A copy was provided by Koei Tecmo for review. Thank you!
Some of the best games to play on the Steam Deck are ones that you can really take your time with. When I talk about these kinds of games, I usually bring up JRPGs, and while they do fit, another fantastic genre that takes some time is strategy games. These usually require a lot of thinking and planning, and what better way to do that than on a device you can easily take with you wherever you go and put down without needing to quit! Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 REMAKE is a longer-form game that really feels perfect for Steam Deck play, and it is, though it does take some time to settle in if you are new to the series.
Coming into this, I am no stranger to strategy games. From the more simple 4X games like Civilization to the grand strategy behemoths like Crusader Kings, I have played them all. I am also a huge fan of Dynasty Warriors, which is a completely different type of game but is actually a spin-off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms! So I went into this game, with this being my first time playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I'm not new to the genre, and I think it definitely helps initially.
Your goal in the game is to conquer the entire map and you will use a multitude of different tools, policies, and actions to not only do that, but also keep your people happy, defended, and with gold coming in. This can get a little complicated and more in-depth, which is partly why each game can take so long. It also sticks really closely to the source material, the book Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, and history of the area.
The bulk of the game will take place in two different scenes. First, you will spend time going around different parts of the city to improve your relationships with other officers or other aspects of it. These can raise your city defenses, more troops (land), gold, and public order. You can also invite officers over in different ways to interact, raise your trust, and take part in practice battles and debates. Most of the actions you take can give you the experience to raise one of your 5 stats, which impacts how effective you are and gives you the Wisdom to learn new skills to use in battle or improve the work you do in the city.
The actions you take are limited based on set points you have called Action Points, and once these are done, you will end your turn. Each turn moves the time forward 1 month, and every 3 months, your Parliament will convene. Here, you will make the big-picture decisions of your kingdom. These include employing new officers, moving resources around your different territories, taking new land in battle, and waging wars. You can also employ different espionage tactics to make fighting/battles easier, like sowing discord in different kingdoms' territories, trying to persuade enemy officers to join you, spying on specific officers to sabotage them in battle, and destroying city defenses. You do have a limited amount of moves to make, which, once you are done, will assign officers to help around the city and raise its stats.
For the most part, I did enjoy Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake's gameplay loop as soon as I got the hang of it. There are a lot of moving parts in the game, and while I do like complexity, it was hard to get the hang of it for the first few hours. There is a tutorial, and it did help me understand the surface layer, but the more in-depth mechanics, I felt I had to learn on my own. You will also be doing the same things over and over as you build up your cities, and while there are some changes based on how you choose to play, it does feel very similar and repetitive as you play.
I do appreciate that some of the aspects can be automated as well. You can take control of sparring matches, debates, and battles with other kingdoms. The mechanics for the first two are similar and easier to understand, but I didn't fully grasp the full battles. Luckily, you can automate the battles, which I enjoyed, though I played some fights manually and won some of them!
When you start the game, you will choose a person to take control of, which could be the ruler of a kingdom where you make all the decisions or as a lesser officer where you will have to work your way up by completing missions and gaining the trust of your superiors for promotions to hopefully take over a kingdom yourself. Then, you choose one of over 50 scenarios based on real history, or six or so that are fictional, which changes the events that happen due to the time period you are playing in. The game sticks very closely to history and allows you to try out different viewpoints, whether you are an emperor or just a common officer.
You can deviate from the historical path if you choose and do your own thing, so you are not forced to follow destined paths, but you can still let history play out around you. This is due to the tales system in place, where you can choose if or when different events can change what happens in your kingdom and the kingdoms around you. The historical tales are very interesting, but there are some other ones for completing requests and learning some other mechanics that feel more generic. There can also be some events that pop up that allow you to get drinks or go hunting to raise trust with the officer who brings it up, but these feel very generic, too.
While I never played the original, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake does feel like a game with some older mechanics that has been faithfully brought back to life. This is endearing in a way, and it's nice to get the feeling of playing a game from the 2000s, but it also feels like some improvements that we have seen in newer games are missing. The entire gameplay loop is enjoyable but is a bit slow and repetitive the more you play. I still liked it, but it didn't feel like it picked up as much as I wanted to.
However, one way to really spice things up is by creating your own officers! You can create your own officers with custom portraits, stats, traits, your lifespan, abilities, personality, relations (like father, mother, spouses, etc), and even a full custom biography. I thought it was an interesting way to change things up, and seeing my officer Woody T, who is very strong and smart but has no charisma, become one of my most trusted officers was cool to spice up. I did send them on a spy mission, which ended with them getting caught, so that was sad, but it was nice while it lasted.
However, I like Romance of the Three Kingdom 8's visuals. The game uses both 2D and 3D visuals for different elements. The portraits are all in 2D and gorgeous to look at, with the more detailed characters also moving a little bit with facial expressions and blinking. It feels like a live 2D portrait in a way, similar to what I have seen with anime models, but I think it looks fantastic here. The 3D models are a bit basic and not really detailed, which is more apparent in the bigger battles when taking land, but it does the job. The 2D elements are better, though, and I really liked seeing them.
Thankfully, the game does run on the Steam Deck, albeit with some interesting quirks.
For the most part, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake runs well on the Steam Deck, though this is by design. The game has some distinct changes for the Steam Deck version, which do improve performance, but also limit us a bit. When I first booted into the game, I was a bit worried when I saw no graphical options to change. But that's only because this is the Steam Deck version of the game.
We can bring back the options by using the launch option:
SteamDeck=0 %command%This does give us a little bit more control, but there is one other problem. The desktop version of the game has a launcher window to get into the game. Having this in the Steam Deck version would have stopped it from getting the Verified badge, which it has, so it makes sense why it isn't there. Oddly, though, you can change settings within the game on Desktop, so I am not sure why that was taken out.
The game defaults to running at 30 FPS, and while it can be changed by forcing it to run with the launch option, the 3D sections can drop performance. With the type of game this is, I see no reason to play it higher than 30 FPS. Most of the game will run wonderfully with a TDP limit of 8 and GPU Clock Speed Frequency of 1200, but the skirmishes with close-up 3D models of the officers do drop. For the sake of stability, I will say we don't have any limits but expect around 16W drain regularly with the skirmishes going to 21W. But it will stick to 30 FPS the entire time.
Most of the text size is readable, though there are some UI elements that do tread the line of being a bit too small.
In the settings, you can toggle tutorial, auto read messages, autosave intervals, portrait animations, sound volume, changing background music from the REMAKE to the original sounds, camera settings, tactics and strategem animations, attack effects, unit movement speed, and you can change some scenario settings while you are playing like difficulty, whether officers can die in battle, and the number of disasters.
The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, but it does have solid controller support and cloud saves. Controller support for games like this isn't the easiest thing to do, so props to the team! There are no HDR settings.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake is a solid strategy game that feels like it may have needed some more modern enhancements. The team clearly wanted to stay faithful to the original, and I think that's awesome, but it ended up making the game feel a bit slow and repetitive. The mechanics do take a little bit of time to get into, but once you do, it gets a lot more enjoyable, and I had a blast trying to take over the map and use my own custom officers to try to take down Lu Bu and Yuan Shao.
It runs pretty decently on the Steam Deck, with most of the text being very readable and having great controller support. It does drain the battery more than I expected, but it's very playable, and I found this the best way to enjoy it, thanks to being able to suspend/resume the game whenever. It's a solid choice for strategy fans, and it will be awesome for those who loved the original, but it may be hard to digest for newer fans.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Romance of the Three Kingdoms 8 Remake is a solid strategy game that feels like it sticks to its original's roots a bit too much, but it is playable on the Steam Deck.
