Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII

"Great! What RTK7 *should* have been!"

Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII (RTK8) came out approximately a year after Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII (RTK7) was released, and the end product clearly showed some major improvements.

In this review, I will be comparing RTK8 largely against RTK7 since these two games are similar to each other, and yet there are some distinct differences that stand out.

Graphics: 8/10
The graphics are much better in comparison to RTK7. For one, each army unit is typically represented by a group of five soldiers (e.g. five cavalrymen and horses for a cavalry unit, five infantry soldiers for an infantry unit, five archers for an archer unit). Each of the units is reasonably detailed, considering the space on your monitor.

City views are now much more distinctively styled. The southern cities will not display snow on the ground during the winter months because, in reality, the climate never reaches such low temperatures needed for snow. Coastal cities will show vast stretches of water in the background while the cities in Shu will have towering mountains in their background. The artistic renderings of these backgrounds is very good and few corners were cut. In addition, the townspeople are much larger and not as ''ant-sized'' compared to RTK7. Their animations are, while repetitive, are in greater detail, thanks to the larger size of the sprites.

Floods, snowstorms, locusts, and plagues will also appear if your cities have been struck by these disasters, which adds to this better quality.

Most of the portraits for the characters carried over from RTK7, but many of the principal characters (e.g. Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Quan, etc.) have completely new portraits while the lesser characters (e.g. Mi Fang, Shen Pei, etc.) keep the same ones from RTK7. If you take a look at a character's information profile or witness a conversation between two characters, you will see a larger version of the portrait. The portraits are beautifully drawn--one of the few constant qualities in KOEI's RTK series.

The battlefield maps also show improvement as the maps are larger and more detailed. You can see individual trees in forests, individual blades of grass, etc. in the terrain, but most importantly the gridlines that dominated the map of RTK7 have disappeared, leaving a more natural-looking map.

Lastly, officers have been rendered into more than just pictures and portraits. This comes out of necessity since there is now a Council Session. With different renderings for both male and female lieges, regional commanders, warlords, warriors, and civil officers, this adds to the overall impression of greater graphics detail. Clever gamers will notice specially-drawn renderings for Guan Yu and Zhang Fei--the only two characters in the game to have their very own renditions.

Gameplay: 8/10
The gameplay has both some ups and downs to it. While you cannot attack enemy cities in any month you want, there is a greater sense of organization, hierarchy, and delegated management--building upon the foundation set down in RTK7. You do not have the same level of micromanagement of cities like in RTK4, but given the limited number of turns that your character has, delegation of responsibilities comes very handy. The introduction of the quarterly council session can frustrate the eager warrior-gamers out there, but the effect is that it slows an otherwise torrid pace of conquering all of China in, say, 5 years. The new friendship system is definitely a plus, and compatibilities between characters is strongly enforced (e.g. Cao Cao and Liu Bei will not become fast friends in RTK8, whereas you could easily get their friendship to 100 in RTK7). The key improvement here is a certain sense of realistic development, which is a major asset to RTK8.

The whole gameplay experience can get repetitive, especially since development of the city has greater dominance and importance in RTK8 than in RTK7. KOEI has, nonetheless, compensated by including additional tasks and concepts that give the gameplay some variety, which was sorely lacking in RTK7.

The new skills and restricted stats development is, in my opinion, an improvement over RTK7 because it is unreasonable for a non-warrior like Guo Jia to have a War stat of 100, and a ''knucklehead'' like Lu Bu to have an Intelligence stat of 100. There are limits to the development of your stats, which I think is a realistic reflection of an officer's potential.

Battle Engine: 7/10
One of the weakest parts of the RTK series is the artificial intelligence. Computer-controlled lieges are not as aggressive, even when the circumstances are in their favour. While overwhelming sizes of armies are not necessarily the primary factor of victory, they can often overshadow some of the newer features of military combat. In many cases, it is too easy to win battles, and sometimes the decisions of the AI are imprudent.

KOEI did an excellent job by introducing the concept of battle manoeuvres, which allow even armies of small numbers to cause serious damage to vast armies. Battle manoeuvres are a constant source of elation, when they succeed, and frustration, when they fail. Battle manoeuvres are very important to the victory or loss in a battle, so be prepared to be very happy or very angry! :)

With the introduction of multiple-liege coalitions, it is now possible to draw in five or more factions into a single battle. Each side could have more than 15 officers engaged in a battle--sometimes even 30 officers! The flipside to this is the rather lengthy animations shown when each officer moves along the battlefield. It is, therefore, in your best interests to set your game's battle settings so that the game would scroll through moves as quickly as possible.

Replayability: 9/10
Depending on your point of view, one of the best elements of these so-called ''freelance'' strategy games is their infinite replayability. No two games are ever the same since conditions and situations are constantly different (e.g. one liege may have recruited an excellent officer in one game, but was unable to in another, thus shifting a balance of power and abilities to another, luckier liege). Because you can play as any officer (i.e. not limited to playing as a liege), there is great replayability, but since most gamers tend to stick with their favourite characters (or at least, the better ones), this factor may be somewhat diminished. Nonetheless, being able to lead the lives of your favourite character in various ways is still an excellent aspect of RTK8.

Buy it? Rent it?
For the die-hard RTK series fans, it's a keeper and certainly worth buying. It's a distinct improvement over RTK7, in my opinion, and incorporates many things that RTK7 should have. For those of you who aren't so sure about buying but loved RTK7, you should consider renting it and then decide.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/24/03, Updated 04/24/03