Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake Review – Return of the King(doms)

I’ll say one thing out of the gate: Koei chose the best possible game for its first Romance of the Three Kingdoms remake. RotTK VIII really coalesced the best aspects of the series, old and new, into a single addictive package. RotTK X was a great candidate for a remake too, but VIII is in much more need of a refresh considering its age. The style of the series can be divided into two ‘eras’; the early turn-based officer-focused style and the later ruler-centered style emphasizing grid-based real-time battles.

2001’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII remains one of the best officer style games in the series, with a huge cast of characters to build relationships with and a ton of freedom to switch ranks or even build your own vagabond army. And as a ruler, you could micromanage armies and command forces in battle while allocating resources through Parliament. But the turn-based battles themselves were always lacking compared to later entries. So, does the remake of the beloved classic elevate its shortcomings, or is it just a shiny coat of paint to a 23 year-old game? Thankfully, despite a few notable missteps, this remake elevates the 23-year-old game with some quality-of-life enhancements and loads of new content.

"Unlike Liu Bei’s historic entourage, players won’t be able to team up together for multiplayer sessions."

Romance of the Three Kingdoms can be a daunting beast of a series, so before diving deep into gameplay mechanics, let’s first go over what the remake removes from the original. We have to start with some sad news; the remake completely got rid of the multiplayer from the original. Perhaps one of the most defining features of RotTK VIII was its 8-player hot-seat (pass-the-controller) strategy matches. Governing cities while defending against a friend’s attack or making alliances with other friends to salvage a border region was especially memorable back in the day. The RotTK 8 Remake gave fans hope that they could relive their late-night group campaigns with magnificent online functionality, but alas, those dreams were put to the sword faster than a dual against Lu Bu. The game’s director just didn’t think multiplayer worth the effort, citing server strain and the ‘impracticality’ of couch co-op as reasons to keep it strictly single player. This remake adds a lot to the original, don’t get me wrong, but the complete elimination of multiplayer is a definite downgrade. Heck, even if you’re just in it for the single player, the inability to control more than one officer at a time is a step back from the original.

"Parliament gives you all the strategic tools you need to run the kingdom as a ruler."

What’s not a step back is the general gameplay loop of RotTK 8 Remake, which remains authentic yet even more robust. Before starting the game proper, you can turn on the handy tutorial, which guides you along your campaign’s opening steps. After selecting one of the bazillion officers and scenario/time periods, you’re greeted with a unique cinematic outlining the specific events and political machinations embroiling China for that given scenario. Then, it’s time to get down to business. The gameplay flow surging through RotTK 8 is addicting. The gameplay loop cycles between three broad stages: strategic planning, interpersonal development, and battles. Your officer rank determines how much control you get during any of these stages, with Ruler having almost complete control of every possible action.

Rulers feel particularly at home during Parliamentary sessions (the strategic planning phase), where they distribute troops between settled cities, engage in diplomacy, and declare battle with other forces. Those seeking a more slice of life experience are likely to enjoy the three-month City sections, which entail deepening bonds with officers, fulfilling missions, and training to raise stats. And then, of course, strategic battles between armies consist of controlling units on a battlefield grid, with one-on-one duals between rival officers.

"Duals are a simple affair, but the return to turn-based combat is refreshing after the active combat later titles employed."

Officer duals went through a needed renovation from the original game, with a simple, yet sufficient cinematic card game determining the outcome. The winner is the one who plays the highest total of cards each round, with officer stats determining starting HP and damage per round. I like how skills and traits can buff certain card strategies, deepening the RPG DNA within RotTK 8 Remake even further. Want to engage in battles with your high intelligence officers?

Well, debate duals feature the same card-based gameplay as combat duals. Since we’re on the subject of intelligence, the AI is supposed to be improved in this remake, but I found the normal difficulty AI to make some truly baffling decisions during duals and grid-based combat, often playing lower cards for no reason or leaving troops alone to die. Harder difficulties supply smarter AI, but don’t leave much room for players just wanting a softer challenge with adequately intellegent AI. In other words, there’s still a noticeable gap between the occasional brain-dead AI and hard mode, but it’s more balanced than the original at least.

"Fulfilling missions in the city and developing relationships with fellow officers remains a highlight of RotTK 8"

Still, all of these disparate gameplay systems dovetail together into a satisfying loop that fulfil the lifestyle sim, managerial, and combat aspects beautifully. I’m an RPG nut, so I found myself particularly enjoying all the stat training and relationship development. Strategy fans will enjoy what this game has to offer in that regard as well.

While it’s nice that every type of player has something to chew on here, the systems do occasionally whittle down to mere busywork at times. I guarantee that once you’ve gotten used to the core gameplay loop, you’ll habitually begin to skip repeated dialogue and prompts with almost wanton negligence. Dialogue and menu actions can be swiftly skipped through by mashing the ‘confirm’ button, helping to speed along what could have been a very slow paced process. The game has hardly any loading between menus and sections, so that’s a plus too.

"RotTK 8 Remake has the largest roster of characters of any game in the series with over 1000 playable officers."

We should all be thankful for the quick loading, since this remake has a metric ton of content to chew through. All 600 of the original officers return here, plus everyone from the Power Up Kit content, resulting in over 1000 total playable characters. Amazingly, each character is individually voiced in Japanese, in addition to their own unique portrait, stats, relationships, etc. For those unfamiliar, officers make up the core foundation of the RotTK 8 experience.

This is because an officer can become any role imaginable, from a ‘lowly’ free officer to a ruler of an entire nation. One of the joys of RotTK 8 is this unfettered freedom to play however you want; whether you play the ruthless warlord Lu Bu as a reserved tactician or role-play as your own custom officer rising the ranks to ruler, the game doesn’t try and stop you.

The officer creator is largely the same from the original RotTK VIII, but you can now allocate skill points freely with no restriction. If you’re an RPG player like myself, you’ll enjoy starting out as a nobody 15-year-old with low stats as you train and grind through that oh-so-satisfying progression loop. I also love the option to insert your created officers into any campaign and choose what force they belong to.

If you’re really into custom campaigns, you can even create your own army using a multitude of created officers and use them against historical forces like the Yellow Turbans, upstaging Cao Cao and the like. Speaking of historical figures like Cao Cao, it’s possible to edit all of their parameters to your liking; you just need to complete a campaign with the character first.

"The new relationship chart gives helpful info for each officer in the game, a convenience lacking in the original game"

Your officer’s journey is much more dynamic and interesting in this remake thanks to added complexity to relationship bonds. Officers have certain ‘destined’ bonds with characters, which take the form of synergistic or antagonistic links. The bond events are pretty bog-standard, like a few text slides portraying the two friends going hunting or drinking. The dialog choices from the original are gone, now just being automatic events dependent on bond level and stats. The practical function of these little events remains the same: increasing your trust/bond with characters further as well as  some stat or reputation increases.

Helping organize the complex web of relationships throughout any campaign is the brand new relationship chart. This chart helps you keep track of every character’s rivals, sworn siblings, sworn enemies, spouse, etc., so you can better understand where allegiances stand between each officer. These multi-layered systems between officers are always dynamically changing and reacting to player and AI choices, resulting in some truly wacky scenarios that fly in the face of the game’s historical source material at times.

"Tales are a great convenience feature outlining all the winning conditions and historical event triggers possible in any given campaign."

Or you can strictly follow the historical story beat for beat, something that is more streamlined than ever thanks to the new ‘Tales’ event log. Depending on the Scenario you start with, historical events will pop up as objectives in the Tales log. You are shown all the conditions and rewards to complete the event, along with the timeframe before it disappears. Of course, you can just ignore all the historical events and the game will continue on with an unpredictable result. There are more than just historical events within the Tales log though, various winning conditions, and tutorials will circumstantially pop up to help guide your campaign with things to aim for. Much of the content within the Tales event log was in the original game, but the event log itself wasn’t a guidance feature until this remake, making for a better gameplay experience.

Thankfully, all 54 scenarios from the original and its Power Up Kit are included, along with the nestled sub-scenarios branching off of  various key event choices. That’s 80-plus in-game years full of historical stories told through cutscenes and emergent gameplay. What’s more, the developers have expressed an interest in releasing more ‘what if’ scenarios after launch. This is an outrageous amount of content; I’d wager a full lifetime wouldn’t even be enough to full 100% this game with every officer and every scenario. That said, much of what you see in a single campaign is just rearranged stuff that can be experienced in other campaigns. This is partly due to the game’s necessarily minimalistic presentation.

"The same backdrops occur time and time again within events and menus, regardless of the city or time period,  but the vast number of character portraits helps add variety."

While it’s true that no two campaigns will be the same, you will see the same assets and locales time and time again. The remake has a cheaply animated, though pretty hand-drawn look for its portraits and menus, while going for PS3-era 3D character models with the 1-on-1 duals and debates. The remake does a pretty good job emulating the city screen movement of the original with a more polished high-res look, and the Parliament map is more easily discernable with each territory being clearly outlined. I admit to preferring the toy doll look of the original’s scaled-down characters, but can’t complain with the almost ‘Octopath’ style of the background characters as they walk across the city.

Cities look very similar to one another, and battle maps and parliaments aren’t much different either, resulting in a lot of homogeneous environments. The environments kind of drained on me after a while, but the new orchestral score never left me fatigued. This is partly due to the option to play the game using the original soundtrack, which has its fair share of charm considering the 2001 soundfont used. The remake soundtrack is beautifully orchestrated, with calming melodic city themes and militant warlike anthems translated perfectly for modern sound systems (and who doesn’t love Holst’s ‘Mars‘, no matter the version).

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake does a fantastic job expanding the gameplay loop of the original while adding much-needed convenience features like the ‘Tales’ tab and relationship charts. The bevy of content outweighs the original, featuring all of the Power Up Kit content that the PS2 version never got and more officers and scenarios than you have time for. This is a good strategy game set within the ‘Three Kingdoms’ that I can heartily recommend to any strategy fan or RPG fan with a love for lifestyle sim qualities. While there are certainly better-balanced strategy games out there, this remains one of the better ‘Three Kingdoms’ titles in a long time, even if Koei completely gave up on the multiplayer aspect.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.