Recent reviews by Donk

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this game nearly as much as I did, spectacular. Well worth it's stellar reviews.

I'll start by saying I have played TW games since the first Shogun came out on PC. I have at some point, owned and played to death, almost every total war game (with the sole exception of Britannia). 3 Kingdoms is, in a way, something new.

3k doesn't quite move away from the province system, but it changes it. The game seems to have moved from a province based model to one focused mostly on characters and generals. Units are sometimes unlocked by research, or a building, but mostly are specific to characters, and you get more powerful units as your characters level up. You can have 3 generals per army, with 6 units each.

When you are looking at the map, from the start to mid game, you'll see tonnes of factions, constantly changing, forming coalitions, alliances, breaking down again. You wont remember most of them, but you will remember the characters. Although it's probably not a popular opinion, I think the diplomacy in this game is great, honestly, after playing total war for years, I usually avoid diplomacy in almost all cases and proceed to stomp all my neighbours. Not here. There are rivalries, friendships, oaths - all of which make the game more interesting as the game goes on.

The campaign map & redone UI are nothing short of breathtaking, I'll happily vouch my favourite in any TW to date. It takes the historical period and makes it easy to understand, and fun to engage with.

However, it wouldn't be a fair review if there was no beef amirite? There is beef.

The battles, although fun to watch, are bland and samey after about one of each type of battle. The units, bland and samey. Hell, you have to pay extra just to see blood, although as it's about the 4th game in the series to charge for this, nobody is surprised.

The unit sizes are awful - Your cities easily reach populations upwards of millions, yet your army sizes struggle to hit a few thousand. I played my first campaign with the unit size set to 'Large'. The game's definition of large, is 30 men in one cavalry unit. (I checked extreme unit size, 60.) Now, I know the limitations of AI on the battlefield, system usage, blah blah, but I'm probably not the first to say, I'd rather see another thousand men on the field than a really nice bush, or a building you dont look at because you're too busy giving your men orders.

All in all, the campaigns are fun, and I'll continue to play, but I cannot wait for the no doubt great workshop content that follows every TW game to correct the swathe of mistakes Creative Assembly always leave. I was literally 2 hours in when I got my first crash - disappointing, considering the tiny size of soldiers on the field.

TLDR; Another classic TW, somehow with less unit diversity than ever before, but a vastly improved campaign. Heavily character based gameplay, but done alright. I will not buy the DLC for this until it's so on sale CA pay ME to take it, but the main game is a laugh. I absolutely do not recommend this game at full price, especially considering you have to pay extra to see... soldiers bleed? Some would have thought a game about war might contain blood, but hell, I'm no expert.

Not normally a great critic, but this is my new favourite game. It's worth every penny, I assure you. In fact, I feel like I should actively dissuade you from buying it at discount price due to how badly the devs earned their pay on this one

Ever play mount and blade and go "Man, I wish the combat worked." This is it I guess. I wasn't a fan of war of the roses, or chivalry, or for honour, just not for me. But this is absolute gold.

It is gorgeous, runs like a dream, the combat is intensely satisfying yet weirdly intuitive, it's gory, it's fun and it's well made. 10/10 haven't had so much fun in ages.

Buy this sh*t.