Guess their metrics on playtime show everyone’s still playing 190 start even among the DLC owners.
Or that they aren’t able to come up with satisfying mechanics for a true 3K start date; the Guandu 200 start date starting with a blob is super difficult to get into since turn 1 is a big drop into wtf is going on with all this shit.
Or if you want to read tea leaves in their very tight lipped followup comments (only referencing the ROTK novels, not history) they want to go even more ROTK with Zhuge Liang casting fire spells or something and dudes dynasty warrior-ing into even bigger blobs. Or something with a more scripted story campaign experience following novel?
I’ve never enjoyed a Total War game at release as much as Three Kingdoms. I’ve also never been so disappointed/disinterested in post-release development.
I was looking forward to / expecting expansion and enhancements to the main campaign. Instead they did things like Eight Princes which take place 100 years later. I don’t know, to me that was like buying a game set during the Hundred Years War and then getting a Napoleon DLC. That’s not to say that the Napoleon era wouldn’t be interesting or cool, it’s just not what I was looking for.
As a fan of Warhammer Total War, I could be down for this. I like the straight historical stuff too but something that straddles the in-between works for me as well.
“We want to take a different approach with this one. However, not much more I can say at this time as it’s still early days on this game, unfortunately. We will have more information in the future that I hope will clarify.”
Apparently trying to get Reddit to link to the correct comment from CA_Grace is a right pain in the butt, so you can find it somewhere in this comment chain. Certainly makes it sound like they want to try something different. Which I imagine, based on the popularity of the ROTK novel and Koei’s games based in the setting, could indeed be letting Zhuge Liang cast fireballs and all that fancy spectacle stuff.
This reminds me that I really need to get back to 3K. Love this game.
I feel like I am drowning in Total War games right now and I barely have the opportunity to give each one its fair allotment of time. Warhammer, 3K, Rome Remastered, occasionally dipping back in older titles, and I was even really positive and enjoyed the Troy Saga but got distracted by some other shiny thing or life. I have all of them installed on my PC right now.
It does feel like there is an overload of Total War content at times. At least for those of us who enjoy both more historical-based titles and the Warhammer titles. I guess if you only dedicated yourself to the Total War: Warhammer branch the pace of Total War releases might not seem quite so frenzied and closer to a steady drip though.
One does wonder where they are planning on fitting a Three Kingdoms sequel into their usual schedule of annual base game releases. Pre-production would suggest it might be a few years out, but then depending on how much they can carry across from TW:TK1 it wouldn’t be impossible for them to crank something out within a one year development cycle.
After all, Shogun 2 surprisingly only took a year of development despite how great that game was as a polished, cohesive package.
Like the old Koei games… Using magic in Bandit Kings in Ancient China was fun!
And yes, Shogun 2 and Shogun 2 fall of the samurai were amazing. They were the only total war games I’d recommend besides Warhammer / 3kingdoms. They actually sold quite poorly, not enough weebs.
Man, I loved that game. Those Koei games on my NES (Genghis Khan and RTK were the other two I really got into) are responsible for my love of strategy games. I remember weekend after weekend as a kid making the 2+ mile walk to the video store to rent Bandit Kings. The teenager working there always seemed so perplexed by the game whenever I rented it. He also screwed up a bunch of my saves trying to figure out what the game was all about!
Honestly, they should have just gifted me the game at some point, given how much money I sunk into renting the damn thing every weekend.
I’d love to see a polished take on the officer-centric gamestyle of RTK 8/10. RTK10 is still my favorite in the series (despite the braindead AI)
Adolescent me could never get into Bandit Kings. I liked the Genghis Khan(s) fine, but I sucked at it. Pretty sure I was able to finish RTK2 within a game year though! (one of the early scenarios ofc)
Same. Some of my fondest Total War memories were painting the map red in Total War Medieval 2002. I can’t believe they haven’t gone back to the era since 2006.
I actually think this is what the direction of Three Kingdoms originally was, and the reaction to Eight Princes pushed it into another direction. IMO I would have preferred the Eight Princes trajectory than the one it eventually took.
I keep trying to get into Three Kingdoms but tend to burn out on replays. It has several cumulative issues for me that spoil the game, especially when there are so many other Total War games to choose from instead. But when i basically just don’t like the battles in general, and feel that the game has no gameplay elements to allow strategist generals - you know, the guys that the series are based around - to do anything more than be ammo donkeys and crossbow recruiters, i have a hard time getting into it. Recruiting Zhuge Liang or Sima Yi should change the fortunes of the war; instead, you get a guy that can recruit crossbows and maybe have a formation or two that nobody else does. By comparison warrior generals plow through enemy ranks single handedly causing hundreds of casualties - and in fact, the red/green/yellow/blue/purple thing of generals feels kind of half baked, as there are really red generals, blue generals, and everybody else.
So i’m of mixed feelings about the announcement. I would have liked to see the rise of the Eastern Jin, Fei River, all very dramatic stuff, but i would also like them to fix the very well worn gameplay of Total War games to allow things like “strategic” generals have an actual use.
IMO, it might well be that, considering CA does occasionally do more than strategy games, that the “next” Three Kingdoms game will not be a strategy war game based on a Total War engine.
One noticeable absence from the current game has been the next gen struggle between Jiang Wei and Deng Ai. I could see them doing an Atilla style game where the game starts with the 3 kingdoms already set up and you are slowly trying to keep them together.
Well I popped on reddit today to see if there was any Warhammer 3 news and instead the news is an out of nowhere cancellation of 3K.
The DLC planning for this game really missed the mark. I’m a person who buys DLC. I have every Warhammer DLC, god help me I think I have every EU4 DLC and I shudder to think of the cost. I could have built a well in an impoverished village or something. But I didn’t buy any of the DLC for 3K despite having enjoyed the main game.
The amazing thing CA managed with Warhammer is that the series and the DLC can all be tied into one massive clusterwhoops of a campaign with all of the games content.
For 3K I just wasn’t interested in a new campaign with new characters that didn’t meaningfully interact with the old content after having seen how fun it was for the content to overlap.
After having seen the backlash on Reddit I find myself forced to wonder “how long should a company be expected to support a title after release?” Because clearly some fans feel quite betrayed. I’m not among them but I am sympathetic to a favorite game being cancelled with no final update addressing longstanding issues.
There is also actually a ton of 3K content - whether or not you like that content is another matter - already in TW 3K. Every additional faction pack has some kind of twist and new faction power, ect. In fact there’s just so many faction powers and so many factions that tbh most people aren’t going to even encounter them unless you play exclusively TW 3K most of your gaming time.
I do feel like there are just way to many high quality “1000 hour” strategy games right now. I’m spoilt for choice, but short on time.
Well apart from 8 Princes (which apparently was a very good, if different campaign) all the DLC does overlap with older content (aka adding characters/start positions in the other start dates).
It’s hard to be excited about slightly different starting map. Like I can understand that start date where the emperor is still alive and Yellow Turban rebellion just starts. But you have 2 more that are just few years after the grand campaign start and aren’t that different. They learn what Paradox learned a long time ago: people play “grand” campaign. They tried to do something more substantial with 8 Princes and I don’t know why it failed. People say it’s not an interesting scenario by its very nature?.. also they didn’t put a lot of effort into it and a lot of text still references 190 start date situation.
And then there are those tribal dudes. They have their own game and are isolated from most of China. I’ve won 2 games since their release and never fought them. So… Yeah. Something went wrong with DLCs.
I really don’t understand what they’re doing. From the initial headline, I thought they were saying “we’re done with Thee Kingdoms and moving on to the next major historical Total War game.” — which all sounded logical. But then I watch the video and they say we’re done with Total War Three Kingdoms and our next game is another Total War Three Kingdoms game.
Am I misunderstanding what they’re saying, because that doesn’t makes any sense.
