Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII Review

"Fame & Strategy Expansion"

Campaign

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII is one of the most dense and probably confusing games I've ever played. I was particularly shocked at the high number tier it's achieved and when discussing it, that my parents remember the second one from back in the day. That aside, there's a lot going on to the point that its overwhelming. Fans of the series will love this incredible depth and the animations making the strategy game feel modern, but newcomers will have a hard time. It was incredibly difficult for me to grasp the game to any suitable degree that would make me proficient during the campaigns. They do attempt to combat this with a tutorial system that plays over many levels and even by the end of that I was confused to what my focus was. Each part of this lengthy tutorial felt like a separate game and I was just overwhelmed.

Through various eras you have leadership, then next of kin and many factions competing for the large landscape. It's quite the map to look at with many villages and conflicting sectors. The goal is take over the map to an extent using peaceful or war directed tactics while growing your influence and dealing with things. You wage wars across land, water or even take on mini duels. These can come in the form of horseback riding or even shouting and I'm still not sure how those debates work yet I won a few. It's complex, there's tons to do and it's a spider web of tasks that anyone new to it would just be stunned to see.

Gameplay

The strategy elements of the game work well having menus for every little thing, but seeing all that text on the screen was purely confusing. I wasn't ever sure of what I was doing even during the tutorial and during campaigns I would get stomped not having an idea of where to start. The amount of complexity is nice for those that truly get the intricacies of the game, but new players will have troubles. The visuals weren't great for the game and I had issues with the controls at times. It's nice to see games ported over to the consoles, but it felt awkward. Going back to visuals the world felt barren with low quality and combat was similar. It was cool to see the little soldiers fight or the ships to wage war at sea, but nothing was spectacular.

The Conclusion

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII Fame and Strategy Expansion is a niche game with so much going on that I'm not sure many new players will be able to get into it. They've done a marvelous job on taking a obviously PC oriented game and getting it to run on the console with what I believe is nothing held back, yet it's just too dense with information. The screen is stacked at all times with tons of text and its overwhelming. I had fun waging the wars or dealing with some politic aspects though I feel there needs to be a streamlined version for new players to get basics. The tutorial did not help as it introduced each area in slightly long separate areas instead of showing properly the connections between doing things. Romance of Three Kingdoms XIII was an interesting game to play and one that could potentially take hours of time to play though not for everyone.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by One PR

Rating Overall: 6.0