Use them wisely and they may be the point on which the whole battle turns.Įach faction also gets a set of unique mechanics and some even feature a unique currency. They’ll also bring the best archers to the field and pair particularly well with any unit wielding ranged weaponry. The combat buffs available to these heroes are usually very situational, but very powerful if deployed for maximum effect. Strategist: The right push at the right time. Use their mobility to move them around the field and provide encouragement to any regiments you may see on the verge of fleeing. In addition, they unlock some of the best melee cavalry available and give combat bonuses to melee cavalry. No one can rally the troops better than a commander. You want to set them up in a spot where you need the line to hold, come hell or Lu Bu.Ĭommander: Inspiration. They unlock high-tier swordsman for recruitment and give combat bonuses to all swordsmen.
Sentinel: Hold the line! These guys can plant their feet and take a charge, outlasting any other hero type in a protracted brawl. You want to sick them on the enemy’s most important generals right away. They also allow you to recruit higher-tier spearmen and give combat bonuses to spearmen. They’re not as good in a chaotic melee as Vanguards, but are peerless in one-on-one combat. These are the heroes that kill other heroes. You want to throw them at the weakest part of the enemy line and watch the sparks fly.Ĭhampion: Dueling. They can also recruit higher-tier shock cavalry and give combat bonuses to shock cavalry. These heroes are the best against normal, everyday troops and have a strong offensive focus. Since you can only include three heroes in any army, you won’t have access to every possible utility in any given one. Total War: Three Kingdoms adds a clever layer of personality and tactical consideration with its five hero classes. Also, each general has a class, so you’ll want to compose forces around complementary generals with regiments that take the best advantage of their bonuses. Diversity in army composition is encouraged in other ways, however, as troops are recruited to a specific character’s retinue and armies are made up of one to three of them. And there aren’t competing ethnic groups to shake things up on the level of Huns vs Romans in Attila since all the action takes place between factions that are decidedly Chinese. We’re back in the land of swordsmen, spearmen, archers, and cavalry in various configurations maneuvering to best exploit the rock-paper-scissors relationships between different troops. Spotlighting named characters helps make up for the fact that the armies themselves aren’t quite as diverse or interesting as, say, the Warhammer Total Wars’ or even Thrones of Britannia’s. The campaign really comes alive in Romance mode.
But some of the fun and character is definitely lost if you’re sticking closer to the history books in Records mode. Both modes put a strong emphasis on the larger-than-life characters driving the action, including quippy banter both before and during battle that helps bring them to life. This turns your generals into demigod-like kung fu action heroes who engage in dramatic duels and can take on hundreds of normal soldiers single-handedly. The campaign really comes alive in Romance mode, which is based on the semi-historical novel about the era, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. That’s not a deal-breaker given how many other things are fresh and exciting on the campaign map, but I was never all that tempted to give it much of my time when the other option is so much cooler. It also led me to feel like I might as well be playing any other historical Total War game, though.
Records mode is closer to classic historical Total War, where generals are mere mortals accompanied into battle by a bodyguard regiment, and real-time engagements play out slowly and less decisively. Three Kingdoms offers you two ways to conquer its sprawling, attractively exaggerated map of 200s CE China.
TOTAL WAR THREE KINGDOMS REVIEW SERIES
A political and tactical landscape that’s almost never boring, filled out with gorgeous, stylized graphics, an excellent character system, and massive performance improvements over previous games in the series leave no doubt who the new emperor is around these parts.
With this foray into ancient China, however, Creative Assembly seems to have finally hit an elusive sweet spot with its campaign tuning. A turn-based grand strategy game on the scale of Total War: Three Kingdoms often struggles to present a consistent and meaningful challenge across hundreds of turns and dozens of battles.
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