While I’m familiar with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms franchise, having played a version of it waaay back in the SNES days, it has been a long time since I’ve bumped into it. The memories of it being a challenge to get rolling with, and its more utilitarian looks, were in the back of my mind as I loaded up this new iteration on Switch, but I still really wasn’t prepared for this remake. Between marveling at its art style and drowning in the abundance of options I had for how to play, it took some time to get back up to speed. That said, even while going through the growing pains of understanding all of the elements at play, it was hard not to be impressed with the scope of what the game is aiming to accomplish.

For those unfamiliar, this is a pretty large-scale strategy series set in Ancient China, a turbulent era marked by many factions vying for power. As you get started, you’ll first need to simply choose who you’re playing as, and that’s more of a head-spinning decision than you may assume. Not only will you be choosing your faction and character, you’ll also need to choose which rank you’ll play as, which will essentially dictate how much power and responsibility you’ll be wielding, from a full-blown ruler who must manage everything on down to a more lowly officer who can make suggestions but holds little sway. As you could guess, playing on the lower-end of the power structure can be a better way to introduce yourself to the game’s mechanics, being able to observe and learn without trying to understand the consequence of every decision, but thankfully the in-game tutorials do seem to do their best to help get you up to speed and give you some direction.

The play itself is broken into quite a number of phases and systems, but you’ll mainly be spending time moving through a variety of interfaces and menus, making decisions and trying to keep your arms around all of the information being thrown at you. Learning how to engage in diplomacy, or perhaps a bit of espionage, could take a little trial and error, seeing how to both initiate those actions as well as see them through. The occasional duel or debate helps to break things up with little mini strategy games of their own, with the rules being relatively simple to pick up but perhaps tough to fully master. Battles are conducted very much from a mile-high view, with you making high level troop movements and assigning stratagems in the hope of conquering your enemies, though in general coming to the field with a larger force is the wisest course to take for success. Then, as you make progress in your campaign, either bringing down or making stronger bonds with the other leaders, you’ll be rewarded with sequences that contribute to the big picture narrative and provide some insight into who some of these people are.

There’s no question that this title represents a hefty amount of effort, completely overhauling the game’s presentation and updating some of its systems, in order to honor the series and to bring new people into the fold. If you’re already a fan of the franchise it should likely have serious appeal, though if you’re more of a fan of how some other iterations were executed it may fall short. If you happen to be among the uninitiated and think it looks promising, there’s absolutely a load of things here to enjoy, just be warned that it’s also quite a lot to take in. That said, if you like investing in understanding deeper strategic play, it should be rewarding.