"It depends on whats important to you in the RTK series."

This new installment of Romance of the Three Kingdoms features much of the same scenarios, strategies, and game play that you've come to expect from the series. Koei added many new and welcomed features this time around, but every time they do so, they always seem to take away elements that we all enjoyed from previous games. Your own personal review will vary. It depends on whats important to you in the RTK series.

Customization
If you like to use created officers a lot, then you'll find this game delivers the best character creation process, which includes many un-lockable skills, portraits, and models. However, in RTK 11, you may only play as the leader of a force, and not just a prefect or free agent. The amount of options you can chose from when selecting a scenario is also well developed, and the entire lobby is neat and well presented. Many new options are available such as being able to chose your force color, having officer portraits age as they get older, and giving you the option to chose your title right from the beginning. Emperor anyone?

Presentation
The opening video for this game is rather ridiculous but past that is a great game. If graphics matter then you'll find that the map and detail of China in RTK 11 is the best in the series. Throughout game play you'll notice oil painting artistry as seasons change and events unfold. Its also the first of the series to have a map thats 3D and fully rotatable and zoom-able. The provinces and cities appear to be perfectly scaled to the real thing (China), and you'll find that 3D mountains are much harder to travel through then the older 2D versions.

Music
The music is decent and the majority of songs set the mood very well and add to the drama and action. There is only one track I don't like, and I suppose its an acquired taste. Unfortunately it's the one that seems to play most often. It seems like its on a 15 second loop and has a church choir singing quite loudly. It isn't a terrible song, its just that when an average song plays for so long it starts to take its toll on your brain matter. Other then that there's no flaws in the music of this game.

Management
RTK 11 has the largest learning curve in the series. To the content crowd, its the most realistic, in depth, thought out system to grace us. To the discontent, this game is the the most tedious, tiresome, micro-management nightmare of 2007. In order to get anywhere in this game, you must perform a ton repetitive tasks. When I mean a ton, I simply mean more then any other ROTK game. Transporting food and gold is no longer quick and must be done continuously to keep every city afloat and the front lines well stocked. After a 40 hour scenario the little things you must take care of can get mind-numbing.

Equipping your troops for battle is not as bad as keeping them fed and paid since you only need armaments on the front lines. But Bows, Pikes, Spears, and Horses do add to the transporting nightmare. Military facilities (like in IX) are well done and are worth the trouble to build, and domestic facilities (new to XI) takes over the job of improving a city's farms and trade every turn. Now you just build the facilities in one swift move, and let the facilities do the rest for you.

In older RTK games, a city could at least stand on its feet after a take over. However, the problem with this new system is that every new city you take over gets 90% of its facilities destroyed. So your stuck in that new city for awhile developing all of its facilities in order to get any use out of this base. It really slows down the game when you have spend 5-15 turns trying to patch up a city before moving on.

Likes
-The new "Duel" system is very well done. Your officers go into a "Dynasty Warriors" type of battle, where officers fight on horseback until a winner is decided. Even a 100 War officer has his work cut out for him if hes alone against a unit of three enemy officers. This system literally gave me goosebumps after a really close fight.

-The "Debate" system is extremely tough when first introduced to it, but its still a nice addition to show off what your Intellectual officers can do. Debates are not that hard once you learn the inner workings of it all.

-Foreign tribes no longer have 500,000 troops, invincible formations, and the ability to destroy city walls in a single turn. Now they don't even appear if you keep your cities "Order" above 80%. When they do appear they are annoying enough that you need to pay attention and take them down, but not strong enough to take down a city with two officers and 10,000-20,000 troops.

Pet peeves
-If two battles are going on at once, you can only watch one of them in that turn. If you try to scroll to a second battle using the scroll button, you'll actually speed everything up, and the battle you wanted to watch will end almost instantly

-The ability to "Search" for officers and items. You can no longer search neighbouring cities, you can only search the city your stationed at.

-When inspecting cities to raise "Order", you no longer come across bandit scenes, corrupt officials, tigers, etc.

-Some text goes by way too fast, even when you set the text option to pause. In Debates I can never read half of the text in time as Im still trying to figure out if I won the round or not. Guess I need a higher INT.

-Fighting battles no longer have extreme animations when performing a tactic. Your unit now either bashes into the enemy, or shoots some arrows. Really taken back to the basics.

-The AP system is a little unbalanced. I always find that half the time I never have enough AP to get the most basic things done, and the rest of the time I have the maximum amount of AP and have nothing to do with it.

Overall
My review for this game is a 7. There are many elements I wish they didn't take away, but I also enjoyed many things they added. This game is the best in the series if you like its new graphics, being a force leader, and enjoy a whole new level of micro-managing. The action sequences don't pull you in as much as they use to, but there's enough non-stop fighting to keep you entertained.

The biggest problem I had with this game was that the majority of your time is spent trying to make sure little things are perfect, and only brief moments do you spend actually fighting. One turn lasting 5-15 minutes and entire scenarios running up to 40 hours can really test your will power when all you crave is a good battle but all your doing is micro-managing every little thing. But that's just my opinion.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/25/07