ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS XIV

Romance is dead – almost

Spend too long trying to unify China and all you’ll see in your dreams is hexagons. These six-sided shapes form the backbone of Romance Of The Three Kingdoms XIV’s new strategy system. It’s also perhaps the solitary interesting new addition to the strategy series.

Gone are roads and battle maps. Now the whole continent is covered by a hexgrid which all your strategising revolves around. Start conquering and hexes will turn your colour. As it’s split into provinces and smaller areas, capturing a city or town won’t give you complete control of a region. You either have to have a unit ride over the hexes to colour them, or appoint someone to govern that area who (depending on competency) will expand control in that area over time. 1

This also means roads don’t matter as much. Terrain does affect your units, but every hex can now be crossed so you can control it. The more troops there are in a unit, the wider a formation it can reach. This means you can quite literally see exactly how each commander’s control unfolds on the map, and use it to your advantage by doing things like crossing out lines of supply to cut-off key strongholds.

Setting you up with key scenarios from across this period of Chinese history, there’s plenty to play through. The only problem is that with the zoomed-out approach to the map, the detail has become more passive. 2 Unlike in the last game there’s no direct control of battles, no debate system, and no smaller-objective story mode.

It’s an interesting evolution, though one that leaves you bored on the throne more often than not. Oscar Taylor-Kent

FOOTNOTES1 Only by entirely capturing an area will you gain access to all its resources. 2 Yet at the same time accessed through clunky menus that require too many button presses.