Contrary to the Final Fantasy series, when Koei gives you Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, they're really giving you the 11th iteration of the exact same game. That's a lot of refinement, folks -- and it's a testament to the series' lasting ability to capture the hearts and minds of strategy fiends.
The problem is that the series has seen so many little additions, tweaks, minigames, extra layers, and characters over the years that it suffers from what you might call "feature bloat." It does a hell of a lot of things well, but it does a hell of a lot of things. Even diehards will likely feel overwhelmed. R3KXI tries to help you with some surprisingly polished tutorials (this is one game that had a fantastic localization), but the game's console roots ultimately hamstring the playability. It's missing a lot of the tools that PC strategy veterans have come to expect, such as hotkeys, rollover tips, and context menus -- which contributes to the general sense of "what the hell is going on here?" throughout the game.
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This is a game with a long heritage. Based on the 14th-century historical novel of the same name, this is the eleventh game in the series. Eleventh! There are very few games with that kind of pedigree. And these aren't sequels, or spin-offs, or even really 're-imaginings' – they are more-or-less the same game, constantly revised for new platforms and technologies.
Three Kingdoms The Battle Begins: MMORPG has Launched. This is a free to play MMO that had some limited beta testing in an Open Beta last week. It is offered by online game publisher Uforia.
The launch saw some server downtime and some concern over antivirus software improperly identifying elements in the download as a virus. Themida is actually an anti-hacking device. The item mall has also been open with new items being added.
