3ko

Being a huge fan of the romance of the three kingdom series and destiny of an emperor I though I was going to re-live these amazing game here.

It’s actually not really like them but the game still bring element of this romanticized period of Chinese history.

Brief historical setting :

During that period, China was divided into three kingdoms and they fought one another to unify the country. The Three Kingdoms period (169-280AD) was a time of war, alliance, treason and great heroes that has inspired historian, literature and gamers. The book The Romance of Three Kingdoms was publish in the 14th century has turned this part of Chinese history into the most famous piece of literature. Countless game brought this period to life has well and Three Kingdoms Online is one of the latest installment.

The Game

The Basic

If you familiar to tribal war or travian you probably already know how it work.
At the beginning your are given the choice of one of the three kingdoms and where to start. Each kingdom have there own units and advantage and disadvantage.

Shu : By far the most aggressive kingdom, since his main advantage come from attacking other player. Shu have the ability to plunder more than the other kingdoms by reducing the hidden warehouse effect by half and their units are much cheaper and faster to recruit than the other kingdoms. The draw back it’s that their units are usually weaker in defense and shu wall his easier to destroy.

Wu : Know for is defensive stance wu advantage come from is wall which is the hardest to bring down and there hidden cache that holds twice the number of resources it usually hold. They have the fastest unit in the game which make them good to send quikly support.

Wei : The more balance of the three kingdom, their units are more powerful than the other but also more expensive. Their other advantage is that, they can build a building and develop a resources field a the same time which really give an edge later in the game.

Your city

Like many real-time strategy game of the same genre, the player has to harvest resources by building resource gathering buildings outside is city and he can build buildings inside your city which you can recruit troop, research technologies, command your troop and much more.

While managing and balance between resources, infrastructure building and military development you will have to wait until it’s done so you probably can go do something else and you come back later when your building is completed you have enough resources.

Heroes

One of the innovation that three kingdoms online bring to the table, is that you can recruit heroes. (note that tribal war do have the paladin but the heroes system is more elaborate that the former) These heroes can help you perform task, increase the viability of your city and increase the power of your army.

Quest

Another interesting feature that in 3ko is that you can be rewarded for doing quest. Some of them act has a guide and tutorial to the game and give you extra money or item for doing them. While others raise your nobility rank and increase your reputation to the faction of the three kingdom

My personal opinion about the game

What I really like in the this game is that they gave each of the three kingdom unique abilities and  units. Because of that, you may change how you play when you’re using another kingdom. Like shu basic units tend to use a lot of wood but wei tend to use a lot of iron, shu unit are way cheaper than wei too.

The heroes are pretty neat, even if sometime I found myself wasting my time trying to send them all to scrimmage, duel and faction quest so they can level up.

They increase the effectiveness of your troop, increase the output of your resources fields. And you can do side challenge with them like the grand melee or the faction quest.

There stuffs that annoy me in this game though.

Having to plunder every morning and every night because I don’t have enough food for my armies make me really sick, especially that when I wake up at 7h00(EST) there a server maintenance, so I have to wait until it’s 7h30. Another thing that annoy me, is that there so much to do in this game that it takes so much time when you play, plundering can sometime take half a hour and you have to come back two hr later to do another round, leveling your heroes, managing your league. Note that can be perceive has a good point but to much of the same thing is not fun.

Another thing might be annoying, too much stuff to buy in the mall and all the items there are overprice. Seriously did anybody bought a styrax bolus for 799 gold when it just an item to activate the third ability slot of ONE hero ! At 4.99$ for 55 gold, each stylax bolus cost about 72$, I’ll rather buy a PlayStation or X-box game for that amount of money.

Finally I really like the game but I don’t if I’ll stick to it for more than a few month. I don’t have enough time to maintain my self to the level other are going.