This is incredible, I’ve always known about the three kingdoms inspired games but I’ve never really seen any UA-cam coverage so for one of my favorite creators to cover it, I know I’m in for a treat.
I'm only 6mins at this point but had to stop to comment at your marriage story. Mine very nearly went the same way for the same reason. I was planning on going to China for a year too, but some friends of mine heard about it and said they were doing a year in Vietnam and asked if I wanted to go along. 7 years later, I'm still here and married even though they've long gone home 6 years ago. So even though I didn't end up in China, I'm also where I am today because of Dynasty Warriors 3 looking badass in an Asda game section.
Oh wow, this series really had an impact on your life. Just hearing that intro had me super hyped to watch and become and engrossed in this series as you are!
Many thousands of hours playing RTK. It all started in '89, I was 9yrs old and my dad rented Genghis Khan, and we all loved it. Then my dad bought RTK1, and we would watch him play every night. I remember him having a province with a single general Xu Zhu with 100 troops. He would get attacked over and over again by 300-500 troops and just barely win every time. Eventually, we all played together. My dad would always be Cao Cao, my brother Sun Quan, and me Liu Bei. Spent countless hours among friends playing ROTK 2&3. Played 4 a long time when I was 16yrs old, and after that I just lost interest, life changes etc. Played 8 or 9 for a while on PS2 when I was about 26yrs old, then played DW 4&5. Havent played RTK in a very long time, but I have an emulator console otw and will be playing again. Would like to play all the other Koei games as well, like Genghis Khan, Nobunagas Ambition etc. I always felt a personal link to Liu Bei, maybe I am descended from his line somehow...
11 was my favorite ROTK game. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were godly with God's Command and Devine Right respectfully. Both had a 80+% chance to confuse anyone as long as they are using spears. Also towers were incredibly overpowered.
@@ChuckC46 11 is a lot of players' favorite due to the mod where characters throughout the entire history of China are united into one single map under their own separate dynasties' banners and fight it out.
I grew up on DW3 and the menu music still slaps. Just loaded it the other week when my old PC died and was waiting on a replacement. DW2 looks solid and a huge improvement on the earlier street-fighter-meets-China debut, but 3 I think took it a big step forward while keeping all of the same energy and epic music. I mean, WAY more maps and characters in 3, many more moves and combos, ect. It also looked pretty good for the day. And YES...it is much harder than I remember lol. I forgot that back then you really had to be skilled to walk into a large group of basic troops - they really gang up on you. No wonder you were allowed to have up for 8 elite bodyguards for a whole squad
Thank you for this retrospective! Awesome to see someone impacted by the Dynasty warriors as well and it was awesome to see how it set you off on your path. I don't usually comment on videos but this video deserves to reach more people. Keep up the good work man!
This is an great video. I love Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Growing up in Taiwan, my dad bought me a kid's version of the story and I fell in love with it. Like you, I also loved the video games. My first ROTK was ROTK 2 on the Super NES and I put so many hours into that. I read ROTK in its entirety 5 times. I even collect 1/6 figures of the ROTK characters. I can honestly say the book shaped my life and made me the person I am today with its theme of loyalty, honor, righteousness, and bravery. This is to me, the greatest book ever written and I, like my dad, bought my kids he kiddie version of ROTK and hopefully they will learn to love the book as much as me.
This is an absolute fact. When I think in hindsight, I've read pretty much every major persons wiki page and other articles. Even played the Yugioh deck based on them too at my locals.
I'm impressed by and appreciative of the fact that you seem to pronounce all of the names better than most people on UA-cam talking about Three Kingdoms games. Well done!
I loved this one! Watched it all whilst playing Samurai Warriors 2. The ps2 era of Warriors games was insane, i'm on a mission to max all the ps2 Warriors games out. Thanks for this gem of a video!
Liao Hua was apparently godlike (age wise). He was a Yellow Turban when the ROTK games had Yellow Turbans. He was still alive in the final scenarios. That would make him over 100 years old. Lol A 100 year old man still fighting and swinging a sword.
@@straydogfreedom7795 Haven't actually gotten to the point in the video yet, but I actually got into KUF because I was trying to download Bladestorm, since I had heard a few times that koei had made a medieval european game, but I couldn't remember what it was called, and ended up mixing the two of them up and being pleasantly surprised. Kuf is a really weird game to me both aesthetically and in gameplay, but I love the bizarre fusion of fantasy, rock music and often strangely profane dialogue
@@straydogfreedom7795 It's neat, but it's hard both to learn and in terms of it's actually difficulty, from the box you would probably assume it's a warriors clone, but it's way more just a strategy war game with warriors hack and slash stuff kinda grafted on top. You can't just run in and start kicking ass like you can in warriors games
Wow that intro meant alot to me . Because i had a very similar story without going to china. My first dw was dw2 and i loved it. My best friend introduced it to me. And the names in the game always seemed so familiar to me until i found out that they are the same names as in my game rotk 4 . When i found out it was actual events i downloaded the book and printed almost 30 or 40 pages of the book and started to read it. It was actually my first book ever. But it was very hard for me to understand as a teenager and my main language was german and back then there was no translation. With 15 i traveled to washington for summer vacation and a good school friend of mine invited me to new york where i actually bought a physical copy of this book. At the same time rotk8 came out and i bought it for my 16 th birthday and i absolutely fell in love with this game. Rotk has a very special place in my life and i have to thank koei for introducing me in this fantastic story. My favourite character was when i was young zhang liao but as i grew older it changed to xiahou dun. I also love xu zhu in the book. This was an amazing video it was very interesting especially the intro. Thank you.
Love this video. I've play a few three kingdoms games over the years and your passion for it makes me want to pick one up again. It's wild to think about how something that might seem so small to another person can change the course of one's whole life. Great video.
I think in the last five years, if there was anybody who has been so influential on my gaming tastes its been you. First with Switch imports, than with Visual Novels and finally with Romance of the Three Kingdoms games. Without wading in to modern politics, I've really grown to love Chinese history and culture. Playing games, listening to podcasts and very briefly diving in to Romance of the Three Kingdoms in book form (though I was thoroughly confused and had to put it down. It feel like was reading a poor abridged version. SO if you can recommend me to version would be best to read do let me know!), I'm become incredibly interested in that time period. I'm super hyped for Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 remake, as I remember you saying it's one of the best. I can only hope it gets that sweet sweet Asian English physical! Fantastic video Bossman. One of your best to date!
Thanks a lot matey! I’m not sure on which version I would recommend. Even the one I read as a kid wasn’t great due to the differently translated names. Was confusing as hell 😅
Bro its like you held a mirror up to me and my life. 10 years in China through my 20s to 30s and its all thanks to SanGuo YanYi (and the SW series). You sir, and a gentleman and a scholar. Much love and respect to you, my dude!
This is a great video 🙏like you dynasty warriors got me in my childhood. I only played the dynasty warriors and samurai warriors games. And orochi. But never starter with the more strategic games apart from the empires games. This video has given some ideas what to play next. Because I love the three kingdoms stories and it's characters
Author: I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet. But your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids are going to love it.
You putting Warriors of Fate in the thumbnail intrigued me, that was one of my childhood games and not many people know of it (my copy was in japanese, and i had to play without knowing much, but at least the names were correct)
Hey just wanted to say that this was a fantastic video. I have been a fan of the three kingdoms since I found DW3 myself. I believe we're right about the same age, only I'm a yankee. I bonded very closely with the series and even when my friends had moved on from the franchise, I remember pre ordering DW5 and being blown away by the character campaigns. This was also where I first realized the encyclopedia, and I hilariously did a whole final project in high school based mostly off of the great write ups in the encyclopedia. I wasn't the best student... Your story with rot3k is fascinating and the fact it led you to live in China is remarkable. It's made me feel less of an outsider to see some real life genuine enthusiasm for this tale. I always feel like a bit of a doofus trying to explain to people why I love this particular story, but at its core its because KOEI gave me the privilege of several digestible versions of it.
A good overview of the games that have been launched from the Three Kingdoms itself. Lots of variety out there with their own tweaks and shows what some studios can do with such a concept.
I’m venturing into this crazy world of the Three Kingdom and I promise you that I will create one playthrough and make sure YUAN BIGDICK becomes the greatest general under the heavens. I appreciate you for all the hard work that went into this. It was highly enjoyable all the way through. Thank you.
This is a great video I started way back in the NES/Famicom era with Destiny of an Emperor probably still my favorite game to this day it was so deep for a 8bit rpg. Fast forward to when I first played Dynasty Warriors 3 on PS2 at my friends house he was shocked I knew the story and the characters already and like you was addicted after that.
Amazing Video, especially with the personal touch regarding the Book. And even though I have no clue why YT decided to recommend me this Video, my only interaction with Romance of the Three Kingdoms so far was casually playing a few of the Dynasty Warriors games, and even then I didn´t even know what they where based on until I watched this Video. You managed to convince me to grab a copy of Dynasty Tactics, the way you described it made it sound like a lot of fun even to me who doesn´t even like Strategy games for the most part. And I promise to read the book this year.
when I was 13 my best friends family rented a condo on a beautiful little island. Right on the beach. He brought me and I brought my PS2. We spent the whole vacation in the room grinding away at Dynasty Warriors 3. Best vacation ever.
Oh man, it's been so long since I've seen the earlier games and I'd forgotten so many things about them, like the ranged weapons, hiding the health bars, the overly-brown maps. I'm so used to the big mazes of the modern releases now. You instantly transported me to my parents' basement, sitting on a ratty-ass couch just wasting hours getting my kill count up instead of finishing the map lol Oddly enough, I think I also played Kessen 2 (and loved it) before I played a Dynasty Warriors game and realizing how ridiculous K2's story was compared to the actual RoTK story (that I knew nothing about at the time) blew my mind. Like I got really into the story of K2 only to find out it was completely, as you said, off the rails.
First off, amazing video, and I have now subscribed. I agree with you on the course the Warriors series took. The Xbox game you were thinking of was probably Kingdom Under Fire, which leans a little more on action but also lets you take direct control.
I am amazed by how good this video is. It definitely helps that you have a very visible passion for the Three Kingdoms. I would not worry about Total War fans coming at you. They are too busy ripping into Creative Assembly's latest releases and business practices to rip into your first impression of the game.
I love your enthusiasm for Dynasty Tactics. I never played the first game, but I would play the second so much as a kid. I had multiple nights where I would be up playing it until the sun came up in the morning. I'll probably try and emulate it again on my steam deck.
I rented Destiny of an Emperor in 8th grade and instantly fell in love. The game is so special to me. The setting stood out to me and sparked an interest in the lore behind it that lasts to this day.
I spent thousands of hours playing RTK3 as a kid. Read the books too. It took forever because they are hard to read. The games have so much replay value. I wish they would release them on steam or something.
ROTK 11 and ROTK 13 are my favorite! ROTK 14 was okay, but it felt like such a letdown in comparison to the other games in the series The way of life and RPG elements of 13 and the strategic elements and character creation of 11 just hit different Wonderful video! Subscribed!
Theres a lot to comment about this video, from personal story with dw, three kingdoms game and the novel itself. I'd like to start by saying that dw 3 was my first of them all and how in order to unlock the 4th weapon I read all the encyclopedia for each character to find hints for it. This led me to learn about the novel and then about history in general, so cheers for such wonderful game and how it led us to learn about culture, history and more.
@@angelnava5385 I wish I was clever enough to look for hints. I had to go sign up for the local library to use their computer to browse gamewinners. Then write more than I did for my uni dissertation 😂
Collecting all my favorite persona's like Pokémon from the series is what makes the games so fun. Historical accuracy be damned, I need Sima Yi, Zhou Yu and Zhao Yun on my team at all costs.
I was just looking into the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, which led me here. Like you, I didn't realise all of this stuff was an adaptation, and from real history. I'm considering starting with RTK IV which is still available on PS3 US PSN, then probably the remake of VIII when it comes out. I've also got the Dynasty Wars games which are an incredibly nostalgic memory from the arcades! Cute hearing about your own life path, and well done on the video 👍
To get rid of upscaling lines in all Romance Games played with PSX2 Emulator (v 2.1.20): Right click game>Properties>Graphic>Rendering (tab)>Manual Hardware Renderer Fixes(this will make "Upscaling Fixes" tab appear). Set 500 for X and 500 for Y. This also helps some other games, mainly Front Mission 4.
Never knew there was so many 3 Kingdoms release in the West. But man this doesn't scratches the massive rabbit hole that is the 3 Kingdoms games in the East, from multiple tactics games, to Isekai RPG base of manga, to Diablo esque dungeon crawler, and a silly dodgeball game with the Wu Kong mythology characters. I am so happy that Heroes of the Three Kingdoms series/ 三国群英传 got ported to Steam (though sadly no English translation), so I can relive my childhood of playing a total war esque rpg, despite not being able to read.
Kessen II definitely reminds me of one of my favorite old Xbox games, Kingdom Under Fire. That game had some GOOD metal in it, hooboy... Ps. KUF The Crusaders is available for PC, works fine with a controller but I haven't finished it yet after... some years lol! Ps 2. The commanders in Total War tends to want better offices as they level up, be it becoming governors, councilor or just a fancy title like Lion of the North or something. Some are more ambitious than others, but in general keeping them happy isn't too hard or a big deal. Ps 3. Great vid btw! Haha 🀄
So to add to some opinions and facts DW3 sadly, is a bit held back by its infamous P1 stats scaling. The AI basically scales their stats on higher star stages and/or higher difficulties in accordance to the current total stats of the character being played in Player 1's slot (solo or co-op). Higher P1 attack = increased enemy defense, higher P1 defense = increased forms of damage to the player from all sources. This is why archers in DW3 are so particularly deadly (especially IF you have no extra bow defense to compensate for that increase in enemy damage), and why your allies struggle more than usual on Very Hard difficulty (allied AI units don't have their stats increased in tandem to compensate). BUT, with this infamous feature, you can slot in a weak undeveloped character in P1 and slap in a fully-developed character in P2, and basically have P2 go to town on everyone (you can even unlock certain infamous rare weapons this way). They HEAVILY NERFED this stat scaling bs in DW4, and personally the 3 and 4 Xtreme Legends expansions are great in my book for one thing; the actual attempt to make the AI be challenging AND intelligent. Expert Mode in DW4XL has massively improved enemy general AI (ESPECIALLY playable generals both allied and enemy) which isn't perfect, but still something to recognize Koei and Omega Force for attempting to make challenging engagments. Hell, 3XL Very Hard and 4XL Expert made the AI playable generals wield their 4th/Lv 10 weapons to really show they mean business (same exact attributes + Lv 10 weapons also have free elemental attack activation without need for full Musou Gauge). But with DW5, alongside Warriors Orochi 1, it set an unfortunate precedent. The new Chaos Difficulty is now merely just Hard Mode AI that ignores your current defense stats for damage done to you, the player (aside from a few story and aesthetic changes brought about from DW5 that I didn't enjoy). Chaos Difficulty even in DW5XL iirc doesn't even make AI playable generals wield their rare weapons (when did they ever do that again) nor does it re-include 5th weapons until WO3 Ultimate/DW8. While the later WO and DW games are fun in their own way, it ultimately also got downgraded into "if your character can abuse the best combination of broken attributes to safely one-shot dumb AI death sticks who just one-shot you, or just die cause your character's kit or amount of activation attacks is badly designed via oversight" (WO1 made it clear this way when Diaochan and Guan Ping are top tier in solo Chaos maximization runs while Lü Bu, YES LÜ BU, sucks cause he has attacks that can't abuse those optimal setups). Also, the Musou Warriors series' main composer, MASA/Masayoshi Sasaki, didn't exactly pull off the Chinese-styled aesthetic for the series' music until DW3XL for its opening, and then especially in DW4-onwards. He sadly already left the company like around 2020. Also, Koei Tecmo is just cheap AF enough to hire Hollywood VA's for DW9's dub (NOTHING to do with the VA Strike) ...AND all their increased DLCs ever since the Tecmo merge. In regards to DW6 being such an infamous black sheep in the series, it's safe to say tho most of the time, the mechanics were fine ideas which were sadly, not implemented property. Multi-Raid/Strikeforce at least dabbled in one thing DW never did again until DW9....aerial combat. SF basically did it in a DBZ/Dissidia dash-flight-based fashion.
47:30 - Yeah, I feel the same. Having useless allies who are there just as part of the stage or to be rescued. I really liked how the first Call of Duty did the first stages of the campaign. They ran in front of me, not picking enemies' weapons for ammo or looking for med kits. They shot, they got shot, I don't know if they really did a difference, but it sure felt so.
Dynasty warriors was my childhood. Dunstable warriors 4 was the first. Then I went to 2, then 3 and so on. Dunstable warriors 5 is my all time favorite. Empires my all all time favorite. I got introduced to ROTK about 15 years later actually. And ROTK 11 is my favorite. I play it none stop. I also want to go to China. I'm 29 years old and has always wanted to see the locations of Dynasty warriors. See the statue of Guan Yu. All the stuff! I just don't have the money yet..😊
I have played every one of them. In 87 at 9 years old I rented Rotk 1 from a local video stop. My favored ones are 2, 4, 8, and 10. I've read the book many times and watched all media related to the story.
For me my first ones were Romance of The Three kingdoms 8 on PS2 and DW4 Empires on PS2. Fell in love with them instantly. And now RTK 8 is getting a remaster.
I’d love to see your thoughts on dynasty warriors origins. I’m really enjoying it, even though you mow down loads of troops, it presents the battles as bigger events and the problems they have are usually from something else like an ambush or arrival. With the options on fighting for different warlords and going through events from different perspectives has been great
I remember watching my friend play this and my eyes was shocked by how many enemies on screen and seeing his character using his OP attack.I was very late in getting into these games.I need to get more DW and Kessen games.i only have 4,5,6 and Kessen 2.I still have Shingen the ruler and Genghis Kahn for my nes.These games are fun and very nostalgic.
Destany of an Emperor was my favorite rpg for a long time when I was a kid and later in life when at a friends house they put on Dynasty Warriors three and I saw names I had not seen in years on the screen made me an instant fan. Also led me to do my research and learn this was all a big part of history we are just not told about
real talk, I LOVE Zhang Jiao. It's sometimes a shame that they make him a sinister character, but I adore how camp and eccentric DW3's was. "I have no time for the unenlightened!" *wiggles, teleports away* (It is worth noting that they were kinda in the middle of a two year drought at the time - we play as the bad guys, here)
When it comes to the title naming, the 'shin' is actually denoted as the sequel or the 'ultimate' version of a game a few times. For example "Shin Hokuto Musou " and "Shin Gundam Musou".
Once my friend and I played DW3 together, I was hooked. I collected each one and the expansions when they would come out. I waited until I really wanted a few games before getting my PS4 and one of those games was DW8:XL Complete. I was hyped about DW9 until I saw reviews and just stayed away from it all together. Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII is one of my favorite PS2 games and I had a great time with Dynasty Tactics 1 and 2 as well. I do think they should go back to making everyone smarter on both sides. Let me choose my difficulty so I can be the unstoppable force or the lowly foot soldier when I want.
I was first introduced to the concept of Ro3K from DW5: Empires, it became the only thing I played for a good year. The best thing about it is you could make custom characters, based on a preexisting character's moveset. Yes it's basically a custom skin for that basic character, but it hits differently when I could make my whole group of friends in the game and run the custom campaign fighting side by side with my buds.
Okay Jordan, this is my first video ever seeing you. I'm 15:27 in and I like you a lot. Big fan of The whole Three Kingdoms period of China myself, got into it the same way you did, except DW4 was my first buy. Will I finish this video? I assure you thats between me and my attention span, and has nothing to do with you lmao. Definitely subscribing and taking a look at what you've got!
Kessen II is funny in that Kessen I was a passion project from the devs and it starts off with a message from the lead about how proud he is to present this important foundational battle from Japanese history as authentically as possible and then Kessen II is like "what if a chinese warlord rode a dragon and shot fireballs out of his mouth"
oh man what a blast from the past! i started with Dynasty Warriors 2 then i play DW4, then Dynasty Tactics 2 and Kessen II(don't remeber the order here) then Dynasty Warriors 6. now i wonna try Romance of the Three Kingdoms, to you this i sholud try the 14 or wait for the remmake of the 8?
#2:14:30 I think that was referring to the story of Lady Sun (sometimes referred as Sun Shang Xiang) attempt to kidnap Liu Shan when she was returning back to Wu in 212. Depending on the characterization it was framed either as an intentional act, or a last request from her sick mother (Lady Wu) to meet her "grandson" (a ploy from Sun Quan). Zhuge Liang purportedly ordered Zhao Yun to intercept her at the river and while Zhao Yun failed to convince her to stay, he managed to convince her to not bring Liu Shan along.
Zhao Yun 10,000 men battle was not exaggerated and that's what made me fall in love with the warriors series, Samurai included. Although Zhao Yun didn't slay anywhere near the thousands in the Novel he leaves with out a scratch on him and slays about a little over 100 soldiers. The Liu Bei throwing his baby away was real too 💀
Personally I first got into the three kingdoms series when I was a young teenager, and Romance of the three Kingdoms 3 was out for the SNES. It scratched my itch for "conquest" games. My parents wouldn't ever buy me games because I was too addicted to them. But I ended up buying RTK3,4,6,7,8,9,10,11 on console and 13 and 14 on steam, though 14 is laggy for me for my current PC. 13 is similar to 8 where you can play as a single general and rise up the ranks/get rapport with others/start your own kingdom. I really enjoyed that aspect. Infact the only time I ever conquered all china as a historical ruler was back in RTK3 as Han Fu. (side note, they made Han Fu progressively worse in each following series) I really liked Dynasty warriors, but something I enjoyed more which was omitted from this list was the hybrid version of DW, which was DW: Empires. It was the hack n slash but also conquest game. As for the total war games, while aesthetically appealing, the long drawn out battles/manipulating troop movements never appealed to me.
My cousin loaned DW4 from Blockbuster.... I was amazed. When I found DW 3 in morrisons I begged for it. I loved how if you bought DW 3 Extreme Legends and removed the disc and inserted DW 3 you could play as all the character on one disc.
My favorite Dynasty Warriors was actually 6, even over 4. With the Renbu system it had a nice emphasis on building and maintaining momentum, which I felt was a layer to the combat system that went beyond the traditional samey combos that you could pull out at any time. Block attacks were also quite fun to use. As for battlefield mechanics, while it's probably true that the emphasis shifted towards the player's impact, it was also the last in the series that had allies have any real agency at all. There was some nuance in understanding which and when allies could handle themselves, and building deathballs via pathing (manipulating the battlefield so 4-5 allied generals stick together and carve their own way to the enemy camp unless they meet a powerful enemy general). The game will very clearly tell you when an ally general in actually in need of your intervention, especially when they're being ambushed, making general positioning pretty important. You can see this especially in the yellow turban mission. I think it's technically possible to basically stand still the entire battle and the allied officers will win the level on their own. The Hu Lao Gate battle with Lu Bu's musou mode in DW6 is my favorite in the series, as all of your allied generals follow you around for the entire mission (or you could free play it with another general and follow him around instead!) Personally, the music in DW6 is my absolute favorite. Not a single bad track in that game. Roster/story was whatever personally. I appreciated the heightened emotional emphasis on the narrative, which I think DW6 and DW7 did better than the others. My biggest gripe with the series is actually when they removed damage inflicted by allied regular soldiers, which completely neutered numbers advantages. In DW7 onward you would see allied and enemy grunts just slap their weapons at each other with unique animations but not do actual damage unless it was against the player. In previous games, having more allies mattered as they could eventually gang up on an officer and knock them around, adding up some hefty damage in the process. It was also a really fun spectacle to see in battles. ROTK 14 is fun, but my opinion is that it has major issues with replayability. Unless you do a lot of work in roleplaying and building a particular narrative for yourself, the overall gameplay loop can get tiring pretty fast once you get can manage to get past a difficult early start. This can be somewhat dealt with by playing on the highest difficulty, but there isn't a great deal of depth in the combat, at least compared to ROTK 11. In particular, activated army abilities used to be much more varied and widely accessible, oftentimes the full range of which were available to an army unit depending on who you brought as general/adjutant. Now it's just one active ability carried by the leading general, which usually can't be activated at will, alongside a range of passive traits held by that general and his adjutants that will usually modify some stats. I'm also not a huge fan of the new supply system: In ROTK 14, an army will continuously deduct food reserves from its origin city, which in turn forces that particular army to be entirely dependent on a contiguous and consistent path of your controlled territory from that army to its city. This means that if at any point that path is cut off, even for a second, your army will be immediately stunned and completely helpless for an extended period of time. It can't even receive supplies from another city of yours whose supply line isn't cut off. It can be fun to be sneaky and send a fast unit to disrupt an enemy supply line to win desperate battles, but it feels a little too gimmicky for me. In ROTK 11 you could assign a general to be a dedicated transport unit who brings a stockpile of extra troops, weapons, and supplies with him, who needs to be protected as the transport unit can't attack, but can in turn replenish food and troops for your other combat units for long campaigns. ROTK 14 transport units can't interact with combat units at all, even if they're carrying a huge load of supplies. Music from both games are very good, although I'm a bigger fan of ROTK 11's OST. ROTK 14 lacks a bit of nuance in its tracks. Long post, I know, but I also have a lot of passion for Romance of the Three Kingdoms media in my own way. I'm also very excited for the new ROTK 8 remake and I'll buy it pretty much no matter what. I strongly, strongly recommend Total War Three Kingdoms if it's ever convenient for you. The [TROM+TUP] Campaign Overhaul mod on steam workshop is almost essential IMO for patching up what it lacks in narrative aspects, and it's probably the best game we'll see out of the period for quite a while. Thanks for the overviews!
I did not expect to watch a 3kingdoms retrospective starting the year, more so considering I never played any games. Wo Long I might check out someday though... 🀄
As a long time total war fan and a huge three kingdoms fan I can explain why it took so long to make the three kingdoms total war. They always did realistic war games. Your general was a single unit in a group of cavalry, a lucky arrow would kill him and none of his cav guards. It would ruin the lore of three kingdoms if a lucky spearman killed Lu Bu. Three kingdoms is about these larger than life figures that famously killed hundreds of men in a day. So when they successfully made Warhammer, where they brought in single unit heroes and found some success with balancing them they decided to work on three kingdoms. Lu Bu can be brought down, but you need either a general(s) of roughly equal strength, or a huge number of troops to wear him down
I had "Dynasty Warriors" 1 for PS1 as a kid. It was a bargain bin game. You know it's actually really good. I had a lot of good time playing that. Compared to contemporary bargain bin games I had such as Evil Zone and Total Eclipse Turbo it was much, much better. Not as good as Strider 2 but I got a lot of play time out of Dynasty Warriors and thought it was weird they made the sequel as an open map thing.
At the beginning I was like "this dude is exaggerating, how can a videogame change your life?" And then you showed your wife and I was like "oh ok I stand corrected"
The most popular TK game used to be in China is 三国志II 覇王の大陸（Sangokushi 2 - Haou no Tairiku）in FC. There are still many hack versions under developing today.
🀄 I think this is your best video so far Jordan. The lore runs deep, and your personal connection to it really comes through!
Wow, thank you!
This is incredible, I’ve always known about the three kingdoms inspired games but I’ve never really seen any UA-cam coverage so for one of my favorite creators to cover it, I know I’m in for a treat.
Wow thank you so much!! I’m glad I could make content about this, shame not many people talk about this wonderful part of Chinese history/culture
I'm only 6mins at this point but had to stop to comment at your marriage story. Mine very nearly went the same way for the same reason. I was planning on going to China for a year too, but some friends of mine heard about it and said they were doing a year in Vietnam and asked if I wanted to go along. 7 years later, I'm still here and married even though they've long gone home 6 years ago. So even though I didn't end up in China, I'm also where I am today because of Dynasty Warriors 3 looking badass in an Asda game section.
Oh wow, this series really had an impact on your life. Just hearing that intro had me super hyped to watch and become and engrossed in this series as you are!
Many thousands of hours playing RTK. It all started in '89, I was 9yrs old and my dad rented Genghis Khan, and we all loved it. Then my dad bought RTK1, and we would watch him play every night. I remember him having a province with a single general Xu Zhu with 100 troops. He would get attacked over and over again by 300-500 troops and just barely win every time. Eventually, we all played together. My dad would always be Cao Cao, my brother Sun Quan, and me Liu Bei. Spent countless hours among friends playing ROTK 2&3. Played 4 a long time when I was 16yrs old, and after that I just lost interest, life changes etc. Played 8 or 9 for a while on PS2 when I was about 26yrs old, then played DW 4&5. Havent played RTK in a very long time, but I have an emulator console otw and will be playing again. Would like to play all the other Koei games as well, like Genghis Khan, Nobunagas Ambition etc. I always felt a personal link to Liu Bei, maybe I am descended from his line somehow...
11 was my favorite ROTK game. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were godly with God's Command and Devine Right respectfully. Both had a 80+% chance to confuse anyone as long as they are using spears. Also towers were incredibly overpowered.
Same here, started playing ROTK in '88, Nobunaga's Ambition the same year,Ghengis Khan in '89.
@@ChuckC46 11 is a lot of players' favorite due to the mod where characters throughout the entire history of China are united into one single map under their own separate dynasties' banners and fight it out.
What a beautiful tribute, Jordan. Cheers
Thank you kindly!
I grew up on DW3 and the menu music still slaps. Just loaded it the other week when my old PC died and was waiting on a replacement. DW2 looks solid and a huge improvement on the earlier street-fighter-meets-China debut, but 3 I think took it a big step forward while keeping all of the same energy and epic music. I mean, WAY more maps and characters in 3, many more moves and combos, ect. It also looked pretty good for the day.
And YES...it is much harder than I remember lol. I forgot that back then you really had to be skilled to walk into a large group of basic troops - they really gang up on you. No wonder you were allowed to have up for 8 elite bodyguards for a whole squad
Thank you for this retrospective! Awesome to see someone impacted by the Dynasty warriors as well and it was awesome to see how it set you off on your path. I don't usually comment on videos but this video deserves to reach more people. Keep up the good work man!
This is an great video. I love Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Growing up in Taiwan, my dad bought me a kid's version of the story and I fell in love with it. Like you, I also loved the video games. My first ROTK was ROTK 2 on the Super NES and I put so many hours into that. I read ROTK in its entirety 5 times. I even collect 1/6 figures of the ROTK characters. I can honestly say the book shaped my life and made me the person I am today with its theme of loyalty, honor, righteousness, and bravery. This is to me, the greatest book ever written and I, like my dad, bought my kids he kiddie version of ROTK and hopefully they will learn to love the book as much as me.
Dynasty warriors 3 is the start to an entire generation of both gamers and east asian history enthusiasts
This is an absolute fact. When I think in hindsight, I've read pretty much every major persons wiki page and other articles. Even played the Yugioh deck based on them too at my locals.
I'm impressed by and appreciative of the fact that you seem to pronounce all of the names better than most people on UA-cam talking about Three Kingdoms games. Well done!
I loved this one! Watched it all whilst playing Samurai Warriors 2. The ps2 era of Warriors games was insane, i'm on a mission to max all the ps2 Warriors games out. Thanks for this gem of a video!
Nice! I was waiting for a long review!
Great video! It was thoroughly enjoyable and educational. I have some fond memories with koei.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Liao Hua was apparently godlike (age wise). He was a Yellow Turban when the ROTK games had Yellow Turbans. He was still alive in the final scenarios. That would make him over 100 years old. Lol A 100 year old man still fighting and swinging a sword.
The game you’re thinking of is Kingdom Under fire
I was thinking he meant Bladestorm but that was on Xbox360
Thissss!!! Love that game.
@@straydogfreedom7795 Haven't actually gotten to the point in the video yet, but I actually got into KUF because I was trying to download Bladestorm, since I had heard a few times that koei had made a medieval european game, but I couldn't remember what it was called, and ended up mixing the two of them up and being pleasantly surprised. Kuf is a really weird game to me both aesthetically and in gameplay, but I love the bizarre fusion of fantasy, rock music and often strangely profane dialogue
@@michaelmorbius3009 I've never played KuF but I saw a video on it and it definitely looked like you describe it lol. Maybe I'll try it sometime 👍
@@straydogfreedom7795 It's neat, but it's hard both to learn and in terms of it's actually difficulty, from the box you would probably assume it's a warriors clone, but it's way more just a strategy war game with warriors hack and slash stuff kinda grafted on top. You can't just run in and start kicking ass like you can in warriors games
Wow that intro meant alot to me . Because i had a very similar story without going to china. My first dw was dw2 and i loved it. My best friend introduced it to me. And the names in the game always seemed so familiar to me until i found out that they are the same names as in my game rotk 4 . When i found out it was actual events i downloaded the book and printed almost 30 or 40 pages of the book and started to read it. It was actually my first book ever. But it was very hard for me to understand as a teenager and my main language was german and back then there was no translation.
With 15 i traveled to washington for summer vacation and a good school friend of mine invited me to new york where i actually bought a physical copy of this book. At the same time rotk8 came out and i bought it for my 16 th birthday and i absolutely fell in love with this game. Rotk has a very special place in my life and i have to thank koei for introducing me in this fantastic story. My favourite character was when i was young zhang liao but as i grew older it changed to xiahou dun. I also love xu zhu in the book. This was an amazing video it was very interesting especially the intro. Thank you.
Love this video. I've play a few three kingdoms games over the years and your passion for it makes me want to pick one up again. It's wild to think about how something that might seem so small to another person can change the course of one's whole life. Great video.
I think in the last five years, if there was anybody who has been so influential on my gaming tastes its been you. First with Switch imports, than with Visual Novels and finally with Romance of the Three Kingdoms games. Without wading in to modern politics, I've really grown to love Chinese history and culture. Playing games, listening to podcasts and very briefly diving in to Romance of the Three Kingdoms in book form (though I was thoroughly confused and had to put it down. It feel like was reading a poor abridged version. SO if you can recommend me to version would be best to read do let me know!), I'm become incredibly interested in that time period. I'm super hyped for Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 remake, as I remember you saying it's one of the best. I can only hope it gets that sweet sweet Asian English physical!
Fantastic video Bossman. One of your best to date!
Thanks a lot matey! I’m not sure on which version I would recommend. Even the one I read as a kid wasn’t great due to the differently translated names. Was confusing as hell 😅
The best part of Dynasty Warriors 3 is really its voice acting.
“You flaming idiots! Feel the power of my MAAAGIC!!!!”
"When all else fails, ATTACK!" *ominous wiggling*
I feel like it's an over-done meme at this point. The internet makes things that should be fun a lot more annoying.
Bro its like you held a mirror up to me and my life. 10 years in China through my 20s to 30s and its all thanks to SanGuo YanYi (and the SW series). You sir, and a gentleman and a scholar. Much love and respect to you, my dude!
Had a few comments similar to this. Remarkable how something so ancient can affect people’s lives dramatically even today.
This is a great video 🙏like you dynasty warriors got me in my childhood. I only played the dynasty warriors and samurai warriors games. And orochi. But never starter with the more strategic games apart from the empires games. This video has given some ideas what to play next. Because I love the three kingdoms stories and it's characters
Author: I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet. But your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids are going to love it.
Learned a ton about Jordan in this vid alone and it made me kinda happy to know that he's a Three Kingdoms fan as well.
You putting Warriors of Fate in the thumbnail intrigued me, that was one of my childhood games and not many people know of it (my copy was in japanese, and i had to play without knowing much, but at least the names were correct)
I too love 3 Kingdoms stuff. I bought the amazing english editions of the novel and its wonderful. Thanks for the video
I can't watch now but I want watch this later. A lot more Jordan.
Hey just wanted to say that this was a fantastic video. I have been a fan of the three kingdoms since I found DW3 myself. I believe we're right about the same age, only I'm a yankee. I bonded very closely with the series and even when my friends had moved on from the franchise, I remember pre ordering DW5 and being blown away by the character campaigns. This was also where I first realized the encyclopedia, and I hilariously did a whole final project in high school based mostly off of the great write ups in the encyclopedia. I wasn't the best student...
Your story with rot3k is fascinating and the fact it led you to live in China is remarkable. It's made me feel less of an outsider to see some real life genuine enthusiasm for this tale. I always feel like a bit of a doofus trying to explain to people why I love this particular story, but at its core its because KOEI gave me the privilege of several digestible versions of it.
An cool detail about Dynasty Warriors 1 is that the characters' attack patterns were kept through most of the following games.
This was wonderful Jordan! I've always been aware of the lore, but never dove in. Now I'm hungry for some three kingdoms!
A good overview of the games that have been launched from the Three Kingdoms itself. Lots of variety out there with their own tweaks and shows what some studios can do with such a concept.
I’m venturing into this crazy world of the Three Kingdom and I promise you that I will create one playthrough and make sure YUAN BIGDICK becomes the greatest general under the heavens. I appreciate you for all the hard work that went into this. It was highly enjoyable all the way through. Thank you.
🫡
This is a great video I started way back in the NES/Famicom era with Destiny of an Emperor probably still my favorite game to this day it was so deep for a 8bit rpg. Fast forward to when I first played Dynasty Warriors 3 on PS2 at my friends house he was shocked I knew the story and the characters already and like you was addicted after that.
Amazing Video, especially with the personal touch regarding the Book.
And even though I have no clue why YT decided to recommend me this Video, my only interaction with Romance of the Three Kingdoms so far was casually playing a few of the Dynasty Warriors games, and even then I didn´t even know what they where based on until I watched this Video. You managed to convince me to grab a copy of Dynasty Tactics, the way you described it made it sound like a lot of fun even to me who doesn´t even like Strategy games for the most part.
And I promise to read the book this year.
Thanks for the watch! Really hope you enjoy Tactics!
Much love to you and your family Jordan and much respect for following your dreams and passions keep on shining you champion
I appreciate that!
@@ABitMoreJordan your welcome my man
when I was 13 my best friends family rented a condo on a beautiful little island. Right on the beach. He brought me and I brought my PS2. We spent the whole vacation in the room grinding away at Dynasty Warriors 3. Best vacation ever.
Sounds epic!
I finally got around to watching this and Jordan you managed to make me emotional in less time than the movie Up.
Wasn’t my intention but happy I hit the feels! 🙏
Wo long is super underrated! Genuienly one of the most battle systems ive ever seen in a soulslike, its soo fast paced and engaging
My friend borrowed me Dynasty Warriors 3 way back in the early 2000s, loved it then, and never looked back!
9:12 "When you are one step away from completing the rubik cube" (the associated colors are so close, yet so far...) XD
Thank you very much. Romance of the Three Kingdom game always my favourite.....
Wonderful video! I’m motivated to go out and check to see what I need for my collection! 🀄️
Oh man, it's been so long since I've seen the earlier games and I'd forgotten so many things about them, like the ranged weapons, hiding the health bars, the overly-brown maps. I'm so used to the big mazes of the modern releases now. You instantly transported me to my parents' basement, sitting on a ratty-ass couch just wasting hours getting my kill count up instead of finishing the map lol
Oddly enough, I think I also played Kessen 2 (and loved it) before I played a Dynasty Warriors game and realizing how ridiculous K2's story was compared to the actual RoTK story (that I knew nothing about at the time) blew my mind. Like I got really into the story of K2 only to find out it was completely, as you said, off the rails.
First off, amazing video, and I have now subscribed. I agree with you on the course the Warriors series took.
The Xbox game you were thinking of was probably Kingdom Under Fire, which leans a little more on action but also lets you take direct control.
I am amazed by how good this video is. It definitely helps that you have a very visible passion for the Three Kingdoms. I would not worry about Total War fans coming at you. They are too busy ripping into Creative Assembly's latest releases and business practices to rip into your first impression of the game.
I love your enthusiasm for Dynasty Tactics. I never played the first game, but I would play the second so much as a kid. I had multiple nights where I would be up playing it until the sun came up in the morning. I'll probably try and emulate it again on my steam deck.
@@tylerhanson5791 try the first game!
I rented Destiny of an Emperor in 8th grade and instantly fell in love. The game is so special to me. The setting stood out to me and sparked an interest in the lore behind it that lasts to this day.
I spent thousands of hours playing RTK3 as a kid. Read the books too. It took forever because they are hard to read. The games have so much replay value. I wish they would release them on steam or something.
Thanks!
Wow thank you so much. That’s incredibly generous of you!
ROTK 11 and ROTK 13 are my favorite!
ROTK 14 was okay, but it felt like such a letdown in comparison to the other games in the series
The way of life and RPG elements of 13 and the strategic elements and character creation of 11 just hit different
Wonderful video! Subscribed!
I’ve never played 11. Should give it a go sometime
My journey into ROTK universe started with DW4.
Thank you Jordan, for reminding me of my good memories. 🙏🏻
Thanks for watching and commenting! 😊
Theres a lot to comment about this video, from personal story with dw, three kingdoms game and the novel itself. I'd like to start by saying that dw 3 was my first of them all and how in order to unlock the 4th weapon I read all the encyclopedia for each character to find hints for it. This led me to learn about the novel and then about history in general, so cheers for such wonderful game and how it led us to learn about culture, history and more.
@@angelnava5385 I wish I was clever enough to look for hints. I had to go sign up for the local library to use their computer to browse gamewinners. Then write more than I did for my uni dissertation 😂
Collecting all my favorite persona's like Pokémon from the series is what makes the games so fun. Historical accuracy be damned, I need Sima Yi, Zhou Yu and Zhao Yun on my team at all costs.
What a lovely family you've built, Jordan! Your kid is very cute. Much respect, and please come to Brazil.
Thanks you 😊
I was just looking into the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, which led me here. Like you, I didn't realise all of this stuff was an adaptation, and from real history. I'm considering starting with RTK IV which is still available on PS3 US PSN, then probably the remake of VIII when it comes out. I've also got the Dynasty Wars games which are an incredibly nostalgic memory from the arcades!
Cute hearing about your own life path, and well done on the video 👍
Thanks a lot!
In depth video. Love it! For now I only have Dynasty Warriors for PS1...
DW3 was my first game in the series, and fell in love since, played even the ROTTK games being a total fool at strategy, i loved it so much.
To get rid of upscaling lines in all Romance Games played with PSX2 Emulator (v 2.1.20): Right click game>Properties>Graphic>Rendering (tab)>Manual Hardware Renderer Fixes(this will make "Upscaling Fixes" tab appear). Set 500 for X and 500 for Y. This also helps some other games, mainly Front Mission 4.
43:45 funny thing i noticed is when they swapped everyone's weapons they gave everyone a spear pretty much.
Never knew there was so many 3 Kingdoms release in the West. But man this doesn't scratches the massive rabbit hole that is the 3 Kingdoms games in the East, from multiple tactics games, to Isekai RPG base of manga, to Diablo esque dungeon crawler, and a silly dodgeball game with the Wu Kong mythology characters. I am so happy that Heroes of the Three Kingdoms series/ 三国群英传 got ported to Steam (though sadly no English translation), so I can relive my childhood of playing a total war esque rpg, despite not being able to read.
Kessen II definitely reminds me of one of my favorite old Xbox games, Kingdom Under Fire. That game had some GOOD metal in it, hooboy... Ps. KUF The Crusaders is available for PC, works fine with a controller but I haven't finished it yet after... some years lol!
Ps 2. The commanders in Total War tends to want better offices as they level up, be it becoming governors, councilor or just a fancy title like Lion of the North or something. Some are more ambitious than others, but in general keeping them happy isn't too hard or a big deal.
Ps 3. Great vid btw! Haha 🀄
So to add to some opinions and facts
DW3 sadly, is a bit held back by its infamous P1 stats scaling.
The AI basically scales their stats on higher star stages and/or higher difficulties in accordance to the current total stats of the character being played in Player 1's slot (solo or co-op).
Higher P1 attack = increased enemy defense, higher P1 defense = increased forms of damage to the player from all sources.
This is why archers in DW3 are so particularly deadly (especially IF you have no extra bow defense to compensate for that increase in enemy damage), and why your allies struggle more than usual on Very Hard difficulty (allied AI units don't have their stats increased in tandem to compensate).
BUT, with this infamous feature, you can slot in a weak undeveloped character in P1 and slap in a fully-developed character in P2, and basically have P2 go to town on everyone (you can even unlock certain infamous rare weapons this way).
They HEAVILY NERFED this stat scaling bs in DW4, and personally the 3 and 4 Xtreme Legends expansions are great in my book for one thing; the actual attempt to make the AI be challenging AND intelligent.
Expert Mode in DW4XL has massively improved enemy general AI (ESPECIALLY playable generals both allied and enemy) which isn't perfect, but still something to recognize Koei and Omega Force for attempting to make challenging engagments.
Hell, 3XL Very Hard and 4XL Expert made the AI playable generals wield their 4th/Lv 10 weapons to really show they mean business (same exact attributes + Lv 10 weapons also have free elemental attack activation without need for full Musou Gauge).
But with DW5, alongside Warriors Orochi 1, it set an unfortunate precedent. The new Chaos Difficulty is now merely just Hard Mode AI that ignores your current defense stats for damage done to you, the player (aside from a few story and aesthetic changes brought about from DW5 that I didn't enjoy). Chaos Difficulty even in DW5XL iirc doesn't even make AI playable generals wield their rare weapons (when did they ever do that again) nor does it re-include 5th weapons until WO3 Ultimate/DW8.
While the later WO and DW games are fun in their own way, it ultimately also got downgraded into "if your character can abuse the best combination of broken attributes to safely one-shot dumb AI death sticks who just one-shot you, or just die cause your character's kit or amount of activation attacks is badly designed via oversight" (WO1 made it clear this way when Diaochan and Guan Ping are top tier in solo Chaos maximization runs while Lü Bu, YES LÜ BU, sucks cause he has attacks that can't abuse those optimal setups).
Also, the Musou Warriors series' main composer, MASA/Masayoshi Sasaki, didn't exactly pull off the Chinese-styled aesthetic for the series' music until DW3XL for its opening, and then especially in DW4-onwards. He sadly already left the company like around 2020.
Also, Koei Tecmo is just cheap AF enough to hire Hollywood VA's for DW9's dub (NOTHING to do with the VA Strike) ...AND all their increased DLCs ever since the Tecmo merge.
In regards to DW6 being such an infamous black sheep in the series, it's safe to say tho most of the time, the mechanics were fine ideas which were sadly, not implemented property.
Multi-Raid/Strikeforce at least dabbled in one thing DW never did again until DW9....aerial combat. SF basically did it in a DBZ/Dissidia dash-flight-based fashion.
47:30 - Yeah, I feel the same. Having useless allies who are there just as part of the stage or to be rescued. I really liked how the first Call of Duty did the first stages of the campaign. They ran in front of me, not picking enemies' weapons for ammo or looking for med kits. They shot, they got shot, I don't know if they really did a difference, but it sure felt so.
Dynasty warriors was my childhood. Dunstable warriors 4 was the first. Then I went to 2, then 3 and so on. Dunstable warriors 5 is my all time favorite. Empires my all all time favorite. I got introduced to ROTK about 15 years later actually. And ROTK 11 is my favorite. I play it none stop. I also want to go to China. I'm 29 years old and has always wanted to see the locations of Dynasty warriors. See the statue of Guan Yu. All the stuff! I just don't have the money yet..😊
I have played every one of them. In 87 at 9 years old I rented Rotk 1 from a local video stop. My favored ones are 2, 4, 8, and 10. I've read the book many times and watched all media related to the story.
For me my first ones were Romance of The Three kingdoms 8 on PS2 and DW4 Empires on PS2. Fell in love with them instantly. And now RTK 8 is getting a remaster.
I’d love to see your thoughts on dynasty warriors origins. I’m really enjoying it, even though you mow down loads of troops, it presents the battles as bigger events and the problems they have are usually from something else like an ambush or arrival. With the options on fighting for different warlords and going through events from different perspectives has been great
Just found this on UA-cam and didn't expect to hear meadowhall mentioned!
🀄lovely family and great retro! thank you for sharing with us!
Thanks for watching all the way through 😊 🀄️
I remember watching my friend play this and my eyes was shocked by how many enemies on screen and seeing his character using his OP attack.I was very late in getting into these games.I need to get more DW and Kessen games.i only have 4,5,6 and Kessen 2.I still have Shingen the ruler and Genghis Kahn for my nes.These games are fun and very nostalgic.
Destany of an Emperor was my favorite rpg for a long time when I was a kid and later in life when at a friends house they put on Dynasty Warriors three and I saw names I had not seen in years on the screen made me an instant fan. Also led me to do my research and learn this was all a big part of history we are just not told about
real talk, I LOVE Zhang Jiao. It's sometimes a shame that they make him a sinister character, but I adore how camp and eccentric DW3's was. "I have no time for the unenlightened!" *wiggles, teleports away* (It is worth noting that they were kinda in the middle of a two year drought at the time - we play as the bad guys, here)
When it comes to the title naming, the 'shin' is actually denoted as the sequel or the 'ultimate' version of a game a few times. For example "Shin Hokuto Musou " and "Shin Gundam Musou".
Once my friend and I played DW3 together, I was hooked. I collected each one and the expansions when they would come out. I waited until I really wanted a few games before getting my PS4 and one of those games was DW8:XL Complete.
I was hyped about DW9 until I saw reviews and just stayed away from it all together.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII is one of my favorite PS2 games and I had a great time with Dynasty Tactics 1 and 2 as well.
I do think they should go back to making everyone smarter on both sides. Let me choose my difficulty so I can be the unstoppable force or the lowly foot soldier when I want.
I was first introduced to the concept of Ro3K from DW5: Empires, it became the only thing I played for a good year. The best thing about it is you could make custom characters, based on a preexisting character's moveset. Yes it's basically a custom skin for that basic character, but it hits differently when I could make my whole group of friends in the game and run the custom campaign fighting side by side with my buds.
Okay Jordan, this is my first video ever seeing you. I'm 15:27 in and I like you a lot. Big fan of The whole Three Kingdoms period of China myself, got into it the same way you did, except DW4 was my first buy. Will I finish this video? I assure you thats between me and my attention span, and has nothing to do with you lmao. Definitely subscribing and taking a look at what you've got!
Thanks a lot! If you did manage to finish it, I hope you enjoyed it.
@@ABitMoreJordan I take it in pieces, but I assure you its currently a tab in my browser I will continue with today!
Dynasty Tactics is one of my all time favorite games. There is nothing like it now and it bums me out.
Kessen II is funny in that Kessen I was a passion project from the devs and it starts off with a message from the lead about how proud he is to present this important foundational battle from Japanese history as authentically as possible and then Kessen II is like "what if a chinese warlord rode a dragon and shot fireballs out of his mouth"
oh man what a blast from the past! i started with Dynasty Warriors 2 then i play DW4, then Dynasty Tactics 2 and Kessen II(don't remeber the order here) then Dynasty Warriors 6.
now i wonna try Romance of the Three Kingdoms, to you this i sholud try the 14 or wait for the remmake of the 8?
wow.... just WOW. this game literally changed your life. awesome
#2:14:30 I think that was referring to the story of Lady Sun (sometimes referred as Sun Shang Xiang) attempt to kidnap Liu Shan when she was returning back to Wu in 212. Depending on the characterization it was framed either as an intentional act, or a last request from her sick mother (Lady Wu) to meet her "grandson" (a ploy from Sun Quan). Zhuge Liang purportedly ordered Zhao Yun to intercept her at the river and while Zhao Yun failed to convince her to stay, he managed to convince her to not bring Liu Shan along.
Zhao Yun 10,000 men battle was not exaggerated and that's what made me fall in love with the warriors series, Samurai included. Although Zhao Yun didn't slay anywhere near the thousands in the Novel he leaves with out a scratch on him and slays about a little over 100 soldiers. The Liu Bei throwing his baby away was real too 💀
Personally I first got into the three kingdoms series when I was a young teenager, and Romance of the three Kingdoms 3 was out for the SNES. It scratched my itch for "conquest" games. My parents wouldn't ever buy me games because I was too addicted to them. But I ended up buying RTK3,4,6,7,8,9,10,11 on console and 13 and 14 on steam, though 14 is laggy for me for my current PC. 13 is similar to 8 where you can play as a single general and rise up the ranks/get rapport with others/start your own kingdom. I really enjoyed that aspect. Infact the only time I ever conquered all china as a historical ruler was back in RTK3 as Han Fu. (side note, they made Han Fu progressively worse in each following series)
I really liked Dynasty warriors, but something I enjoyed more which was omitted from this list was the hybrid version of DW, which was DW: Empires. It was the hack n slash but also conquest game.
As for the total war games, while aesthetically appealing, the long drawn out battles/manipulating troop movements never appealed to me.
Liao Hua is the Hank Hill of Shu. I completed Twin Blades a couple years ago and really enjoyed it the whole way through.
I like that comparison
Wow, Meadowhall in Sheffield? Means you are a South Yorkshire lad like me. After uni i moved to Japan and been here ever since, over 15 years ago.
awesome video dude!! i agree with your outlook on these games, dw3 was the best and my first game in the series too. it was all downhill at dw6
My cousin loaned DW4 from Blockbuster.... I was amazed. When I found DW 3 in morrisons I begged for it. I loved how if you bought DW 3 Extreme Legends and removed the disc and inserted DW 3 you could play as all the character on one disc.
My favorite Dynasty Warriors was actually 6, even over 4.
With the Renbu system it had a nice emphasis on building and maintaining momentum, which I felt was a layer to the combat system that went beyond the traditional samey combos that you could pull out at any time. Block attacks were also quite fun to use.
As for battlefield mechanics, while it's probably true that the emphasis shifted towards the player's impact, it was also the last in the series that had allies have any real agency at all. There was some nuance in understanding which and when allies could handle themselves, and building deathballs via pathing (manipulating the battlefield so 4-5 allied generals stick together and carve their own way to the enemy camp unless they meet a powerful enemy general). The game will very clearly tell you when an ally general in actually in need of your intervention, especially when they're being ambushed, making general positioning pretty important. You can see this especially in the yellow turban mission. I think it's technically possible to basically stand still the entire battle and the allied officers will win the level on their own. The Hu Lao Gate battle with Lu Bu's musou mode in DW6 is my favorite in the series, as all of your allied generals follow you around for the entire mission (or you could free play it with another general and follow him around instead!)
Personally, the music in DW6 is my absolute favorite. Not a single bad track in that game. Roster/story was whatever personally. I appreciated the heightened emotional emphasis on the narrative, which I think DW6 and DW7 did better than the others.
My biggest gripe with the series is actually when they removed damage inflicted by allied regular soldiers, which completely neutered numbers advantages. In DW7 onward you would see allied and enemy grunts just slap their weapons at each other with unique animations but not do actual damage unless it was against the player. In previous games, having more allies mattered as they could eventually gang up on an officer and knock them around, adding up some hefty damage in the process. It was also a really fun spectacle to see in battles.
ROTK 14 is fun, but my opinion is that it has major issues with replayability. Unless you do a lot of work in roleplaying and building a particular narrative for yourself, the overall gameplay loop can get tiring pretty fast once you get can manage to get past a difficult early start. This can be somewhat dealt with by playing on the highest difficulty, but there isn't a great deal of depth in the combat, at least compared to ROTK 11.
In particular, activated army abilities used to be much more varied and widely accessible, oftentimes the full range of which were available to an army unit depending on who you brought as general/adjutant. Now it's just one active ability carried by the leading general, which usually can't be activated at will, alongside a range of passive traits held by that general and his adjutants that will usually modify some stats.
I'm also not a huge fan of the new supply system: In ROTK 14, an army will continuously deduct food reserves from its origin city, which in turn forces that particular army to be entirely dependent on a contiguous and consistent path of your controlled territory from that army to its city. This means that if at any point that path is cut off, even for a second, your army will be immediately stunned and completely helpless for an extended period of time. It can't even receive supplies from another city of yours whose supply line isn't cut off. It can be fun to be sneaky and send a fast unit to disrupt an enemy supply line to win desperate battles, but it feels a little too gimmicky for me. In ROTK 11 you could assign a general to be a dedicated transport unit who brings a stockpile of extra troops, weapons, and supplies with him, who needs to be protected as the transport unit can't attack, but can in turn replenish food and troops for your other combat units for long campaigns. ROTK 14 transport units can't interact with combat units at all, even if they're carrying a huge load of supplies. Music from both games are very good, although I'm a bigger fan of ROTK 11's OST. ROTK 14 lacks a bit of nuance in its tracks.
Long post, I know, but I also have a lot of passion for Romance of the Three Kingdoms media in my own way. I'm also very excited for the new ROTK 8 remake and I'll buy it pretty much no matter what. I strongly, strongly recommend Total War Three Kingdoms if it's ever convenient for you. The [TROM+TUP] Campaign Overhaul mod on steam workshop is almost essential IMO for patching up what it lacks in narrative aspects, and it's probably the best game we'll see out of the period for quite a while. Thanks for the overviews!
Thanks for the epic comment!
Dynasty Wars looks pretty cool. I'm not that into strategy so I hope they make more games in other genres.
Great video bruv
Thanks dude
Wish you went more into romance of the three kingdoms 8 and is sequels. I just got an emulator for it and can’t wait to play!
I did not expect to watch a 3kingdoms retrospective starting the year, more so considering I never played any games.
Wo Long I might check out someday though...
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Hope you enjoyed it none the less! 🀄️
As a long time total war fan and a huge three kingdoms fan I can explain why it took so long to make the three kingdoms total war. They always did realistic war games. Your general was a single unit in a group of cavalry, a lucky arrow would kill him and none of his cav guards. It would ruin the lore of three kingdoms if a lucky spearman killed Lu Bu.
Three kingdoms is about these larger than life figures that famously killed hundreds of men in a day. So when they successfully made Warhammer, where they brought in single unit heroes and found some success with balancing them they decided to work on three kingdoms.
Lu Bu can be brought down, but you need either a general(s) of roughly equal strength, or a huge number of troops to wear him down
I had "Dynasty Warriors" 1 for PS1 as a kid. It was a bargain bin game.
You know it's actually really good. I had a lot of good time playing that. Compared to contemporary bargain bin games I had such as Evil Zone and Total Eclipse Turbo it was much, much better. Not as good as Strider 2 but I got a lot of play time out of Dynasty Warriors and thought it was weird they made the sequel as an open map thing.
at long last someone else knows about and enjoy e dynasty tactics ! ❤
Kessen 2 was such a fun game. Would love a modern take on it. Kessen 1 was pretty fun but never got very into Kessen 3.
I'm surprised you didn't have anything to say about Empires when you were such a fan of Tactics and Kessen.
At the beginning I was like "this dude is exaggerating, how can a videogame change your life?" And then you showed your wife and I was like "oh ok I stand corrected"
The most popular TK game used to be in China is 三国志II 覇王の大陸（Sangokushi 2 - Haou no Tairiku）in FC. There are still many hack versions under developing today.
Romance was my first grand strategy game I played without knowing what that even was.