Two of my generals dismount in the middle of a field to duel with their opposite numbers. The rest of the battle continues in the distance, but I've zoomed in to watch the flashy moves as the generals kick and stab each other instead. Occasionally a flurry of arrows or a riderless horse will pass in the background, but I'm intently focused on something that looks more like a game of Tekken.

Total War: Three Kingdoms embraces the story it's inspired by, Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, rather than strict historical accuracy. Soldiers can run around the battlefield seemingly forever without getting tired. Their leaders are larger-than-life figures with complicated backstories and rivalries, who carry legendary spears and are able to defeat entire units single-handed. Characters like Cao Cao are cast as devious opera villain masterminds able to manipulate wars into existence at the drop of a hat, when the history books suggest he was a decent ruler and also quite a good poet.

There's an option to turn some of these things off at the start of a campaign by engaging Records Mode, if you want stamina to play a more important role in unit repositioning or to get rid of the duels and get generals' bodyguards to do most of their fighting instead. The alternative, Romance Mode, feels like an honest embrace of what Total War has really been all along, though. It's a version of history that's closer to an epic movie, where the broad sweep is familiar but subtleties are ignored whenever they would be inconvenient to the action.


That said, it's still the kind of epic where you'll also have to increase three different types of income by small percentages. The systems that were simplified for the Warhammer games or the trimmed-down Thrones of Britannia have returned to the party and brought some new friends. Espionage has its own menu full of options so that embedded spies can mess with trade or sabotage cities. Characters have a satisfaction score that will drop if they're not promoted regularly enough. Court positions that are unlocked as you level up have to be handed out carefully to prevent dissatisfied generals from starting a civil war. (You can also give them a nice water clock to boost their satisfaction.)

Diplomacy is one of the most substantial and welcome areas to be changed. Where before there was so much guesswork involved that dealing with rival nations felt like passing notes in class and then waiting for an answer ("Do you want to form a defensive alliance with me, y/n"), in Three Kingdoms it's completely transparent. Whenever I ask a neighbour for something there's a button to automatically figure out what it would take to make that deal work. It just straight-up tells you how much money will guarantee this trade of territory or food or even marriage, rather than making you stab in the dark then try again when it fails.


There's a finer grain to the diplomatic options as well. Between non-aggression pacts and alliances there are coalitions, unions that act as a step along the path to confederation without being guarantees of friendship forever. They allow for more than two members as well, so my Confederation to Defeat the Barbarians has new faction leaders lining up to join it on the regular.

Everyone in the coalition gets a vote on who is allowed in, so frequently someone like the bandit queen will rock up to the table and be voted against by a majority even before I get to make a decision, leaving just a button that lets me acknowledge her application while sadly declining it on this occasion. It feels like being part of an exclusive high school clique everyone wants in on but, my god, did you see what Zheng Jiang wore to Brad's party? Request denied.

Diplomacy has been a weak point for Total War even as other systems have improved, so these are welcome changes. So is the quick deal button, which lets you immediately see who is open to trade or vassalhood or whatever rather than having to scroll down a list.

Vassals are an important part of Three Kingdoms, with factions much more eager to suggest handing some of their income over to you in perpetuity, though they may demand a degree of autonomy at the same time. Your enemies can even submit themselves to vassalage under your allies as a last-ditch attempt to end wars, forcing you to either give up on your conquest or upset the ally in question.


Rather than choosing a faction at the start of a campaign you choose an individual leader. Some of them are warlords with varying degrees of legitimacy to their attempt to take charge of China, some of them are straight-up bandits, and one of them is Dong Zhuo, a tyrant who begins the campaign with the current child-Emperor as a hostage.

These very different characters can make for very different starts—Cao Cao, the suggested beginner's choice, feels more like trad Total War in that you have a decent settlement, an army, and a neighbour to defeat so you can complete your first province (here called a commandery). Meanwhile, Liu Bei has an army full of legendary generals but no home and has to defeat an army of Yellow Turban rebels before settling anywhere.

Each character has a different mechanic that defines them too. Gongsun Zan's military government adds a unique court position for military inspectors, while Sun Jian's fluctuating heroism score affects the price of troops and the satisfaction of characters. Cao Cao earns a handful of credibility points every turn and can spend them to influence the feelings of other factions, or even blow 75 of them at once initiating a proxy war between others while seeming to have clean hands.

That extra degree of manipulation makes the diplomacy even more fun. It's like the way the high elves worked in Total War: Warhammer 2 but with even more ability to be a devious jerk. Being able to get right into the guts of diplomacy like this makes the campaign side of Three Kingdoms more impactful, and after a certain point every turn begins with a parade of messages about who has turned on who. They pop up alongside images of the leaders pulling intense faces that make them hard to take seriously, it's all a bit "Friendship ended with KINGDOM OF WU, now KINGDOM OF WEI is my best friend."


Other parts of the turn-based campaign side of Three Kingdoms are less jolly. Population is important—a high rate of growth, facilitated by constructing the right buildings, can increase your armies' replenishment rate but also cause overpopulation, the main culprit of public disorder. Having too many people also puts a strain on the food supply.

Meanwhile, you want to keep constructing buildings that earn money and increase prestige (which is how you unlock higher ranks, fill out your court, and eventually declare yourself one of China's three kings). I can't say working my way through upgrades of various buildings has ever been my favorite part of Total War and when you control something on the north side of 20 settlements managing all this construction can be a real bore.

On the upside each member of your court can be given an assignment, attaching them to a settlement and giving it some kind of bonus. You don't need to march them around the map to do this—like espionage it's just a menu. It feels like a way of keeping some of the things agents and heroes did in former games but abstracted enough that they aren't an annoyance, and it also keeps them off map so it's free for actual armies to do their thing.

According to one point of view, all this stuff on the campaign map and its multitude of attached menus—I haven't even mentioned the reforms, a tech tree mapped onto a picture of an actual tree where each improvement lights up a blossom of petals—is just scene-setting for the battles. And it's true that it gives them context that can make the next siege feel different to the last one no matter how similar they actually are in play.

I enjoy the campaign for its own sake though, even if it can occasionally be too mathematical for its own good. For an example of that look no further than the way it takes an important theme of Romance of the Three Kingdoms like corruption, personified by traitorous eunuchs who nepotistically manipulate their friends into positions they don't deserve while the country falls apart. In Total War: Three Kingdoms corruption is a percentage modifier that impacts your income. It's so prosaic it's almost funny.