"A deep strategy game which will please fans of the series that suffers from ONE MAJOR FLAW."

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is the latest installment in Koei's famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms series. The game (as always) takes place in ancient China. The purpose as always is to takeover China by whatever means necessary.

Gameplay:

The game on most fronts is changed a lot from Three Kingdoms X. Gone is the gameplay style where you pick up a hero and play through the era as just him/her. Now you really play a force. Everything as far as Roleplaying a character goes is gone. If that's important to you, then you'll be pissed off with this game. It's not a big deal for me however. The core of the game remains the same. It's a turn based RPG where you try to take over China one city at a time by raising an army, and recruiting officers (historical or player created) to fight for you. The game is divided into turns. Each force takes a turn in succession building up their armies, and economy. Or perhaps engaging in diplomacy. All in all the gameplay has been improved. There are lots of options, that let's you play the game in a lot of different ways. Similar maybe to say Age of Empires DS, the game allows you to research technologies which improve your entire Kingdom. You can use this to better suit your Kingdom to your own personal style of play. Like fighting on horses? Invest in Cavalry technologies. Like attacking the enemy with fire? Invest in fire technologies. Prefer siege weapons? You can research those too. It's all based on YOUR preferences.

The dueling is back. It's been improved incredibly. It's now in real time, and it's really fun. The debate system is also back, but it's no longer any fun. The debate system in Three Kingdoms X was very fun to play. However the system has been dumbed down significantly this time. All in all, the gameplay is sound with the exception of the fact it is slow. There's too much micromanaging. You can't really trust the A.I. to delegate for you, so you end up having to take care of all of your boarder cities yourself. As such each turn seems to take forever.

The gameplay however only really suffers from one major flaw which if not present would have seen this review rate XI a 9 instead of an 8. Transportation of supplies. In past installments the transportation system was somewhat broken. You could transfer 100,000 soldiers, 10,000 gold, and 1,000,000 food instantaneously from your cities on the other side of the country, to any of your other cities. That pretty much broke the game. They went the other way with that this time however, and broke the game still. Now transporting anything takes a ridiculous amount of time. To send supplies from Cheng Du to Han Zhong, it would take like 9 turns. Keep in mind that it goes Cheng Du--Zi Tong--Han Zhong. Sending supplies to a destination only 2 cities away takes 9 turns! It's ridiculous and it slows down the game incredibly. I realize they were trying to balance the game, but they failed. 3 turns would have been acceptable. 9 turns? No way. It wouldn't be such a big deal only for (as previously stated) the game is so slow!

Graphics:

The graphics for the first time are 3-D. They for the most part used Dynasty Warriors character models, but it works out fine. I have no complaints with the graphics.

Music:

Impressive as always. If you like pretty classical music, you'll enjoy the soundtrack here.

Control:

The game controls fine. There are lots of shortcut buttons, and etc which make navigating the game very easy.

Story:

The Han dynasty has grown weak from corruption and unrest within the peasant population. Zhang Jiao seeing opportunity rises up with his army called the Yellow Turbans to topple the Han. Warlords from all over the nation see the opportunity for personally glory and rise to wipe out the rebel Yellow Turbans. From there various Warlords rise and fall. Some rise to become Emperors. Others watch as their ambition crumbles to dust. The story as you may know is based off of the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong. As it is the greatest story of all time, obviously that reflects onto the game.

Overall:

Great game. Slow, but still great. 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/26/07