Recent reviews by Exia

This game is definitely not esports ready, but the same can be said of Hearthstone. So, at the end of the day, it's a game that's trying to move that way, despite not even able to leave early access yet.

Great game though, should really just play it with friends in my opinion. Probably still better than similar games that are out there that have a battle royale format.

When I first heard about this game, I thought, "Hey, it's made by Bethesda. It's probably going to be a pretty good game!" Well boy was I wrong.

This game wasn't pretty good. This game was phenomenal. Although I do admit I have yet to experience this game in full (I haven't finished any of the story lines yet so no spoilers, as well as the fact that my computer really can't run this game higher than medium graphics settings), this game has been both a game I have held dear to as well as a game that horrified me.

To be fair, I haven't played any previous games in the Fallout franchise. I didn't expect this game to be amazing, and admittedly, I really was just jumping on the hype train because everyone else around me was.

When I first started the game, I had no idea what to do. So, I followed through the storyline. I thought the part about the nuclear war was really interesting, and that's where it grabbed me. The whole lore behind this story got me into nuclear physics, and now I'm pretty much a well-informed (somewhat expert I guess but without a degree) on everything radioactivity-wise.

I guess I'll skip to the really touching parts. When I first entered Diamond City, I instantly felt reminiscient of Whiterun in Skyrim. Something to do with going to the first big city has always kind of touched me. It was an amazing establishment, and just like Whiterun, I think it really gave a good vibe to the introduction of the whole game (it didn't take me long to get there).

Do I still play this game? No, because I still haven't decided what to do in my DLC storylines. I don't know how to deal with choices in games, so that's a big upside to this game.

I like this whole game. I don't know about everyone else, but to me, I can't wait to continue playing this game once I've made up my mind as well as get a new graphics card.

This review's a little messed up, but hey, Fallout 4 really touched me and horrified me at the same time. I really don't like dark, scary, abandoned places, so yeah, thanks Bethesda for another Skyrim-like game that I love and hate at the same time.

Before I begin, I do have to state a few things. I've played ROTK X and 11, but didn't play any before or 12 (since it was terrible according to reviews). My favorite one has always been X, because it felt so easy to grasp on. I also do play on Chinese instead of English. (I just use the Chinese voice/language pack because it feels more immersive to me and I can read it.)

So, I'd pretty much say that ROTK 13 is the best installment in the series yet. To me, as someone who has played ROTK X extensively as both historical characters and my own player-made characters, ROTK 13 literally felt like a "facelift" version of ROTK X. It's so nice and polished that there are only a few things that annoy me.

Since I love ROTK X, I'm going to basically compare ROTK 13 to ROTK X (which is reasonable since to me, there are so many similarities). Back in ROTK X, you had to "draft" your own soldiers into a unit, with each unit being specified to only one type (i.e. cavalry, spearmen, archers, etc...). Each unit had a maximum capacity of 10,000 soldiers only, which meant that each city could only have up to 20 units of 10,000 at its maximum. Every time you went into battle, you would lose troops, and then you would have to re-draft soldiers, overall decreasing the experience that unit had. It was a very painful process to endure and it would take forever for me to finally upgrade my troops to their maximum rank. Another thing about ROTK X was that there wasn't a city that could fully support 200,000 troops, so supplies would always be on a decrease. This was one of the few things that always bothered me when playing ROTK X.

In ROTK 13, KOEI has fixed that problem. Not only do you not need to draft soldiers into a unit, there is no maximum cap for a unit any more. Experience is now given to the city as a whole, which meant that any soldiers you brought into a battle held that level of experience for the type (cavalry, archers, spearmen, etc...). By all means, you could go into battle with a 30,000 strong unit. Although the city capacity for soldiers has been decreased to 100,000, it's a lot more reasonable. The added feature of "injured soldiers" and "returning soldiers" are great as well, which meant that you couldn't cheekily just finish a battle, disband your army, then immediately fight another battle on the other side with the same number you had.

In terms of character control and gameplay, you still play as the character you choose like in ROTK X. The feature of "entering cities" has returned in ROTK 13, and it's something that I've loved in ROTK X. I was really disappointed when that feature was minimized as a role in ROTK 11 onward, and I'm beyond glad that ROTK 13 has had this feature.

Graphically speaking, it's just stunning. Everything is clear to me to see where my troops are (at the bottom left corner there are circles that represent each unit and where they are, as well as you can click on them to snap the camera to their location). The colors used to distinguish each allegiance is pretty clear as well, but I think that the colors for player-made allegiances should be more diverse. The animations are also amazing too, I would daresay compare the animations to that of Dynasty Warriors 7 (which was really good).

What I've noticed as a flaw in the Chinese language pack is that there are times when some of the dialogue is messed up and it says something like "Y#CM6!>?/". I'm sure it can be fixed, and it doesn't come up that often either.

I've seen some reviews where people aren't happy about this game. I'd like to address them really.

So firstly, I've seen people complain that as the ruler of your kingdom, no matter how strong your kingdom becomes, you still can only issue 2 commands as yourself, and then 6 commands from your "trusted officers" that deal with recruiting, training troops, and enhancing cities' farming, commercial, and cultural values. Yes, it's a little annoying at first, but let me tell you something. If you play as a ruler with more than 10 cities under your command and you still haven't set up governors for your cities, you're going to have a real bad time because your cities will be so much weaker than the NPC's. There's a reason why the game gives you limited commands. The reason is that the game WANTS you to assign governors. Realistically speaking, how can you assign jobs to a person that lives in a city halfway across China immediately? Would that even be efficient?

Let's address the issue of dueling next. Why would you try to set up duels anyway? There are ways where your character can get into duels, just like in ROTK X. In battle, dueling is random and consistent as well. There will be around one or two duels per battle and usually it isn't some overpowered general versus a terrible fighter, so the random method is efficient in choosing worthy opponents. The system of dueling for scholars and generals have always been random, even back in ROTK X. To me, it's a lot more realistic that way.

I don't remember troops being able to re-supply at all before. So, I don't see how that's a problem in the first place. Yes, you can't build outposts any more because they're "discovered" by searching in cities, and I feel that all these mechanics are alright. I also just found out that you could actually resupply in cities that you currently hold control over! So, there's that problem solved.

If you're not convinced to buy this game yet, or if you have no idea what I just wrote about up there, that's alright. You can be a completely new player to this series because ROTK 13 features a frickin' tutorial. This isn't some basic, dimwitted tutorial that downplays the player's knowledge (like telling you to move right and left or something), but it's a tutorial within the whole story of Three Kingdoms. You get to play as different "main characters" of the Three Kingdoms from the start (Yellow Turbans) while learning all the controls you need. I specifically remember a part where there was an old man that teaches the character you are playing how to control an army in a battle, and when you defeat the enemies in that battle, your character actually tells one of his generals to kill that old man because the old man knew too much about his army's strategies. That's as realistic as can be.

ROTK 13 is the best installment in the series so far. I don't know why the next Dynasty Warriors has been on hiatus for a few years now, but if it was to work on this game, by all means, this game was damn worth it.