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Lord He Jin has made his last mistake. For years, he has been a thorn in my side—sending out his troops to steal away my cities and add to his empire. In every battle, I have stood against his forces and triumphed, yet his scheming minions seek to continue undermining the peace and security of the people I've sworn to protect. He left me little choice but to advance upon him like a black wave, taking his cities under my protection. Thanks to his greed in throwing away his soldiers against me, their defenses were light and quickly fell before the arrows of my experienced archers.
That was what drove him to his final act of desperation. A major assault against my capital—and this time it was Lord He Jin, himself, who led the charge—along with the finest of his officers in the largest force I had ever seen. Yet he failed to take into account the ability of my experienced troops to build towers to fire arrows over great distances, or my alliance with Liu Bei, more than happy to lend me his personal army if it meant grinding this tyrant into dust. In the end, Lord He Jin's forces were cut down to the very last soldier, and the man who believed he could conquer all of China was nothing more than a pathetic wretch clinging to the tatters of his pride. I could stand looking at him no longer, so I granted him mercy...in death.
Freedom means never having the same experience twice.
With painfully few exceptions, what you get when you pick up a controller is going to be pretty much the same for anyone else. Even in most RPGs, the player is left to follow along with a preset storyline where their only action is to overcome whatever obstacle lay in their path. Choosing between good and evil when it results in a slightly different ending isn't enough. True choices that actually affect the flow of events are rarer than a hero with a normal hairstyle. The only genre where they're commonplace is city or world building simulations such as Sims City or Civilization. Yet these leave the player as an omnipresent being floating above the action rather than a true part of it. Even The Sims is more like a dollhouse than a playhouse.
In Romance of the Three Kingdoms X, you're the main character in your own personal drama, where you not only choose your fate, but affect the flow of history itself. You can take a minor officer who ended up as no more than a footnote and turn him into a tyrant who shook the very foundations of China. Or you can take a legendary figure like Lu Bu, and give them a son or daughter that will carry on their legacy after their death, or ruin it utterly. How other officers react to you, and whether they will swear to serve you or curse your name, will be all due to your actions. Someone who was your lifelong friend in one game could end up being your greatest rival in another. Even your own created characters will take on a life of their own if you allow them to roam free, and could end up as the rebels who topples your empire. ROTTKX works on the imagination in ways that few others dare.
Most of this is done through a maze of menu options, where you can perform duties to improve a city, make friends with local officers, accept paying jobs from normal citizens, or just wander around the length and breadth of ancient China on the back of your trusted steed. If this sort of gameplay doesn't thrill you, just wait until the conflict between warlords begins to bubble over into turn-based battles.
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