I fear the Chinese cohorts will want a very particular telling of the story (it is their foundation myth if I understand it correctly) which is somewhat at odds with what someone like me would like, namely something historical, or historically feasible (meaning the hero duels are an instant no for me) and entertaining, that has battles that “make sense,” by which I mean flanking, slow battles, attrition, not alot of special abilities (did not like this in rtw2 or total warhammer, although in the latter it made alot more sense. Iirc Rome 1 had just one clickable ability, which was rally?) and emphasis on positioning, and a realistic scale.
It’s one thing to read about 50,000 or whatever Romans dying at Cannae and then commanding your entire 20 stack army and having it be…1600 soldiers…
Throw in personal relations and a province system that is in depth and makes sense and I’d buy it in an instant.
I looked at the video linked above.
It seems provinces, trade, diplomacy and character management are actually worth a damn now.
I get that there be Chinese who play games , but they just won’t buy this game, its as the post above says, a westernized version of their story, they will hate it…
In addition it will probably not pull a huge crowd from the west either, just not seeing it :(
I think if there’s a market for the Shoguns then there’s a market for this. RTK is less a foundational myth than a respected historical novel that also lends well to popular adaptations and youthful comic book style fandom.
I think this will sell better than any other historical TW to date.
This is aimed at the Asian market. The Asian market is huge. It dwarves the Western market (although China specially is really hard to access). The genre is perfect for that market and I am pretty sure they are focus testing the hell out of this there (not so much a Westernized version as a Western developed game).
I guess it could get banned in China or something. Otherwise I don’t see how this will not be a success.
The story will probably follow quite closely to the established Chinese canon and style, veering into myth and legend as opposed to historicity.
That’s not a bad thing as such, but it is not appealing to me.
It could, infact, be very very appealing to Chinese players, who form a large part of the market and, who, to my knowledge, don’t have a TW style product.
The things I am leery about/weary of in TW don’t look like they are going to be solved any time soon (ability heavy, fast paced combat, over large aimless maps, lack of anything to do really than fight fight fight/no real diplomacy etc - although these last 2 seem to be addressed at least a little bit in 3K)
I don’t know if it will be a flop. I think there are enough people there who are maybe tired of the overly spectacular Total warhammer style, and want a break and a return to spears poke Cav who ride down archers who poke Spears, with no Giants please…
I hope it’s a resounding success so they can maybe make a TW game more to my liking.
To be fair, I do have 220 hrs played across both Total warhammers, so I enjoyed it well enough. Just not a masterpiece.
The high point remains Shogun 2 and Napoleon for me.
I think some of your concerns are addressed here (though I haven’t actually been following this game too closely, so it could be out of date):
It’s neat that they got Rafe De Crespigny to consult. I really enjoyed his preface to the three kingdoms and always point people to it (like earlier in this thread.) Unfortunately both links to his essay seems to be down though.
Can’t trust Napoleon/empire tw hours, those things were bugged and tw2.exe would stay running after you quit the game.
Romance is going to be the real mode, it’s in the name itself. Historical mode is going to be like multiplayer, bone thrown in to appease the masses.
That last video is cool but need to see all the numbers because if it’s just minor tweaks to the existing engine that’s just not gonna be cool after the initial shine wears off. Also, how the scenarios start is very important because I really hate the puzzly-diplomatic map a lot of scenarios start with - for example, you start with a NAP against the guy you really really should kill first.
edit: percolate means the caffeine in my coffee is percolating through my arteries allowing me to function.
From what I’ve been reading the natives are indeed restless. Lots of talk about an AI that’s brain dead is what I’ve been seeing.
My own concern is CA isn’t up to the task of properly integrating Paradox elements into their TW formula effectively. Least I’ve never seen them do it properly yet. So when all the vids they’ve released appeared to be doubling down on that element I thought to myself, I wonder how that’s going to turn out.
I wonder how much they’ll lean into the Koei games for inspiration - and the expectation of fans. Koei at this point is Three Kingdoms and has been so for 25+ years, and to a large extent how people “perceive” the characters of Three Kingdoms is seen through that success/fail ability lens Koei has fashioned out of them.
For example, all three major characters in the Three Kingdoms story - Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Jian all start (apparently) as roaming armies. (Or at least the last two i’m sure, I think Cao Cao does as well though). Those sort of starts, in Total War games, lead to map anarchy. Will players be disappointed if Cao Cao never forms Wu or Liu Bei never forms Shu if they’re playing as Sun Jian / Sun Quan? Will one of the random map corner factions end up being the strongest? In Koei games population directly relates to income, but in Total War corner empires have a distinct stability advantage and every faction is given a big stack of starting money for free so that they can field at least one full stack; which leads to all sorts of randomized nonsense of how the AI that is the last to attack ends up the strongest.
I’m guessing this will be the case, because they seem to be leaning into the “initial” phase of the Romance story in their narratives, defeating Dong Zhuo.
Having Zhuge Liang (or Sima Yi, most of the time) was like having a Leeroy Jenkins card in your deck to play every turn. How will that translate in a Total War game? The difference between a 3 star general and a 10 star general is a pittance compared to the huge bonuses Koei games give their characters. Will the named characters just get blurred out as yet another slightly better than average hero character, like in Warhammer? And how will the fans respond?
In other words, I feel like when they start having to balance the “Romance” game, they’re going to have to balance it to the expectations gamers will have having played Koei games for decades of ‘how things should be’.
Well, if delaying a couple months avoids another Rome2-style release debacle, I’m happy to wait. This is based solely on anecdotal evidence, but I think Atilla’s sales suffered pretty dramatically from the sour taste Rome2 left for many of us at release. That’s a hot mess I could do without.
