A faithful remake of the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 experience, though perhaps a bit too faithful.
Jason HidalgoReno Gazette Journal
As I watched Lady Bian valiantly mount her steed to fight the mighty Lu Bu in a hopeless duel in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake, I found myself thinking, “How did it come to this?”
See, just a few turns ago, I was doing quite well and routing Lu Bu’s forces with legendary warlord Cao Cao’s army. Then the guy taps into his inner Christina Aguilera and Lu Bu decides to come on over, baby, to trigger a duel.
Now in the list of bad ideas during the later Han dynasty, dueling against Lu Bu likely ranks among the top. But one of my generals, Xiahou Yuan, more than gave it the old college try and was even winning at one point. That is, until I made a late mistake with my card selection, allowing Lu Bu to mount a comeback — no pun intended — and narrowly win.
It’s bad enough that I decided to send Cao Cao’s army to fight Lu Bu too early without building up my foundation just because I just wanted to do a quick test drive of the battle system before diving deep into the game’s administrative stuff. But the battle was still going well and I was on pace to defeat him way before his reinforcements arrived.
Honestly, I still could have won after Xiahou Yuan’s defeat but I wanted a close-to-perfect victory. So loaded an earlier save of the battle and redirected some troops around to prevent said duel.
Crisis averted.
Only Lu Bu really wanted to duel and next thing I know, I basically had to pick between sending out Cao Cao and one of his favorite concubines.
Seriously.
Now, Cao Cao might be a great tactician. But ain’t now way he’s beating Lu Bu in a physical duel at this early point of the game. So I sent out poor Lady Bian instead to ensure Cao Cao remains active on the field.
Spoiler alert: It did not end well. And by that, I mean Lady Bian lost to Lu Bu. In just one move. Adding insult to injury, rubbed it in by showing a prompt that Lady Bian was seriously injured. After pressing “F” on my keyboard, I proceeded to kick Lu Bu’s big, old Lu Butt and reloaded an even earlier save so I could properly build power and muster my forces before the big battle.
Thus started my experience with Reload, er, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake.
Remaking Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8
As someone who remembers playing Remaking Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a kid way back in the Super NES days with my brother, the ROTK series is one of our favorite games to play growing up.
There’s just something about its mix of history, politics and large-scale battles that tickled or fancies back then. The fact that the ROTK games continue to this day is proof of its allure to generations of gamers. And among its many titles, ROTK 8 from the turn of the millennium was fondly remembered by many fans.
It’s no surprise then that the game was picked as the first major remake for the series.
As beloved as ROTK 8’s gameplay is, the game looks quite old by today’s standards. What if you keep its gameplay but give it a modern coat of paint?
The result is ROTK 8 Remake.
A complete remake as opposed to a simple remaster, the game is much improved visually thanks to new art and animations. The game essentially combines classic hand-drawn 2D art with 3D graphics while keeping the series’ ink painting aesthetic. Although it isn’t the most visually compelling game in the series, it’s a huge improvement from the original, which was released way back when the PlayStation 2 was still the dominant home console.
Despite the visual upgrade, the gameplay certainly feels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8.
It doubles down on the original game’s crazy number of playable characters, which is now increased from 600 to more than 1,000 officers. That’s right, you can play as more than 1,000 characters, from heavyweights such as Cao Cao, Lu Bu and Liu Bei to lesser known supporting officers.
That’s a lot of people.
The game flow of Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake
For folks who want plenty of options, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake serves them up on a pu pu platter.
When starting the game, you can pick not just from multiple scenarios based on historical events but also multiple roles to start the game.
You can go the classic route by starting out as a ruler who micromanages every detail like that one boss you used to have. This includes directly overseeing your army and economy, officer recruitment, commerce and technology development and also fully controlling battles on the field.
Don’t want all that responsibility? You can also play from a more local perspective by starting out as a governor or focus on strategy by becoming a tactician. Heck, you can even take Lu Bu and start him out as a free officer who works his way up the corporate, er, dynastic ladder, which is what I did on a second playthrough.
The Three Kingdoms period is your veritable oyster and you have the freedom to be who you want to be.
Anchoring the base gameplay, meanwhile, is the familiar three-part cycle from ROTK 8.
You start out with a big meeting of the Parliament, which is done every three months to decide the course your territory will take militarily and economically. This is when you decide to move officers around and assign them to specific roles, engage in diplomacy, conscript troops and capture other cities. You can also send spies and saboteurs to other territories to learn about their strengths, foment civil unrest or even weaken their walls prior to an attack — basically, all the stuff that B-movie villains dream about while rubbing their hands with satisfaction.
You then enter the city cycle, which focuses on managing your territory. This is also the phase where you can build relationships with your allied officers through private visits and conversations and bribery, er, showering them with gifts.
You can also check out your farmland, visit the market or hang out at the tavern should you wish. This is all technically work, so every activity serves a purpose. They also require action points to do so you have to be strategic in what you do each month. It doesn’t help to have a huge army for battles, for example, if you don’t have enough food to feed them. Just ask the fine young cannibals of the Yan army during the Siege of Suiyang.
One of the things that the ROTK 8 Remake adds is a “Tales” feature that maps out key events in history. This list conveniently details what you need to do to trigger the events, which can have a huge impact on your allies loyalties or the loss thereof. In fact, you can even opt not to trigger certain events if you don’t want it to affect certain relationships.
On one hand, it’s great for players who value efficiency because you no longer have to guess what you need to do to start important events and scenarios. On the other hand, it can feel like storytelling by spreadsheet.
It’s something that extends to the overall narrative of ROTK 8 Remake, which feels more like a shallow visual novel as opposed to a grand epic tale. It’s a vibe that also applies to the rest of the narrative.
You still get scenes like Liu Bei’s brotherhood oath with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei under the peach tree but it doesn’t seem quite as dramatic as it could be. This is the price you basically pay for having more than 1,000 playable officers as you certainly can’t have a fleshed out narrative for all of them. Just the amount of voice acting in this game is an accomplishment in itself.
Battling and gameplay in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake
In addition to Parliament and the monthly city cycle, battling makes up the next major gameplay component of ROTK 8 Remake’s three-legged stool.
Battles play out on an overhead map where you can move units comprising thousands of troops. The units are shaped in hexagons instead of squares, allowing for more strategy in unit placement once several units clash. Not only can you surround units from more sides, you can also have multiple groups from both sides involved in one clash.
Witness the power of geometry.
Leveraging troop type factors heavily in how well you do in battle. Cavalry has an advantage with movement, for example, while archers can poke at enemy melee units from range without getting hit.
You can also use terrain to hide troops and launch surprise attacks against your foes when they approach. You can even use fire to lower the morale of enemy units, which prevents them from using advanced moves and attacks.
Battles can provide a good challenge, provided you think like a normal person would. That’s because the AI is susceptible to being cheesed through moves that don’t make sense in an actual battlefield.
In that first battle against Lu Bu, for example, I split my troops to make sure I can properly deal with each opposing group. Most reasonable strategists would do this to cover their flank so they aren’t susceptible to pincer attacks. This resulted in a pretty exciting battle that played out as one would expect.
Sometimes, though, you can totally ignore another army at a different part of the field and just converge all your troops on another group. You can then proceed to pick off all the remaining units separately without getting an adequate response from the other enemy troops. This makes battles easier but less fun.
During battles, you can also engage in duels, which plays out through a card system that’s more like a strategy game. In addition to picking the right card, you also have to decide how many of your limited cards to use per hand. Picking more cards than necessary to win a hand, for example, can lead you to not having enough cards in your hand later, opening you up to a devastating attack. Beating an enemy officer forces that officer’s unit to withdraw from the battlefield, which can help turn the tides of war.
You can also engage in debates, which also uses a card system. While cards work relatively well for duels, it isn’t as engaging when it comes to debates. I wish the game used word choices instead as the debate segments don’t feel like debates at all.
The whole card system also has some luck involved. This can lead to some frustrating losses if the RNG gods decide not to smile upon you and you feel cheated out by a factor that’s out of your control.
By the way, you can also skip battles if you want and have the AI decide the outcome. It doesn’t lead to the most ideal outcome but it’s a nice feature to have for folks who are more invested in the politics and civil management of the game and don’t like manual battles.
Final thoughts on Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake is a faithful re-imagining of the classic game with several new bells and whistles to make it more interesting for modern audiences. The remake might be faithful to a fault as some of the mechanics can feel dated at this point. The AI for battles could also use some improvement. With more than 1,000 playable officers and a plethora of roles for players to assume, however, ROTK 8 Remake boasts plenty of replayability plus a ton of options to play exactly how you want. If you loved the original or are pining for some classic ROTK gameplay, this is one romance that isn’t bad at all.
- Rating: 7.5 out of 10
- Cost: $59.99; PC, PS4, PS5, Switch
- More details: Official ROTK8 Remake website
