Recent reviews by Small.SydneyTrains

In light of the recent negative reviews (which are predominantly about CA's business practices), here's a review on 3K as a game.

Total War: Three Kingdoms revolves around the "Three Kingdoms" period in Chinese history. As someone who had no knowledge and interest in this period, I wasn't sure what to expect. It has however definitely surpassed my expectations.

Diplomacy
Diplomacy is better than it ever has been. You can trade territories and have more meaningful ways of increasing or decreasing relations other than "trade agreement" or "offer to join war". There are actual diplomatic repercussions to post-battle choices as well, which means you have more options to weigh other than "increased replenishment" or "money". The potential for the recruitment of other characters also creates a trade-off that has never existed in a previous title; execute a powerful character, or let them live but risk their continued presence on the battlefield?

For the first time in a TW game, allies and vassals actually feel as though they have a function. Allies can be depended on and unlike the engame collapse of Shogun or WH's Vortex, allies and vassals will absolutely help. You also now have a reason to create vassals as well as helping to build up their strength. Previous titles meant vassals were just used for trade and buffer zones; now vassals can help secure important objectives and reduce the new corruption mechanic.

Spies also confer interesting and potentially powerful bonuses. In my 4 campaigns, I personally never found a way of getting my spies to achieve their end goal (ie becoming the heir/leader of a faction). Having said that, their bonuses, which include boost to trade and speeding up character defection still made their investment interesting and worthwhile.

Diversity
Faction diversity is an aspect which has been heavily criticised. Yes, the game is no WH. Even compared against Attila, factional unique units don't distinguish themselves enough. For me, this wasn't a problem. For players who want the diversity of Rome 2 or WH, this may be disappointing. The game also suffers to an extent due to build staleness. There is no reason not to take 2 trebuchets, which when upgraded with flaming rounds will rack over 300 kills a battle making ranged diversity moot.

Endgame
The endgame is the best it's been. Previous titles basically had "paint the map" as objectives. Vortex on WH2 is essentially a waiting game as you wait for rituals to finish and set up ambushes around key settlements. Now, you are able to plan ahead and strategically take out key opponents to set up your endgame enemies as weaker and geographically closer factions.

The artstyle and music, as expected from a CA TW game, is stellar. The UI, which at first seemed cluttered and confusing, grows on you and in some respects feels simpler and clearer than WH. The artstyle rivals that of Shogun 2, and the voice acting is much better than expected. There's little more to say in this respect other than that CA's art/design team has knocked it out of the park again.

In my opinion, this is the best TW has been yet. Yes, the game does not have the endless replayability that WH2's myriad of factions provide. That said, the campaign feels more complete and strategic than any TW I've played to date and it feels like the first TW where strategic decisions beyond the battlefield matter. If this new layer of strategy appeals to you, this is definitely a worthwhile buy at full price. If unit diversity is critical, this game will disappoint and waiting for the WH pack will be the better option.

Took me an hour to get my Hori V3 Sa-Kai recognised, which is odd considering you'd think it'd be one of the more popular fighsticks in Japan to be used on PC (aside from V4), and KOF13 recognises it as an XBox Controller. Nonetheless, feels good: this is the easy-link very basic SF that people were asking for.

An interesting visual novel, something that I think really differentiates itself from the other 'moe-blob' VNs that you see in the Steam catalogue.
Pros:
- A unique story that steers clear of simple tropes and explores archaic Asian attitudes towards issues such as sexuality and gender roles. To provide some backstory, it is recommended that Analogue: a Hate Story should be played first, though since Mute isn't exactly fleshed out a whole lot in that game, one can probably get away with playing this first.
- Art style is fairly generic, though the sepia-photo visuals do provide some fresh realism and believability to the story.
The enhanced HUD from the next game is pretty nice, though some people have reported issues with it bugging out and failing to display anything. Windowed mode fixes that from memory.
- Good soundtrack that meshes well with the material that it supports.
- Great character development: this ties in with the story, but it's refreshing to see characters who aren't just "I'm tsundere, but really I'm actually really nice, my mum and dad died in a car crash when I was young", or "overly-exuberant moe-blob mk.2000". Both main supporting characters (or protagonists?) are very well developed, and allow NG+ playthroughs.

Cons:
- Game design. The options available to you are so limited compared to the first game. Literally the entirety of the game revolves around decrypting logs, reading through them, and getting your supporting character to interact with them. You get options from a dialogue wheel to choose from, but there's none of the puzzle-solving that was available from the first game.
This flaw was probably the biggest disappointment I had with this game, and what really stopped me from doing a NG+ playthrough.

All in all, a great game especially in the story and visual department. The game mechanics are very bare-bones, though if you haven't played the first game and are familiar with the usual "choose this option" type of VN, you shouldn't find this a problem.