Romance of the Three Kingdoms III

"Supremacy on the SNES for the Three Kingdoms"

Truly the best ''old-school'' Romance Game of the series. Romance of the Three Kingdoms brought a lot of very nice things to the series that have been carried on through all of the installments following it.

Story:

As always, the story revolves around the ''Three Kingdoms'' era of Second Century China. The game presents you with six different scenarios, all taking place during different parts of the period, starting from the year 189, when Dong Zhuo raised his rebellion, and lasting through the year 235, just after Zhuge Liang's death and the start of the fall of Shu.

Gameplay:

Gameplay has changed rather dramatically from II to III. The game, of course, is based in turns like all of it's predecessors have been. Each turn, you're allowed to perform as many actions as you have officers available to perform action. You can only play as a ruler; many people that are new to the current lines of RTK games may be used to being able to play as officers or vassals. This is not possible in RTK3. As ruler, you command every aspect of your nation, from the civil aspects, to the war strategy, to who you trust to place in charge of your nation in your place.

Civil aspects of the game are a superb improvement over RTK2. Each city has five governing values: Economy, Cultivation, Land Development, Flood Control, and Popular Support. As a ruler, you will choose how to improve these attributes to lead yourself to a financially strong nation.

War has changed. A lot. RTK3 is the very first Romance game that introduced 3-dimensional battlefields, complete with castles, ramparts, rivers, and forests. Each city has it's own battlefield map and a unique surrounding. When invading or defending, you can use these different terrain types to your advantage and launch devastating attacks against your foes, while holding the advantage of terrain. Also, the map now comes with additional new features that were never available before. Now you can also control battlefields that are beyond the scope of your city. Controlling these battlefields can help you fortify your defense, and protect your cities from war damage.

Duels are pretty much un-changed from RTK2. Unlike in the newest installments of the series, you are not allowed to ''control'' the actions of the officers in duels.

There are some new stats, also in RTK3. Unlike in the previous games, there is a new ''Army'' and ''Navy'' skill that helps govern the amount of offensive and defensive strength a commander has on the battlefield. While the ''war'' attribute is still significant in game, this allows some of the tacticians that have lesser wars become more useful in battles.

There are also some new war commands, such as ambush. A unit can now go into ambush and surprise attack the enemy with devastating results. There is also simultaneous attacks, which allow all units surrounding someone to attack all at once, causing greater damage.

Diplomacy has also improved, introducing new commands such as giving gifts, or requesting aid from an ally. You can also sometimes persuade other nations into submitting to you, if you have the might to make them consider subjugating without a fight.

Graphics:

Graphics are much improved. The introduction of 3-dimensional battles has significantly helped the appearance of the franchise. It's no longer totally boring to play, graphically. From the SNES, graphics are par, I would say. Character portraits are also massively better in RTK3 than any of the preceding Romance games. They're very well done and colored nicely.

Sound/Music:

Sound and music are okay; there are better games out there on the SNES, however. The music has little variance. Music changes as you acquire more cities, allowing a little variety, though not enough. It does sound authentic, however, which is a nice touch. I'd say that the music in RTK3 is par for the SNES. I did like a lot of the battle songs in this one, especially for the water battles. It was quite nice.

Replay:

This is the shining feature for all Romance of the Three Kingdoms games. They have exceptional replay value if you really enjoy strategy sims. It's excellent. No two games are ever the same and you're given such a deep amount of control, it makes for a truly remarkable game. Also, the amount of different starting scenarios makes it possible for you to give yourself a different change of pace when you get tired of another.

You're allowed to also create new characters in RTK3, which add a lot more variation to the game. More discussed on that below.

Created Characters:

In my opinion, the best thing new from RTK2 to RTK3 is the created officer option. This allows you to create 60 new officers for the game, and additionally 7 new created rulers. RTK2 had a created officer and ruler option, but only one of each, and you also had to start AS that created ruler. In RTK3 you can create all of these officers, and pick fictional mode, allowing for all of them to filter into the game in random locales. This adds a lot more officer variety to the game.

When creating an officer, you're allowed to input the name, of course, their starting age (unlike the newer RTK games, they always start at this age, no matter which scenario/year you start in. It's different from ''birth'' in the newer ones), their gender (There are lots of very nice portraits for male AND female officers in this game), and the type of officer they are going to be. Upon entering this data, you will be able to roll random stats for each officer. Simply stop the roller and pick whichever set of stats suits you. Rulers are a little nicer because you get to input the stats based on a set base and allowed to distribute bonus points to your liking.

Conclusions:

If you are a fan of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, and want an old piece of the franchise that's highly fun and entertaining for hundreds of hours, despite it's age, then this is the best one the of the older ones to get your hands on. Its fresh, and it introduces a lot of features that really helped the franchise explode into the really successful series that exists today. Brilliance from KOEI.

Game Ratings:

Story: 10/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Graphics: 7/10
Music/Sound: 6/10
Replay Value: 10/10
Difficulty: 8/10

Overall: 10/10 (Best RTK on the SNES console, in my opinion. That includes II, III, and IV versions on the SNES.)

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/03