Total War: Three Kingdoms

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

CaughtCross

Vyemm Raider
2,655
4,144

Never played much of the Total War series but love me some Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Utnayan

I Love Utnayan he’s awesome
<Gold Donor>
16,269
12,026
I really need to play more of the last four of them I bought. :)
 

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
9,071
9,097
I wonder if this is just going to be a reskinned Total War: Warhammer 2
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

TrollfaceDeux

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Bronze Donator>
19,577
3,741
I have played for about two hours so far on easy mode and here is my recap...

Gameplay: pretty basic of total ear franchise. Characters have become even more customizable compared to older series, diplomacy involves more than just trade of good will, resource, and past actions. Some involves goods like items, building coalition, and so on.

Battles: I don't know if Britannia total had this feature. So from get go, you can engage in duels between generals and champions to increase or demoralize your troops if you win or lose. Once the battle is settled, enemy troops immediately makes a move on you so get the fuck out before your champion gets swamped lol....

But generally basic total war campaigns. They have different names for things that used to be called continue siege which is now called starve out. You can also extract immediate surrender from the opponent IF they have a general or champion that guards the city.

The map is now divided into major city and minor rural resource area. Very unlike the older franchise gameplay, you can only truly developed one city per region now and I think that makes sense.

The scale of the growth is incredible and we are talking about China here. Population grows like rabbit and it is incredibly important to have retainers in cities who has right traits to suppress growing unhappiness...

Factions are pretty good and it is clear cao cao is the easiest and the best faction to play from early on.

Anyway....I wanna go back to play again...I waited two decades for total war to tackle this genre and I will be honest....

Considering this is about epic Chinese romance and probably the greatest saga from China, this is a little underwhelming.
 

TheAylix

Vyemm Raider
363
2,054
I'm 5 hours in to my campaign so far, and I'm already kind of bored.

The characters and character management stuff seems to be the heart of the game; which I guess is part of the historic fantasy of the Three Kingdoms period or whatever. My problem is that it starts to feel like I'm not so much a grand general sweeping across ancient China, caught up in the romance and grandeur of this legendary story.

Instead, I'm playing TOTAL WAR: CHINESE FANTASY PROJECT MANAGER. I can't put Lu Kong in an army with Wong Fu, because they don't like each other. Why? Who knows. Maybe Wong Fu took too many of Lu Kong's story points during the last sprint release or some shit. I'm already getting tired of watching to see who is dissatisfied with random events and having to coddle them with gifts and promotions, because I don't want more hassles down the line that screw up my grand plans. It really does feel like I'm back at work, only this game has (slightly) more Chinese to complain to me about things.

Speaking about complaining, the battles are dull and easy. Your color-coded generals can only recruit 6 "retinue" units from a tiny pool of possible units, and you only get 3 generals plus their retinue in each army; your blue generals are for ranged units, green is for spearmen, etc. So far, most of the units I've recruited are totally forgettable and there don't really seem to be interesting upgrades or particularly fun/innovative strategies. I've been cruising to victory by just building out a simple front line of cheap infantry, some decent crossbow men and a catapult behind them, and a few flanking cavalry with my generals. Mostly the AI just walks forward and gets torn apart by my ranged units, while my cavalry sweeps around to hit any of their ranged units. This is on Hard/Hard, by the way.

Coming from the superb TOTAL WAR: Warhammer games, this is a major disappointment. While the sieges in TW:W could be a little clunky, the battles (and pretty much everything else) were amazing. The TW:W games have so many different approaches, such diversity in army and character builds, and a cleaner, more refined building/province system. TOTAL WAR: Three Kingdoms doesn't. Now that I think about it, feels like it was heavily designed for the Chinese/Asian market - the tactical battles and grand strategy are downplayed, while the Pokemon-esque character management nonsense is given center stage.
 

TrollfaceDeux

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Bronze Donator>
19,577
3,741
every faction is just clone of another and that is the greatest tragedy of this game.

again, china is a clone of itself repeatedly so it is historically accurate.
 

Quineloe

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,978
4,463
Should have released Total War 7 Kingdoms, which would have featured a great start, but the endgame would have been utter shit and boring. And first DLC would have downgraded it to 6 Kingdoms.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Punko

Macho Ma'am
<Gold Donor>
7,912
12,564
I got this game because I'm a sucker for TW games.

First impression is a fantasy game based on china isn't remotely as interesting as one based on WH fantasy.

I turned the game off after a few turns, it just didn't catch my attention.
 

TrollfaceDeux

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Bronze Donator>
19,577
3,741
Well....I will continue to play it but replayability is absolutely zero....

At least Korean dlc would be a highlight of this entire thing....
 

TheAylix

Vyemm Raider
363
2,054
My faction leader just got a random trait at the start of a new turn that makes both of the other generals in his army hate him. This is despite the fact that both of those characters are at "Oathsworn" level of friendship with my faction leader, and have been fighting by his side since the beginning. Plus, they're my faction heir and my main administrator, so it's not like I can easily replace them. I'd have to hire totally new characters - but there's no characters in the recruit pool that have the right traits/colors, and even if there were they would be low-level and nearly useless.

I guess the game randomly decided that my army was too good or god knows what, so now I just get random penalties imposed on my main character that I can't anticipate, mitigate, or remove because... fuck me, I guess? I'm at 14 hours in, and it's tiny bullshit like this that's basically killed my interest in the game.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
How the fuck is no one playing this when its the best and most optimized out of the box total war ever?
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
It's their best selling TW yet, so plenty are playing it. But what is there to say about TW v10?

Well but its the first Total War in the 3 kingdoms period and theres a lot of interface changes and shit. I dunno maybe you're right.

I'm fucking blown away by how well this one runs for once, at least.
 

Gankak

Vyemm Raider
4,010
2,754
How the fuck is no one playing this when its the best and most optimized out of the box total war ever?

I bought it day 1 and have played it some and while I agree its the most optimized and polished all of the lords or generals all feel the same. The units all feel the same, at least to me. This is only the 2nd Total War i have played, Warhammer 2 being the other, and I still WAY prefer WH2 over this.

I think sales are helped tremendously by the Chinese market.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
Every total war feels that way that are set in realistic settings. I mean you basically had guys with spears, guys on horses, guys in armor and guys with missile weapons, plus siege engines. The same tactic works for every battle, too, basically.

Its one of the deeper flaws of the series, especially if you've played all of them, which I have (Except Warhammer 2, which I skipped but do still need to get during a sale sometime)

I've always wanted a Total War: Romance of the Three Kingdoms game though, for like 20 years. Its one of my favorite settings
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
I'd do some horrible things for a 40k Total war. One can dream.

It'd be easy to do except they'd have to add a whole layer for space and shit. I dunno. I have not a huge amount of faith in Creative Assembly most of the time (Three Kingdoms notwithstanding, their overall record is somewhat mediocre), but it'd be interesting to see them take on that challenge and how they would tackle it.
 

Genjiro

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
5,218
5,066
Game is ok at best. The unique thing is the dueling/dynasty warrior part of the game, but in a long playthrough all the notable characters are killed off/die off and then you just get replacements who show up with random_chinese_guy names with nothing unique. Outside of the few who are scripted to appear, the very long late game loses the "romance" part of the game completely and all the classes are the same.

Then you have the homogenization of the units, most are just boringly similar.

Some shit as others mentioned are just frustrating like the random events that make your generals hate each other or happen in between turns. Oh hey random assassins attacked your faction leader who now has some shitty permanent wound for the rest of the game. Or stuff thats just plain stupid, like Liu Biao's faction whose unique building is a +experience/+commerce one that requires fucking tea to build. A resource that's only produced in all of China in your biggest rivals region (Sun Ce) or way down in the southwest so you cant even build it without either trading with him (if the AI decides to even take that town) or until much much later on.

Im sure knowing CA, we will get some paid DLC for great heros for late game to gouge the wallets some more.