The 11th instalment is in no way an exception. Though at first i was a little disappointed due to the complexity of the game, i realised the awesomeness was simply being overlooked by me due to my inability to quickly adapt to the new 'system'.
The highlights of the game are (these may be spoilirish if you like being surprised):
-You can marry of your officers
-All the female figures are vassals
-You can create Oaths
-Transport of Material, Officers etc is not instantaneous more realistic
-You play the game as the sovereign (don't be turned of by this, you'll have full autonomy over your vassals, strategists etc)
-The map is 3-D
-The portraits of the prominent figures change as they age (though I haven't experienced this since so far i only played rise of heroes)
The rest you'll have to experience yourself, all in all, the game is simply great!
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This game takes a good long while to get into. Even the game itself cops to it. When you are playing through the tutorial (with an unusually retarded Liu Bei I might add) your character will comment on how long it takes to actually get an army onto the field of battle. First you have to build barracks, then recruit guys, then drill the guys, then build a smith to create weapons, then make the weapons. Dear me, that's a lot of hand sitting. But the thing that really dragged this down for me was transporting materials. It's friggin' hard and it takes forever. Resource management is the number one issue in this game. If you don't plan things out right you might have one city with 40,000 gold and one with hardly any. Also, for some reason, whenever you attack and claim a city the gold in that city drops down to nothing even if it had tons of gold earlier. What is up with this 'scorched earth' crap? That is why it is good to bring gold with your troops when you attack so you can pay your officers and they won't get annoyed the next turn. Food, and soldiers take forever to send. Your better off just sending gold and then buying food.The good news is that combat is more interactive then Romance 9, the game that most closely ressembles this one. In that game you sent your army out and they kind of stood around and banged on the other army untill a tactic would randomly trigger. In this game you have control over when you use your tactics and in general you have more control of your army. Like 9 you have a lot of action going on at once. The whole 'you are attacking someone but someone else attacks you and then another force attacks another one of your cities, which one are you gonna try and save' chaos sort of deal. Only it is more difficult because of the aforementioned resource management. If I had to sum this game up in one sentence I would say that it has the chaos and free flowing combat of Romance 9 and the exacting resource management of Romance 8. The 3d thing is nice but not essential. At least they are improving the look of the game slightly. Still, while playing I frequently had the urge to stop and go back to playing one of the previous titles in the series. It is a good game that starts slow but build speed quickly once you get into it.
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If you can't stand turn-based games, history lessons, or having to work with numbers, and if graphics are the most important thing to you in searching for a game (along with mindless action) then steer clear of this title. ROTK11 is an engaging game that you can easily spend days on. For those of you who have grow up playing L'Emporuer, Liberty or Death, Genghis Kan, Oda Nobunaga, and of course the previous ten ROTK titles then this is a godsend!ROTK11 is a throw-back to the earliest titles in the series. Unlike ROTK10 it is not single-player, you are allowed up to 8 factions to control as the player. Logistics, warfare, city development, etc. everything is executed on one world map (meaning no battle screens or pesty loading times). It may take some getting used to if you're not familiar with the layout of previous ROTK games. They kept the deuls (naturally it's been there since ROTKone) and the debate screens, but they aren't near as frequent as in ROTK10. No ranks, just sovereigns. A plethora of optional game settings and character customizations along with enough battle/game senerioes to keep you busy for a month.
In summa:
A MUST HAVE for strategy gamers who think big.
Honest reviews on Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI - PlayStation 2
Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is yet another installment of the classic Chinese strategy game. If you're a fan of the RotTK series, you're sure to enjoy this one!This is a very immersive strategy game, and you need to accept that it'll take a long time to play. Not long as in "millions of maps that you get to explore while non-stop fighting your enemies". It's long as in "first you have to build your barracks. Then you have to slowly build up your enemy. Don't forget about all the hassles of moving supplies around to keep your army fed and taken care of."
Your world is set in historical China, in the early 100s / 200s. There are literally hundreds of characters, and if you've been playing these series, many of them are quite familiar. You are actually learning some history while you play a game :)
The graphics are quite pretty, especially during some of the cut scenes. It is like watching a Chinese painting come to live. In the battle you get some 3D rendering of what is going on, but the focus is not on fast-moving button mashing. It is very much about strategy, about managing your resources.
This game will appeal to people who want to sit down for many hours at a stretch, delve themselves into what their troops are doing, how each area is being managed, learning all the glossary terms, becoming a Chinese historian.
For gamers who want a quick hack-and-slash for a half hour before dinner, they will become frustrated and bored with the attention needed to get through this game.
Well recommended for serious strategy gamers. Make sure you go through the long tutorial first, to get a solid grounding in how the game works.
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ROTK11 is a good follow up in the genre. I've been playing this series since Wall of Fire (and Koei's games since Genghis Khan), and each one has been an improvement from the last, but not without hiccups. I'll touch on some of my own experiences with them, since all the good things about this game have pretty much been laid out.A couple things ticked me off. Traveling distance and time is more realistic and I like it, but it doesn't adhere when an enemy general is defeated in the field. One scenario was when I had an enemy being surrounded and incinerated/cavalry charged with no troops left in his unit with his back to my city walls, yet somehow 1. He escapes (every time), and 2. He is instantly teleported back to his city of origin, where he sets out again with a fresh unit. Suddenly, travel time and distance doesn't mean anything here and you're soon fighting the unit that you just destroyed. This gives nations with many starting generals a distinct advantage, as even if you don't loose a single time on defense, you'll eventually be worn down by a constant procession of recurring units and generals. This doesn't encourage good strategy either, as the incentive is eliminated by the guarantee of officer safety if you lose, oh well, just recycle his unit.
One way I've found to get around this is to wear down enemy attackers, then let him take a city, whereby you can simply retake it and guarantee capturing whatever generals are in it. However, this tactic is impossible with one city remaining, as even though you may let one enemy unit take your city with an entire army waiting to retake, the game deems you "wiped out" and suddenly tens of thousands of troops in the field magically disappear along with your generals.
Things like these, along with the elimination of the ability to play an officer (which made ROTK10 so fun, even though it was single player for some reason), brings this game down a couple notches. Still fun to play, but I swear Koei purposefully puts boneheaded flaws in to justify another release. I'd love to see what a fully updated ROTK would be like, combining the best features of previous releases and finally taking care of some things that have plagued this franchise since its inception...but that wouldn't encourage future releases (and money), would it?
However, as this may seem like a negative review, I liked the game overall. It had me addicted for hours on end at one point, so its mission is accomplished. Fun gameplay, great replay value, great musical score. A good update on the series, but as usual, it has its flaws.
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