Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV Critic Reviews

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV is the most sophisticated one in the whole series. It not only follows the "easy to start, hard to master" formula but also identifies a lot of innovative gameplay.

The bottom line here is that if you like games like Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia then you will most likely enjoy Romance of the Three Kingdoms, if you are a fan of the previous versions then this may well tickle your fancy. Even if you just enjoy tactical strategy games, this is a great chance to have a different nationality to the standard US, or sometimes UK ones we are used to. A hefty price tag, so maybe wait for a sale but there’s a decent bit of replayability here too.

Koei does an unrivalled job representing the complex history and characters of the period, but the lack of variety in the experience combined with a steep price tag makes it hard to endorse without reservation.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV represents a marked improvement on recent outings from the franchise, offering great strategic gameplay and strong characterisation. All of this is done with a strong focus on ease of access, made easier by a clean UI that allows people to pick it up easy. There are downsides, however. With adequate at best, though often poor AI and a collection of bugs, some that are game-breaking, there is still room for improvement and a dire need for patches to fix the bugs and optimisation issues.

The game interface continues to be quite confusing.

If you are looking for an in-depth strategy game to sink your teeth into, and you can’t get enough of Cao Cao and company and if you have already played Three Kingdoms to death, then, by all means, pick up Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV. But if not, then I would recommend taking your time and money elsewhere.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14 is accessible to casual players, but it sneakily removes the depth Rot3K veterans might expect.

It's not a chore to conquer China in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14. It's just underwhelming. Especially when we've seen this era represented so much better by Creative Assembly so recently, I couldn't come up with a compelling reason why I'd play this instead. Only die-hard fans of the franchise who want to see Koei's specific takes on these characters will be likely to find much to get excited about here. And given that this is the fourteenth entry in the series, I expected a lot more.

Fans of the series and setting will probably find validation and likable aspects here, but I wouldn’t suggest jumping in here if you’re unfamiliar. There are better strategy games out there for cheaper with more depth, options, and personality than this one. By the end, I preferred the idea of just playing Civilization VI as China — that’d probably be a more fun evening of strategy for me.

Eschewing role-playing aspects, depth, and fan-favorite features in favor of simplified pause-and-play automation, ridiculous map-painting mechanics, and lackluster strategic options, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV is one of the most disappointing offerings from Koei Tecmo's popular franchise. It's the Liu Shan, not the Zhuge Liang, of the series.

The veteran series has sadly been outgunned by newer rivals such as Total War, which breathes greater personality and more engaging gameplay into this time period. This one suffers badly from poor game design choices, and a visually dull style, which will put many potential buyers off. While the scenarios are detailed and historically accurate, sadly there is little in the way of control in the overall gameplay loop. Battles are disappointing and confusing affairs, while the turn-based chore of filling up hexes to conquer areas gets old very quickly. With a raft of DLC already available, when there are some basic features missing on release, it is a hard title to recommend to fans of the genre or time period. The best word to describe this? Lacking.

This game might sound interesting to Chinese history aficionado but it falls short as it was not polished enough as some of its predecessors.