-top madness
of the Warhammer
games because there
aren’t hydras breathing
fire or giants swinging
tree trunks around, but there’s
also none of the individual clashes
that made Shogun 2 so much fun
to watch. It’s fine from a distance,
but unrewarding if you like to hit
the slow-motion button, press K to
make the HUD fall away, and watch
things up close.
NIGHT FIGHT
Night battles do look gorgeous,
though. Troops carry red lanterns on
poles and cities under siege fill the
sky with floating paper lanterns like
low-hanging stars. Battles during
winter take place on maps covered in
high-contrast snow, while at other
times of year farmers might be
working in paddy fields as you ride
past. Port cities have cranes on the
docks and boats in the harbour.
There are no naval battles, though.
They’ve given up on them completely
it seems, and while armies board
ships when they head onto the water
encounters at sea are resolved
automatically. Given how important
rivers like the Yangtze are to China
strategically it’s a missed opportunity.
Imagine if John Woo’s movie Red
Cliff, after hours of build-up, ended
with someone clicking autoresolve.BATTLEFIELD BULLY
Anticlimax is a problem with Three
Kingdoms more generally. At a
certain point in the campaign the
three leading warlords are declared
kings and have to fight it out to
determine who will be sole emperor.
When I marched a
decent army into my
first opponent’s
territory they abdicated
and surrendered to me,
so I switched my
attention to the final
remaining enemy, the
Kingdom of Wu. After
many turns spent
building armies as strong as my
economy allowed, I sent one full
stack the long wayaroundviathe
water to attack hiscapitalfrom
behind while theres f i
marched on ourshar
capturing villagesan
After a few season
finally drew hisfullf
Wu’s best armiesstay
close together, buton
itself up in ambush
nearby. I discovered
thanks to one ofmy
generals havingkeen
eyes, attacked withs
numbers, and defeat
handily. The restofh
were still formidable
and mine slightlywe
by wiping out thefaiambush. We faced off for the
climactic finale. And then on his turn
a diplomacy pop-up informed me he
wanted to surrender and abdicate.
A relatively bloodless victory is
nice and all, and it’s a credit to the AI
that it knows when it’s about to be
beaten, but it was a hell of a downer
way to end a campaign. I could have
said no to the offer and carried on the
war but it would have felt like
bullying at that point. As I said, the
campaign lends context to the battles,
and sometimes that context can take
away from them as well.
Plenty of these criticisms — an
underwhelming endgame, or clunky
battle animations, or AI oddness —
have been true of other Total War
games. Three Kingdoms is no worse
than many of them and better than
quite a few. It’s easily in my top five
games in the series.
I look forward to seeing how
things like the diplomacy system and
maybe duels carry on into
Warhammer 3 and what comes next,
it’s just hard to look past Three
Kingdoms’ role as an iteration on a
formula rather than a game in itself.
That’s the problem with there
being so many of them, and their
releases so regular. A new one comes
out while the last two are still fresh in
our memories. Three Kingdoms is a
very good strategy game for when
you want to experience 2nd century
China, and I’ve spent dozens of
enjoyable hours with it. When you
zoom in close on the right details,
whether two generals duelling or an
enemy turning the vassal system
againstyou,it’sgrand.78
This ranks as my
fourth or maybe fifth
favouriteTo t a lWa r
game,whichis stilla
goodthingtobe.VERDICTIt’s a credit to
the AI that it
knows when
it’s about to
be beatenHISTORICAL BATTLES History is another word for spoilers
BATTLE OF RED CLIFFS
Cao Cao controls the north. Sun
Quan and Zhuge Liang unite the
south against him, hoping he will
rely on his fleet of flammable boats.CONQUEST IN JIANGDONG
After taking the Wu commandery
Sun Ce convinces his uncle to join
forces. Together they march on Wu
Lang in the Qiantang estuary.THE INVASION OF JING
PROVINCE
Sun Quan, after lending control
of Jing Province to Liu Bei,
turns against him.tofmyarmies
redborder
ndsmallcities.
nsof this I
forceout.
yed
ne setitn
uperior
ed it
his forces
ethough,
eakened
iledTotal War: Three Kingdoms
REVIEW