Deep into RTK8

Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII has me in its iron grip, still sucking away hours at a time whenever I sit down to it. Nothing for years save Morrowind or other PC RPGs has been so addictive to me. I’ve finally figured out that this is the kind of console strategy game that I’m cut out for, not the typical tactical strategy RPG (though I remain quite fond of Advance Wars). The roleplaying elements provide just the right amount of freedom for me to really be able to express my imagination and find my own narrative, and the depth and detail of the setting provides for a very rich playground and some really neat divergent-history situations. Granted, I’m not that familiar with Chinese history circa 200-300 A.D. (yet), but I’ve picked up the first volume of an excellent translation of the original Three Kingdoms novel upon which the games in this series and Dynasty Warriors are based. I also bought the book in order to better get to know the characters in all these games and the individual stories that are repeated so often. I’ve even started teaching myself pronunciation of the pinyin notation used by the names and place names so that I’m not mangling them as I pronounce them in my head. It’s not often that I find something game-related that I can immerse myself in so deeply, so I’m loving the opportunity.

Near the end of my Zhang Fei game, then-Emperor He Jin died and then Zhang Bao, a former leader of the Yellow Turban Rebellion took his place. This caused several officers in the court to break away and separate their districts from the empire. They were all quickly conquered by the capital, and then the emperor set about bringing the more unruly corners of China under control. Near the end I missed an opportunity to start my own rebellion when the emperor moved a large number of troops and officers into the city over which I was presiding as prefect and then ordered me to bring a neighboring district under control. I was obedient at the time, but it was only several game-months later that I realized the chance I’d blown. That game ended with Zhang Bao uniting China and the three oath-brothers each going off his own way.

I really found it interesting that the game didn’t give me a “game over” screen when that happened – rather, it was like a proper game ending after which the credits rolled. It definitely wasn’t the best ending I could have managed, but it made sense, as my character was in a fairly comfortable situation and wasn’t about to die without an heir. That’s one of the only ways you can really flat-out lose the game, along with being beheaded by a conquering ruler. The way the game simulates the life of your character encourages me to play it straight-through with no reloading when things go wrong. I save when I stop playing for the night, and I load when I resume. It’s very satisfying to play this way, and it encourages me to more carefully consider situations and my actions, even though there’s not a quick death lurking around the corner. In fact, there’s a bit of text somewhere in the game (maybe in one of the tutorial menus) that explicitly encourages the player not to exploit the save system because of all this.

In the game I’m currently on, I began as a free officer, a young woman named Sha Ren Fan who is the daughter of Lu Bu (not that that’s done me any good so far!). She came into the game right after the death of He Jin, after which the tyrant Dong Zhuo stole the throne and corruption in the empire fragmented it into many districts and provinces. I started out by travelling from city to city until I found a couple of officers willing to join up with me, with whom I formed a band and continued travelling, rounding up bandits, and pillaging here and there. Eventually I settled down and claimed the unincorporated district of Wu on the eastern coast for myself. Immediately I shifted into managing the city and pounding the ground, meeting as many free officers as I could and attempting to hire them for my cause. The latter has been the bulk of my character’s activities between quarterly strategy sessions, while I leave management of cities aside from the capital to AI-controlled prefects. They do a surprisingly good job, too, at following the policies and meeting the goals I set for them. In fact, I generally prefer to leave combat entirely to my officers, as I’m pretty terrible at actually winning battles myself. At this point in the game I have control of the entire southeast and much of the south of China, and I’m duke (or duchess?) of the second-largest province within China. I’m not quitting until I’ve united the country.

The the fact that the player may have any rank in the game at any point (depending on circumstances) really makes it compelling to interact with AI characters, because once you’ve been in the shoes of the vassal you’re ordering around or the viceroy who’s making strategic decisions involving your city, you really understand what might be going through their AI-driven heads, and you feel like you’re just one of many players on a very large stage, rather than a lone autonomous unit dealing with predetermined conditions and situations.