A pretty solid game. I saw this game on GOG.com and I had been reading Three Kingdoms so I was hyped for some Chinese history. I ended up playing the game all night lol. The killer feature is that the strategic map and battle map are the same thing. You can zoom in and watch your units fight each other. The scale is nowhere near that of Total War, it's basically just like Civ maps but instead of units being 3 soldiers or whatever, it's 20 or so. The fighting isn't anything spectacular, but this game certainly lays some groundwork for future improvements.

The fighting is done automatically. You just give units a basic strategy and they then battle without your input. I kinda like this approach because Total War can get a bit tedious when you feel like you need to personally manage every battle to prevent the AI doing something stupid. It's all done in real-time, and honestly it's pretty cool that there's the tactical aspect of the battles, but you can also see other armies moving around on the map, and sometimes arriving to reinforce the battle.

Move orders are executed simultaneously. To me this actually makes a lot of sense. None of this "turn-order" business. The main drawback is that you will sometimes have trouble chasing down an army if it keeps moving around. However I didn't really have a major issue with this because they seem to engage each other if they are adjacent or something. Overall I like this system, and I think there is a lot of potential with it.

I spent about 14 hours on the first campaign, and I was still figuring stuff out by the end. I still don't completely understand how the unit strategies work. Also there were multiple moments where I thought I was screwed... The first time was a civil war, when my empire pretty much just split in half. I managed to reclaim all my cities eventually. The second time I was fighting a war, and then suddenly 2 other civs joined in. I am used to this happening in Total War... Normally you just make sure your borders are protected and prepare for some sieges. In this game it don't work like that. Multiple stacks crossed the border into my territory, and my armies began to retreat. My emperor and heir died in the fighting. I lost a few border cities, and then there were some pretty epic battles outside my capital.

Then my nobles got pissed off at me and suddenly my capital and surrounding cities rebelled, and garrisoned themselves with full stacks. At this point I was pretty sure I was screwed. I figured I would just wind things up just to see what happens. So I sucked it up and made peace with my enemies, giving away cash to one civ, and cities to the other 2. At this point I began to realise maybe I could come back from this. I gathered up my armies and besieged the rebel cities, eventually getting them back.

After taking back the last city, I realised I was on turn 260, and apparently there were 300 turns in a game. I had no more time for wars, so I spent the time building up the economy (goddamn trade routes), making friends, and then built a bunch of temples. I managed to secure a cultural victory fairly easily.

So yeah, keeping the people happy is very important in this game. This game will let you screw yourself over. Also being attacked by a superior force is a bad thing in this game. The AI knows how to kick your ass.

There's a bunch of stuff in this game you can only learn about by messing around with it. Although to be fair I haven't read the manual, but even so, you can't really know the consequences of a lot of things in this game. The game won't really warn you that something bad is about to happen, it will just happen and screw you over. But then you will be able to avoid it next time.

The trade route system seems really cool, but damned if I can figure out how it actually works. I pretty much just have to guess which cities are going to be on important trade routes and build them up. But I gotta admit it is kinda cool to see a game that will actually show you the trade routes on the map. Like most things in this game, it would probably be awesome if they would expand on it a bit.

Unfortunately there's bugger-all Chinese history in this game. It's about as historical as a game of Civ. There's no historical events, biographies, anything like that. Just random civs fighting each other on a China map. Oh well, I enjoyed it anyway. I might have another go of it, but yeah, was kinda hoping to learn some history, not play some random strategy game.

The game has a random map feature... But considering you're playing a game about China, it's not exactly going to add a huge amount of replayability. I play this game to be the emperor of China, not to play a strategy game with only Chinese units.

An example of the battle system. I do not really understand it but it looks kinda cool

Let's not go to Shangdang. It is a silly place.

Anyways, it's a cool game if you're into Civ and Total War stuff. In fact this was actually made by 2 Total War developers. Assuming this is their first solo project, I think it's pretty damn good. Honestly I hope to see them release another one with a bit more polished gameplay. I think their fundamental design is pretty solid, and the only real issues are in the execution of the features.