Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2

Today I shall talk about this great game that I played for a year. A friend of mine lent me this game, and I ended up hogging on to it for a year before returning it. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 (aka RTK2) was my first Koei game. Like other Koei games, it was turn-based. It involved building up the civil resources of your state. It required you to train your armies. You needed to recruit able people to lead your armies and help you administer your states. You go into battles to gain more territory. The ultimate aim was to conquer all the states and become the next Emperor of China.

The game was set in the later period of the Eastern Han dynasty of ancient China, around the period known as the Three Kingdoms period. The Eastern Han dynasty was falling, and warlords started to rise and claim territories for themselves, as they proceeded to war against each other in the name of "bringing peace to the country in the name of the Emperor". But what they were really after was the throne. In the game, you start out as a warlord with some generals under you and a piece of territory. Through good administration and skill in warfare, you will slowly gain more territory as you expand into empty states or conquer those of other warlords. Diplomacy allows you to form alliances with other warlords, but alliances are as easily broken as they are made.

San Guo Zhi 三国志 is the historical work that documents this period. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (aka San Guo Yan Yi 三国演义) is actually the title of a book written by Luo Guanzhong 罗贯中, a Ming dynasty author. His work is a novel based on the historical events of the period. As with Dune 2 and Flight of the Intruder, I ended up reading the book too, my interest in the Three Kingdoms period now stirred up by the game.

Some sites related to RTK:
Romancing Cathay (information on Three Kingdoms period and related games)
Kurakat's blog (plays RTK series)
D_luaz's blog (has a review on RTK2 and Dune 2)
Kongming's Archives (lots of stuff relating to RTK series of games)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms Frontier