Historical Accuracy at its finest: Let's Play Romance of the Three Kingdoms III

[Mesden]

Hello and welcome to Let's Play Romance of the Three Kingdoms III: Dragon of Destiny for the Sega Genesis. Created by Koei in their ongoing line of "historical accuracy" games, it's quite the fun little simulator with a surprisingly large amount of actions and depth to it.

A lot of the jargon may be familiar to many here, and for good reason. Anyone's who's played any Dynasty Warrior games or know practically anything about the Three Kingdoms story will recognize many names and even more plot elements. Luckily for you all, this game has quite a few ways it can be played (Many of which you will be deciding for me!), so you won't be subject to the same ol' same ol' story!

Let's get started!



Ah, the proud old logo!



If you've played many RotTK games, then you probably know this name quite well.



Yoichi Erikawa's pen name, this man is filthy rich and an incredibly successful game producer in Japan, as well as the co-founder of Koei.



We will prove this a horrid, filthy lie.

Brace yourselves, incoming plot!



The red shaded fellow with the grin of a madman would be Cao Cao, one of the most powerful men in China's history and ruler of the Wei dynasty.



Say hello to the very blue Liu Bei. While not as powerful in military and resources as his two rivals (Wei and Wu), much of his power came from his amazing officers -- most notably Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, and Zhuge Liang -- and his endurance through several defeats to carve out the Shu Kingdom.



And our final behemoth is the vomit-green Sun Quan! Sun Quan is the median between Liu Bei and Cao Cao. His cabinet of sorts was made of officers who rivaled Liu Bei's in skill, such as Zhou Yu and Zhang Zhao, and had military force enough to fend off Cao Cao for years. He enjoyed the longest reign of any of the rulers over his kingdom of Wu, dying at the decrepit age of 70.



Foreboding!



Oh, they're not multi-colored. There go all my teletubby jokes.



Holy shit, fairies!



Fairies that combine into title sequences!



Voltron is still better. >:

Let's get to the actual game now, shall we?



Our standard menu screen. The first two options speak for themselves, but what is this "Enter officer's data" nonsense?!



Here are your two options: Create a custom ruler, or a custom officer. Let's try out that officer option.



Straight to the naming, now let's see...



Ah, a perfect example. A 1 year old, Male, new year's day baby, who is a better naval commander than most experienced veterans!

Here's the gimmick for custom officers. You pick two options: Civil Officer and Military Officer. Civil officer gives you a higher chance of good stats in Intelligence and Politic (Either of which being at 80 or higher allows this person to become an Adviser -- which is like a general that can actually do things) and a decent stat in Army (How many soldiers you can hold, as well as how much damage they do on the ground) and Charm (Kind of a weird stat with various uses, such as making your ruler's/governor's actions more well recepted, and stealing officers away from Rivals).

Whereas, Military Officers get a higher chance of better General stats, such as War(Used for personal combat, recruiting soldiers, and training times of soldiers), Navy(Like Army, but increases damage during naval battles. Kinda worthless comparatively because there's only like 3 areas with naval battle). And, again, a decent chance of high charm.

What's all this about chances though? Well, the other gimmick is the stats are randomly produced. Sometimes you will get an absolutely retarded character (My silliest to date was 100 War, 100 army, 98 Navy, 77 charm, and a retard) and other times a worthless character you wouldn't waste a save slot on.

Here is the first chance at participation from you folks: There are 50 character slots for custom characters, and while I don't much fancy filling up every one of them with whatever inane characters you want, I will be taking suggestions for 25 custom characters -- Names(6 character limit per first and last name), favored stats, age, the whole she-bang. Each person can only suggest 5 characters, but you may vote for up to 25 from other people. The 25 with the most votes gets a character made in that likeness. A word of note, though. It is my experience that 20something males get the best general stats, whereas 30something females have the best adviser stats. This has not stopped me from creating a 1 year old girl with 100 War (She can fight Lu Bu on equal footing!). But, a word of advice. Don't start voting on characters until there are atleast 25 suggestions up, so I don't have to track through all your posts 20 times because the new guys people are suggesting pique your interests.

There's one extra bit, though! You guys also get to decide what they look like! Here are the guys, and you may refer to them as picture x, number x:










And the ladies:










Now, for the custom ruler. Rulers, being far more important than officers, have non-random stats that you pump a certain amount of points into. Now while the premise of a 1 year old super genius ruler who could punch Lu Bu in the face and live to tell the tale is hilarious, there will be some restrictions, as Age and Gender play a part in the amount of points given to the character. We have 5 custom ruler spaces open to us, and each person may give me one ruler suggestion with a prospective Name, Age, and Attributes you want pumped, and may also vote on 4 other rulers of choosing (5 if you don't wish to make one yourself). I will do my best to keep these as close to the winning suggestions as possible, but know they will be subject to change based on the way the stat layout works.

Now, to see what our rulers look like!

Guys:




Gals:




And, last and probably least, the non-custom stuff! I am not limiting us to custom rulers and characters, because there happens to be a ripe amount of flavorful rulers throughout several eras to choose form as well. Here's your happy list:



Let's start from the top, shall we?






This is Dong Zhuo's rivals unite. At this point there are very few super powers in the game, as Liu Bei hasn't even transferred over to the southwest, Sun Jian is still ruling his kingdom, and Cao Cao has fled to 10 Chenliu to plot the fall of Dong Zhuo. This is the easiest campaign to start out on with a custom ruler, and has the second highest rate of crazy shit happening.





Here is the Chaotic Era Begins. At this point, Dong Zhuo has been taken out by Cao Cao, who seems to be the first developing super power, whereas Sun Ce has taken over for Sun Jian in the south and is beginning to set up his country's rise to power. Liu Bei, on the other hand, is still struggling in the East and has yet to begin his building of the shu Kingdom. This era is crazy, as Cao Cao isn't so powerful that he's steamrolling everyone. Sometimes you see Sun Ce go crazy and wipe out everyone, other times Liu Bei pulls through and kills Cao Cao. There are a lot of wild cards here, like Lu Bu being his own ruler (after having taken half of Dong zhuo and Cao Cao's officers) and Yuan Shao being the ever present war monster in the North East. I like this setting a lot, but it's up to you guys still.




And here is Cao Cao's Power Expands. At this point, Cao Cao is a monster, controlling the two best cities in the game (11 Louyang and 19 Xuchang) and a practical army of officers. The only two forseeable rivals he has are Sun Quan (Who has taken over after Sun Ce's assassination) and Yuan Shao, but the two don't stand much of a chance unless they ally together to push from the east (This never happens, as Yuan Shao is a total arrogant retard who doesn't ally with anyone who isn't a swindling custom ruler.) Liu Bei has moved to the west, but is barely hanging on by a thread at this point, and a stern look from Cao Cao's direction would run the poor guy over.





Here is Zhuge Liang Plots Strategy. Zhuge Liang is Liu Bei's supergenius adviser and the only person to get an era named after him when he wasn't a ruler. At this point, Liu Bei is getting on his feet and has control of some of the best officers in the game (Such as Guan Yu and all his sons, Zhao Yun, Zhuge Liang, etc) and is on his way to rivaling the other two powers -- Cao Cao, who has thoroughly stomped Yuan Shao, and Sun Quan, who is struggling against Cao Cao. There are some shitty little rulers in the south who usurped kingdoms from Liu Biao, but they're all pretty worthless and are obsessed with infighting.




And here is Liu Bei Builds the Shu Kingdom. Liu Bei is finally a challenge for Cao Cao(Cao Pi at this point) and Sun Quan as he has basically taken over the west and established a powerful military. The only thing in his way of being undisputed ruler in the west is a pissant of a ruler named Meng Huo who will be ran over early. The only thing notable about Meng Huo is he has an officer named Shamoke, because he has no last name, horrible, stats, and a custom picture.

And finally:




The Three Kingdoms Fight Decay. At last, the three rivals have become dominant rulers of their countries (Though all of them are dead except Sun Quan, who will die of old age soon enough). Cao Rui has a definite advantage, but the other rulers will fight to the last to beat their northern enemy. This is the hardest era for a custom ruler, as you only have 3 possible provinces to start out in, all of which blow, and 2 of them will be under constant attack from Cao Rui.

For reference, here is the layout of the world:




And here is the 'make your campaign' info:



I will be playing on advanced because Beginner is retardedly easy. On Adv, the computer cheats and builds resources atleast x3 faster than actually possible for them, and the AI is a little better in that they don't send 5000 soldier armies to fight 50000 garrisoned provinces (it actually tries to outnumber you on Adv!)



This is a dumb option. Viewing other citys' wars is just a huge time waster in general and I will not be playing it like that. Sorry guys, no screenshots of fights we're not participating in.



Now here's an iffy one. If we play on Historical, custom character will not show up in the regular course of the game, even if we have a custom ruler and his 3 custom officers. If we play on Fictional, then all of our custom characters will come in at some point or another whether we're playing a custom ruler or not, and makes being a non-custom ruler a little more interesting, as you compete with the other rulers to get these super special secret soldiers.

Another option, though, is to play a custom/non-custom ruler and put other custom rulers around the map under computer control to spice things up (This is why I'm making 5 rulers instead of the most popular 1). This will strain fictional setting, though, as we have to put custom officers on those rulers and that leaves fewer that can be found throughout the game's course.

So this is another option for you all.

Look down for the index/audience participation post!