For English speaking gamers: This is the worst game in the series.

[Coocoodas]

Hello, curious English speaking audience. I'm writing this thread to help you with an informed decision on whether to buy this game or not when the English version is released a week later.

If you are worried about my credential, I've been a loyal fan of Koei games for a long time and played ROTTK from 1~13. Admittedly, I pirated 1~5 since there was no way to buy when I first played those, but I've bought all titles from 6 to 13. I have 13 on PS4.

If you don't want walls of text, here is a simple advice for you: Don't buy until a discount & PK comes out.

Now to the details, especially those that the English speaking audience are not familiar of.




1. EA is an angel compared to what Koei is.

EA is like an axis of evil to English speaking gamers, but they do not yet know the true extent of evil if they haven't experience Koei. Koei is infamous for its 'Koei price' and 'PK marketing.' Koei makes historical character-based, pseudo strategy games, without much strategy really, that they claim to be a 'historical simulator' genre.

Koei has been selling its games at a 1.5 times or double price of its competitors for decades and has been able to get away with it because their audience is of a niche market. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a lot more popular than Star Wars or Lord of the Rings to East Asian audience, and from where I'm from I've hardly met a man who hasn't read the novel at least once. Since Koei is the only developer who makes games based on ROTTK, fans buy their games despite it being overpriced. Every single Koei game is overpriced. If you want a taste of it, try searching up any mobile games made by Koei. You will watch in awe as a price tag triple times more expensive than similar games stand before you.

Koei took this further and started milking out of its loyal audience by releasing 'Power-up Kit' ever since ROTK 3. Koei releases original games at a beta stage with half-baked features, and often don't even bother patching it. They release PK with bug fixes and finished features about 6 months~1 year later with another tall price.

Often original games are completely unplayable and broken but Koei forces you to buy PK by not fixing the original game. For instance, ROTTK IX which is considered a classic and one of the best in the series, had a broken AI at release that all AIs committed a suicide by running out of provisions on its own and stagnated without a player intervention: Koei refused to fix the problem, they didn't release ANY patches for nearly a year and included a fix on PK for $40. Does EA look still evil to you?

Fortunately, Koei has patched ROTTK 13 5 times since release, and it's unprecedented since they've never released a patch more than once or twice in the past. However, don't start cheering yet; the reason for that is because ROTTK 13 is so bad that without a fix you are guaranteed to throw it out of a window or feed it to your dogs within 5 hours of play.




2. ROTTK has been a beta version of Nobunaga's ambition.

Nobunaga's ambition is another Koei game based on Japanese history, and naturally it is a lot more popular in Japan although the popularity is reversed in China, Taiwan, and Korea.

Starting with ROTTK 9-ish and onward, ROTTK has been used as a test and simplified version of Nobunaga's ambition. Nobunaga's ambition has hundreds of castles as opposed to 50-ish in ROTTK and near 2 thousands of officers as opposed to 500~600-ish of ROTTK. One would think Japan is bigger than China if you compare those two games. ROTTK to Nobunaga's ambition is like Sengoku to Crusader Kings II of Paradox Interactive.

If you are not particularly interested in ROTTK, you are better off with Nobunaga's ambition. Unfortunately my childhood has been spoiled with ROTTK so I can't really get immersed with Japanese history. I have to stick to ROTTK.

For a reference, 1233 characters appear in the ROTTK novel and about 1400 characters exist in relevant materials of the time period. (including a play and historical records) Usually only half of them appear in the game at best.

However, Koei dropped balls with both of the latest ROTTK and Nobunaga's ambition, so I don't know if it even matters at this point. Both games are equally bad this time, so just this time once, you are free to go with ROTTK 13 without feeling a relative deprivation. Good for ROTTK fans. Woo-hoo!




3. The matter of fact is that Koei stopped trying after ROTTK 11. Here are proofs:

ROTTK 13 is based on DirectX9.0c, a relic from 12 years ago. However it does not support XP.

ROTTK 11 released in 2006 was based on DirectX9.0c as well. The graphics of ROTTK 13 is similar and obviously has less effort put into it compared to ROTTK 11. Compared to 11, 13's 3D character models are mostly copy-pasted, they lack animation variety, special army attacks animations were replaced with a picture.

One-on-one combat is basically a rock-paper scissor and verbal combat is exactly the same with a different card names. It used to be a lot more complicated and strategical; ROTTK 6 IMO has the best one-on-one combat and ROTTK 10 the best verbal combat in the series, but as you can expect from Koei, they never build upon their previous installment. They always add something new and unfinished, and does not implement features appraised in the previous titles; except they didn't even do the former in ROTTK 12 and 13.

The truth is this: Koei stopped supporting the game and most likely disbanded or integrated the development team of ROTTK to another team after 11 was released, and put them together in a rush in a short time before releasing ROTTK 12 and 13 for a quick cash-grab. The only improvement those two received are better illustrations which has nothing to do with developers.




4. Koei didn't bother with ROTTK 13. Why should you bother buying it?

The downgrade of ROTTK 13 from the previous series is seen all over the place and are very noticeable. Compared to ROTTK 10, quests were butchered and simplified, you can't form a wandering band, there are no events such as single combat tournament and discussion tournament, taking over an empty city is instant without any fight or verbal combat, you can't request reorganization of cities to your lord as a vassal(which becomes a huge hassle later on as you try to manage vast empire without diplomatic rights and with few officers), there are no natural disasters, no on-map stratagems, no plots and no tactics, no battlefield constructions, no traps, no in-depth marriage system, no raising a child or new officers, streamlined party system and so on. Literally everything fans loved was butchered thanks to no efforts on Koei's part.

Fog of war is gone and you see the entire battle map and enemy movements. All battle maps are slightly altered version or recycled maps of one for castle, one for field, and one for the sea. (used to be that all battle fields were different.) The only command you have in the battle is 'attack,' 'move,' and 'special ability' button you press once in a while. Cavalries climb a castle wall. Don't even start laughing because that's the least of this game's problems. ROTTK 11 had 7 different troop types but ROTTK has 3, as rock-paper-scissors seem to be the best extent the developers are capable of emulating.

Diplomacy is almost non-existent and diplomacy success is guaranteed 100% unless you try to fail or have the enemy invade you before the diplomatic act is finished. Even if you are an enemy of an AI they will 100% accept a proposal of alliance; it's the only matter of how long it takes until accepted. Can you believe this? A self-proclaimed 'historical simulator' with 100% diplomatic success rate! Simply ally with all forces around you except for one and beat the heck out of that one you didn't ally with. AI in diplomacy used to be stupid in previous titles but at least an abomination of a design like this didn't exist.

In ROTK 11 there used to be different titles used by family members to refer to each other, and 10 different manners of speaking for all characters. Surprise, it's gone and even your nemesis, your father, your lord, your wife will address you with the most honorary manner of speaking. Even after a marriage your wife's dialogue doesn't change at all except for one welcoming line. You won't even recognize who is your sister and father until you look at the relationship chart and this is the first in the series this nonsense happened.

I won't explain everything since most of you probably haven't touched the previous titles, but simply put ROTTK 13 is a downgrade from every previous title of the series.

No doubt PK will 'fix' some bugs and balance issues here and there already done better with fan made modes, add editing feature already available by fan-made editors, and add missing features Koei intentionally removed from previous titles and come with a price tag of $30~50 to violate your wallet, but you can only expect so much from a bare-bone game Koei released to milk the dying franchise without putting any efforts or investments apart from good character illustrations.


ROTTK 13 is indisputably a joke. ROTTK 13 PK will be overpriced but may be playable if you have enough love for ROTTK's story.

If you are poking around here it's likely you are already interested in the era, so I won't tell you not to play the game. However, wait until PK is released or the game is on sales. As of now I objectively think the game has as much content as ROTTK 7 PK released in 2000. With PK it will probably be on par with ROTTK 8 PK released in 2001 in content-wise, disregarding the released year difference.

To just give an example out of many, ROTTK 8 had over 60 scenarios each representing every year from the yellow turban rebellion to the death of Zhuge Liang and a bit more compared to 8+3(sold as separate DLCs) scenarios of ROTTK 13, but at this point it should be obvious that Koei never overdoes its previous work.

I have so much more to criticize about Koei and ROTTK 13 but I will end it here since I've gone on long enough. Just know that, and I'm not saying this as a angry critic of Koei but objectively speaking, Koei didn't bother with the serious at all after 11. This is their milking attempt at the dying franchise.

If you ever get a hold of English patches or previous games, play those. Even though they aged quite a bit, they are still better than ROTTK 13. In all ROTTK except for 7,8,10 and 13, you play as a faction rather than a character.

ROTTK 3 was the base on which the series was built upon. It didn't age well, but it could be fun if you appreciate it as a old game.
ROTTK 5 is very speedy and has fun battle formations
ROTTK 6 has the best one-on-one combat in the series. It's based on semi-real time battles and each officers have 'dreams' which makes relationships dynamic.

ROTTK 8 and onward are still very playable and arguably still more fun than ROTTK 13. ROTTK 8 has scenario for every year until Zhuge Liang's death. You can play as an officer. It has less things to do than 10 but its combat AI is a lot better.
ROTTK 9 is considered the best in the series and it has the best AI and strategical depth. It's semi-real time and everything including city management and battles takes place on the same map. Highly recommended. You play as a faction. Best war in the series.
ROTTK 10 is considered an epitome of officer-based ROTTK and it has the most contents to do as an individual. Even playing as a commoner is fun. The only and most outstanding flaw is its incredibly bad AI in battles and associated balance issues. If you are more into RPG style games rather than wars this is the game for you.
ROTTK 11 is considered a good game and AFAIK it is one of few titles translated in English. It provides strategical depth. There are some balance issues and the game is time-consuming, but overall it's good all-around and the last 'properly made' ROTTK game by Koei standard. Highly recommended #2.

ROTTK 12 is the start of Koei's 'milk the franchise until it dies' ploy. It's a huge downgrade from ROTTK 11 but surprisingly is still playable, and PK fixed a lot of release-date problems.

ROTTK 13 is a piece of waste that went even further below ROTTK12. You will feel fruitful after giving aims to the homeless for longer than the fun you get by playing this game. Highly recommended to dodge as best you can, or at least wait until PK comes along.



I will end this long walls of texts with a few positive notes about the game. ROTTK 13 is no doubt the worst game in the series considering its year of release. Koei barely put any effort in it and released the game half-baked. However it had a couple of good ideas shadowed by numerous bad design decisions and lack of efforts.

ROTTK 13 has the most number of officers in the series, 700. It is somewhat undone by the lack of scenarios. (no northern expedition by Zhuge Liang for the first time in the series! More scenarios will likely be added by PK and time will solve this problem)

ROTTK 13 has the most number of cities in the series, 60. It is however completely undone by the fact that they are all copy-pasted.



The followings are the ONLY two things about the game that I'm going to only state the positive:

For the first time in the series the game succeeded in representing historical balance of power in Three Kingdoms period. It used to be Southern China that was undeveloped back then was over-evaluated as they had more cities that the novel's protagonist Liu Bei was active on. However, ROTTK 13 created a rather accurate representation of provincial productivity and power based on historical populations, so the importance of the central plain and above has become enormous, as it was in history. Wars tend to be all-out in ROTTK 13, so it's a lot harder to overcome the power difference. You can no longer take on a unified Chinese empire by starting with 1 city and 1 officer and by using all kinds of exploits as you could have done in ROTTK 10 and 11.

Also, ROTTK 13's Hero Mode is done rather well with its unique scenario, illustration, voice, and cut-scenes. It starts as a tutorial but gets harder in late stages, providing you adequate fun if you are up to the challenges. There are 34 scenarios(some of which are events-only) with all DLCs purchased.

ROTTK is still bad, but if you only ever play as a lord of a faction it could be fun and challenging for a couple of plays of unification. Then you will have to wait for PK regardless, to keep having fun.



Many Koei fans buy new titles despite fully knowing that they will be let down. It's similar to how bad Star Wars games sell well to Western gamers. Until either of Paradox Interactive, Creative Assembly, or Firaxis Games decide to touch the subject, Koei will remain as the sole producer of non-mobile ROTTK era games and this unhealthy relationship between Koei and fans will continue. The fact that the game is based on ROTTK makes half the fun at minimum.

This is it. Good luck with your purchase decision of ROTTK 13. I hope this helped you understand what kind of developer Koei is and let you make an informed decision when you buy another product from them in the future.

[Coocoodas]

Originally posted by Punished "Venom" Nightengale:

How in-depth in the "Hero Mode" in this game compared to the novel story-wise?

It is good for a Koei standard and from a game-play perspective; some say it's even better than the main game. It has its unique scenarios, cut-scenes, some voice, illustrations and events. It faithfully follows the important events of the novel with 34 scenarios, DLCs included, (some of which are events-only) and you play as 3 main factions as well as a few side factions such as Lubu's. However, I wouldn't compare it to the novel story-wise. It is a slight improvement over Dynasty Warriors' script, and I doubt if you will ever see any stylish or memorable moments from any of Koei games. Length-wise it only scratches the surface but that's inevitable given the volume of the original novel.

[Vel]

Approximately when could we expect a release of the PK version?

[B o f u]

I have to disagree pretty strongly with you on a few points. The game isn't perfect, but it isn't a bad game by any stretch.

ROTK12 was easily the worst game of the series. It lacked depth, officers only had one type of unit they could use, and diplomacy was very simplistic.

ROTK13 has many more historical events than most of the other games. Officers behave more realistically than they do in earlier ROTK games (where loyal officers such as Huang Gai or Xu Zhu will betray their rulers at the drop of a hat). The character relationships are deeper than in ROTK8 or 10, where you pretty much become best friends with someone just by visiting them a lot. These relationships can even influence diplomacy; as Sun Ce, I became close friends with Liu Bei while we were both rulers by visiting him and fulfilling his personal quest, and this made diplomacy very simple. In addition, if you kill an officer in battle, you will become their relatives' nemesis, something that was left out of ROTK11 and 12 (you could kill Guan Yu, and Liu Bei would still join you).

The problem is that people have unreasonable expectations for these games.

[sanjin84]

TLDR

[Midnight Fenrir]

To be honest I couldn't care less if the game isn't very good. I'm going to buy it along with all of it's DLC/Expansions come July 5th and play the s**t out of it just for the sake of it being an RPG Romance of the Three Kingdoms game on Steam.

[Vermillion]

The game might not be perfect but at least it is another RotK game in the west and at least they went back to the awesome style that was in RotK 7, 8 and 10.
My advice is play the game yourself and decide if you like it as opposed to the extreme amount of ♥♥♥♥ talking everyone is doing to the game mainly to due with price.

[Hasboob]

I agree with this being a beta test for Nobunaga's Ambition.
secondly, the original director of ROTK is the current CEO of Koei Tecmo. He didn't develop 12 or 13, and those two are regarded as the worse in the series. I don't imagine he'll ever develop another ROTK because he is busy doing CEO related work.

[Conte]

Thank you for making this guide! I had RTTK11 and it was really good but I'm more of an RPG player like on CK2 (crusader kings 2) I'm going to try RTTK10 seems a lot of fun, I'll prolly buy the new RTTK but as you said I'll wait for a patch and a sale seems fair enough

[I'm gaming]

There is no company which makes a game to betatest another one. You will be surprised with the fact that some ROTK were released after NA or TR which used similar system.

[Guess5050]

WOW, Nobunaga:SoI is supposed to better? Why, then this got to be bad. That game was so awful. There was hardly any RPG element. You couldn't even have a boy if you used a custom made character.

Too bad Paradox is now too busy with Stellaris. I didn't like ROTK11 because the English didn't get PUK and it focused too much on the battle. ROTK isn't famous for its fights and battles. It's famous for its political fighting and intrigue.

[Sayonara]

If i play as a ruler of a faction can i control all of my officers and conquer like in ROTK 11 or NA:SOI ? I love ROTK 11 and quite enjoy NA:SOI but don't like the RPG aspect of ROTK 10, so hopefully ROTK 13 can be played somewhat similar to these games.

[I'm gaming]

Originally posted by Sayonara:

If i play as a ruler of a faction can i control all of my officers and conquer like in ROTK 11 or NA:SOI ? I love ROTK 11 and quite enjoy NA:SOI but don't like the RPG aspect of ROTK 10, so hopefully ROTK 13 can be played somewhat similar to these games.

ROT13 has few rpg elements.

[LoVe)Ly]

Originally posted by SunBofu:

I have to disagree pretty strongly with you on a few points. The game isn't perfect, but it isn't a bad game by any stretch.

ROTK12 was easily the worst game of the series. It lacked depth, officers only had one type of unit they could use, and diplomacy was very simplistic.

ROTK13 has many more historical events than most of the other games. Officers behave more realistically than they do in earlier ROTK games (where loyal officers such as Huang Gai or Xu Zhu will betray their rulers at the drop of a hat). The character relationships are deeper than in ROTK8 or 10, where you pretty much become best friends with someone just by visiting them a lot. These relationships can even influence diplomacy; as Sun Ce, I became close friends with Liu Bei while we were both rulers by visiting him and fulfilling his personal quest, and this made diplomacy very simple. In addition, if you kill an officer in battle, you will become their relatives' nemesis, something that was left out of ROTK11 and 12 (you could kill Guan Yu, and Liu Bei would still join you).

The problem is that people have unreasonable expectations for these games.

I've played about a million hours of RotTKXI and found that whenever I executed an officer, his relatives and sworn siblings refused to join me (and said something about me 'killing brother' or such when I'd try). This may not be the case if you kill them via repeated fire/arrow/cavalry tactics, as I almost never do that.

[DKB]

This doesn't seem to be for the purposes of making an informed decision. It just sounds more like a post to ♥♥♥♥♥ and moan.

[Nox]

Really, I feel the oppsite, Personally If you like sphere of infleucne you will like this game imo.