Here is a chance for you to see me try and talk about a game series that I’ve been aware of for decades but know absolutely nothing about. It’s The Romance of the Three Kingdoms! Yes this series has been around since the mid-80s, and has no less than thirteen(!) mainline entries as well as a smattering of spin-offs. It’s a strategy game series which isn’t really my cup of tea which probably explains why I’ve never delved into its many entries. However, it seems to have a strong fan base and back in September we learned that developer KOEI Tecmo in conjunction with BBGame would be adapting the eleventh game in the series as a new free to play mobile game. That game, titled simply New Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Free), is now available in the App Store. For whatever reason there’s not one regular length launch trailer for the game, so here’s a bunch of super brief little trailers instead to give you an idea of what’s in store.
So as I said, I’m not super familiar with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, so I’m not really qualified to say how this new mobile entry stacks up against the rest. Other than to say that it looks pretty cool to my eyes? Obviously there’s a base-building aspect and that’s another genre I’m not very keen on, but the visuals look quite good and you can’t really be mad at horseback combat now, can you? It doesn’t really matter what I think anyway, as New Romance of the Three Kingdoms is free to download and check out for yourself, and if you do be sure to stop by the forum thread for some discussion and to leave your thoughts about it.
So for some context, this release is nothing at all like the Koei namesake games. It borrows name, art resources, and just hints of other gameplay elements.
You have a kingdom aligned with Shu, Wei, or Wu, and are plopped down on a map with other players on the server. You form clans with associated rewards and cooperation and complete in events and to claim cities (which just provide resources and benefits to your personal, portable “city”). You build stuff in your city, collect resources through battles and whatnot, level up generals and amass soldiers, attack bandits and other players or quest events, rise and repeat.
It is HEAVILY monetized with F2P elements. There are timers everywhere, multiple resources for building, a premium and regular currencies, VIP levels, stamina and another similar resource for deploying soldiers, a gatcha for generals, tiers of generals and star levels for those generals ranked up only with duplicates, and a rapid pickup with a heavy slowdown after some time playing. I’m leaving our plenty. Making all this possible is, of course, why it bears no resemblance to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It borrows a lot from some other games in this “genre.” I’ve seen similar in some other RTK games. A lot of it in Star Trek Timelines.
That said, it’s a lot more fun and involved than some of those other games. More respectful of your time, more engaging and enjoyable gameplay. Star Trek Timelines, by way of comparison, had incredibly dull gameplay mechanics and slow gameplay and animations once the Star Trek theme was stripped away, and the game was downright needy/insecure/infuriating with how often it demanded your attention in game. In this game I can already tell that activity slows down a lot once you push past the initial cycle of action/event/rewards designed for quick pace, but it *may* be a good game for casual enjoyment. Premium currency is rather available, there’s a reasonable monthly card, and *so far* it seems well balanced in terms of the PvP element. That said, some days or weeks down the road this balance could fall apart and the game could prove to be unenjouable and frustrating.
So far I’m having some fun, but that may not last. At its heart this is yet another F2P mobile franchise cash-in build on an established model. If it has any saving grace it could be a balance which is more respectful of semi-casual (i.e. $5/month) players swimming amongst the whales.