This "reward" that Romance of the Three Kingdoms offers is subtle and nuanced. This is a niche game and I would very much expect its sales to be much lower than what its rival achieved. It's the better experience, though, from a particular perspective. If you love your historical strategy for the history that they depict, then Romance of the Three Kingdoms delivers. Everything about it is a perfect reflection on what that book was on about.

This is a solid strategy game, and even if it doesn’t match the greatness of the titles it’s based on and loses a bit of depth, it offers a lot of fun and a much friendlier learning curve.

This will never be a title that I to return to it in the way I do with Civilization V or Rome: Total War, but it was a solid experience nonetheless.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV is the perfect choice for the fans of this epic historical event, but it's not a perfect choice for the fans of turn based strategies. Gameplay flaws are here and there, and some mechanics are not deep enough, making it not a very strong contender in the genre. However, console players can still enjoy it given the fact that there are not many options available on the consoles in this genre.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV still carries the hard tradition of strategic games on console. The game gives a great deal both on personalization and historical context, and tries to recover a more traditional conception, giving a better result on commanding in a strategic gameplay with a gamepad, instead of a mouse. However, even if the satisfaction of conquering and well-administrating land it’s undeniable, this search for tradition pushes the game further towards only a specialized niche of public.

A verbose strategic one, with a farraginosa interface, offering a solid, complex and articulated game structure, but also very "hard" to tame: only for fans.

Setting you up with key scenarios from across this period of Chinese history, there’s plenty to play through. The only problem is that with the zoomed-out approach to the map, the detail has become more passive. Unlike in the last game there’s no direct control of battles, no debate system, and no smaller-objective story mode. It’s an interesting evolution, though one that leaves you bored on the throne more often than not. [Issue#174, p.86]