Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake is a grand strategy game of overwhelming scope and possibility that makes a lasting impression.

I have never played the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8. It was years before I even realized the series existed, and even then, many of the series’ older titles are not available officially in English. I am somewhat familiar with the series, having recently picked up the 13th entry and begun working through the tutorials not long before being assigned this review. I do have a… well, I won’t say in-depth, but a fair understanding of the depicted period. Nevertheless, this review will largely speak of the game on its own rather than in comparison to the original, other entries in the series, or the historical and literary record.

If I had to sum up the experience of Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake in a single phrase, it would be “expansive modularity.” While the game has a few broad themes and many campaigns will follow similar beats and move at the same tempo, each playthrough’s exact focus and nature can and will vary wildly. It’s hard to pinpoint what a typical experience is even supposed to look like, given the many possible options, choices, and modifications. You can always find a new avenue to explore, a new storyline to uncover, or a new battle to be waged across the campaigns included, and the breadth of options makes summarizing the game somewhat challenging.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake is a grand strategy game set during the tumultuous end of the Han dynasty. The player takes on the role of a personality and selects a campaign era, then sets out to carve their path through history. The exact details of this can vary wildly, as can the primary focus of each campaign. Perhaps the most consequential decision you will make is who to choose as your main character.

Each playthrough has the player assume the role of an officer in the Three Kingdoms. You might play as the legendary warrior Lu Bu, the masterful Cao Cao, or the cunning Zhuge Liang. Each has differing strengths, weaknesses, starting locations, storyline events, and more. The officer you select also impacts more than stats and talents, though, as you will have different levels of importance that impact the scope of your game. If you are a governor, you will manage domain affairs, assign AI subordinates to handle important tasks, decide whether or not to wage war, and so on. You might also be merely an officer in another’s domain, working alongside your AI peers and serving under an AI governor who makes the critical decisions. In such situations, you are given objectives and quests to garner approval and quotas to meet. You may make recommendations for domain-level actions but do not have the final say over what is to be done. This creates a sliding scale of scope and responsibility for the game, which is deeply fascinating compared to strategy titles where you have one assumed level of reach/control and might change out leaders or factions without changing the zoom level of the game.

This is further modified by different officer types available and possible game states. A military-oriented leader will encourage certain behaviors and unlock opportunities utterly different from a more diplomatic one. Historical figures have unique connections and side story opportunities that might be further modified by the era being played. In one of my campaigns, my officer was promoted to governor of a particular region, meaning the scope of my responsibilities changed in one playthrough.

Once you factor in the hundreds of possible officer choices and the ability for the player to make custom officers and tailor their playthrough to their liking, you can see where the number of options can quickly become bewildering.

Most of the moment-to-moment gameplay is based on a month and season model. For a typical (if I can even use that term) playthrough, the start of each season has a council meeting with the governor or leader of the region. During this time, you will see income, crop yields, troop and population growth, etc. Advisors will recommend what to focus on for the season, and the governor will assign tasks. Then the officers will go their separate ways to carry out those tasks. During that time the officers have three turns to take action, each representing one month of real time.

The officer has a stamina pool that they budget to take action. For example, on a month when you have a budget of 130 stamina, you might decide to handle a request at the market to boost your reputation and earn some gold (30 stamina), patrol the city to increase public order, and because your lord tasked you with doing that (60 stamina), practice duel with a fellow officer to raise your martial prowess (20 stamina), then visit with your spouse to strengthen your relationship (20 stamina). Then you rest at home, a new month begins, and you start over again.

A few primary events break up the monthly/seasonal time management. The first is the dueling and debate minigames. Both work along similar principles: you start with a selection of numbered cards, bid each turn to match doubles, triples, etc, to beat your opponent’s hand. The visuals differ – duels have warriors on horseback charging at one another with animations for attacks, while debates have the two figures on foot shouting back and forth – but the overall tempo for both is very similar. The outcomes involve different officer skills, but their overall feel is close.

Tales feature pretty heavily in the monthly portions. As you take action in the game world, you know the outcome at face value. However, you may fulfill conditions (some known to you, some hidden) that trigger events called Tales. These are usually short interludes that depict all manner of encounters: discussions in the marketplace, meeting an old friend in an unexpected location, helping someone with a task, or even major historical events in the ongoing Romance of the Three Kingdoms. These may be one-off events or part of multi-step questlines that have you pursue other side objectives to see them through. The rewards and outcomes vary quite substantially, and the sheer number of possible events means there is always some unexpected happening that can spice up the month’s activities. The Tales serve as the primary mechanism for moving the greater macro-plot forward along the timeline and the opportunity for unique interpersonal interactions on a personal scale.

Combat also takes up a large portion of your activities, if not in frequency, then at least in scope. Major battles are not entered lightly, and there can be significant preparation work in effectively invading a neighboring region: spying on the opposition, turning other officers to your side, amassing troops and supplies, etc. The actual battles are turn-based affairs on a hex grid. Each unit is a body of troops led by one of your officers, usually carrying around a bundle of stats, troop types, special abilities, and so on. Like any good turn-based battle system, there is a lot to chew on here, including terrain, positioning, proximity bonuses, resource management, defensive positioning, and so on.

The presentation is simple but, for the most part, appealing. You spend a lot of time looking at static screens and making selections from menus. But there are a lot of little touches that help make the menu-browsing pleasant: the character artwork is quite good, the OST is fitting and matches the tone of events on-screen well, there are small groups of citizens wandering about towns while you make your choices each month, and the seasonal transitions are nice. The voice cast is expansive and includes luminaries like Takaya Kuroda (of Kazuma Kiryu fame) and Takehito Koyasu (Mister Dio Brando himself), all of whom put in terrific performances.

Of course, as with any era beset by conflict, there is strife, too.

The presentation can feel rather lackluster as time goes on. Most notable is how the character art moves and shifts during dialogues. Sometimes, they enlarge with an idle breathing animation that is not so bad, but the effect of making the still images move their faces when they speak is incredibly off-putting. It is something you can toggle off – which I did – but for a game that already has a lot of static elements that you look at for long periods, it makes things feel even more lifeless at times. Many of the towns, council rooms, dueling backdrops, etc., look quite similar, meaning that they all quickly blend, and you lose any sense of place even across different campaigns.

I am also concerned about the overwhelming number of options and numbers flying around. It’s not that any particular system is too complex to understand or doesn’t properly function; it’s simply that there are so many systems and sub-systems vying for attention that it can be hard to get a handle on the entire game. For example, I’m unclear on whether I’ve got a good grasp of the combat system or the greater strategic implications of war based on my current playtime. I won some battles and lost some others, which is an expected outcome when learning new systems. Yet I spent so many hours between battles handling other tasks that I haven’t had the time to rigorously examine the combat system to know how strategically rewarding it truly is.

You could say this is a skill issue. And perhaps it is! I’ve played many strategic games, which took multiple hours and multiple playthroughs for everything to click into place. This has finally given me an appreciation for how all the various systems connect and made me feel empowered in my decision-making. But that’s the rub, too: I’ve played dense strategic games and had everything finally become clear, only to realize that certain strategies are laughably better than others or that seemingly complex systems are painfully simple or outright broken once you understand the core mechanics. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake is in a somewhat nebulous position for me. Despite many hours with it, its breadth means I still haven’t discovered just how balanced or busted the “true” game is.

The same can be said of the campaigns, too. There are dozens of possible campaigns, but how different are they all? It’s hard to say without exploring each of them in depth. I tried to start a few different playthroughs and blitz through some months to see what could happen, and while I encountered a lot of novel story events, I saw a lot of repeated elements shared across campaigns. So there certainly is a great deal of quantity on offer, but it’s hard to assess just how much variety there is or if it’s just a shuffling of character portraits and change in start position on the map.

I got a lot of enjoyment out of my time with Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake thus far. But I have to admit that early on, I abandoned my desire to fully grasp all of the strategic decision-making elements and try to win in a literal sense. Instead, I fell back into a much more historical and literary mode where I was trying to think of the actual historical personalities, really soak in the Tales events, and try to make the decisions I thought they would make. In this mode, the grander strategic aims were still important, but I enjoyed the game as more of a historical fiction drama framed by my input. I avoided focusing on making the correct policy choices to speedrun a diplomatic victory, and more towards an exploration and story mindset to find out what happens next.

At the time of writing, I am still playing and exploring the game, picking up bits of story and learning mechanics over time. I’ve still yet to determine whether all of the mechanics and sub-systems amount to a rigorous, fulfilling strategic offering – perhaps over time, I’ll play it as cutthroat as I would any other 4X title, or perhaps I’ll find it’s mostly flashy attacks and big numbers that release dopamine rather than display depth. But it must be said that I am still loving the historical fiction element of the game while I come to grips with its other systems, and with so many potential campaigns in the game, it’s clear there are plenty more fun hours to be had here.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake is a solid and enjoyable game that gives the player a lot to think about. But it is an experience that does not instantly gratify, and coming to grips with the sheer volume of what is on offer is no easy task. If you are looking for an approachable way to roleplay a major personality of this storied era while discovering a rich strategy game underneath, you’ll be well-served by the breadth on offer here. However, discovering whether there’s true mechanical depth may take longer than most would like to invest.