"Total War: Three Kingdoms" DLC "Abandoned the world" review: speed attack flow of the unified world

"Total War: Three Kingdoms" has been praised repeatedly after its release, and many media have given high marks. However, as we all know, the first version of the "Total War" series is often not perfect, and the follow-up needs a lot of DLC to fill in order to push the quality of the entire work to the peak. And the protagonist of our review in this issue is the latest DLC of Total War: Three Kingdoms - "The World of Rebellion".

The background of this DLC is chosen in the era of the rise of the bully Sun Ce and the rise of Lu Bu, who are also the main roles in this DLC. Although the mechanics are different, the overall direction is still the same, which is to increase the pace and encourage the player to attack and complete the goal.

So here we need to separate this sentence, the first is to improve the rhythm.

Sun Ce's main mechanism is "qi luck", by completing the faction goals to give Sun Ce life, otherwise Sun Ce will run out of qi. This game mechanism is quite in line with the performance of Sun Ce in the history, in the specific stage of the game, you can feel that you are racing with death, and you must complete various goals as soon as possible to improve your own luck.

At the same time, Qi will also bring permanent gain, can be said to be very powerful. But the problem is that the emergence of gas means that the player's opening route is basically locked, and once it changes, the difficulty will rise sharply. Sun Ce's early qi movement was usually related to attacking surrounding forces, obtaining qi movement by occupying strongholds, and it would be better if he successfully destroyed the enemy forces.

However, the judgment condition of destroying the enemy forces is that Sun Ce has occupied all the strongholds, which also leaves a foreshadowing, because if the strongholds are truncated by other forces, it means that Sun Ce wants to continue his life, either to go to war, or to change forces to continue his strategy, so in a sense, Sun Ce's opening route is basically locked and not free enough.

Another point is that in the game, Sun Ce's plot events are often dealing with Yuan Shu, and Sun Jian's old side will return to our forces, which actually caused a very serious suppression effect. Yuan Shu will ask us to take the initiative to offer the city, and the old men continue to return, if not timely promotion, then it will be due to too low satisfaction will lead to General Wu to leave, but the promotion means more salary, the city will lead to the economy is not optimistic, naturally difficult to pay high salary, leading to the game into a vicious circle.

Compared with Sun Ce, Lu Bu's power design is relatively simple, constantly fighting to expand its own power, by challenging well-known generals, gain effect, due to the negative effect of "not good at internal affairs", Lv Bu's economy will be poor in the early stage, so Lu Bu also needs to expand rapidly to nourish the army. Another point is that Lu Bu's battle victory gains are very high, after defeating enemy troops, they can completely supplement their own action and complete the complement, so that further rapid expansion.

In other words, in terms of game mechanics, Sun Ce and Lu Bu encourage players to attack quickly to complete the expansion through the behavior of reward and punishment. However, by encouraging players to expand rapidly, it also invisibly determines the development path for players, that is, "clear goals".

Sun Ce's early development path is relatively fixed, the player can soon see the optimal solution, if the game is not completed according to the plot, then Sun Ce will die before the reunification of the river East, will make the entire faction of the game mechanism is virtually useless. Lu Bu is through the "general record" in the form of clear goals, players can challenge special generals, to unlock the bonus. At the same time, Lu Bu will gain "Qi Qi" after winning the single battle, which can be used to directly annex the city, and the overall rhythm is much more comfortable than Sun Ce, and the freedom and income of the development of the force are very good. On the contrary, Sun Ce's game mechanism mainly relies on the rapid expansion in the early stage to ensure the income of Qi Yun, and then can obtain the mechanical advantage in the later stage of the game.

In other words, due to the emergence of the reward system, the game no longer encourages players to farm, with Total War: The Three Kingdoms originally had a relatively fast annual increase, and the income from farming using DLC characters was very low, but it had to be planted, because the development of the army cannot do without resources. Due to the negative effect of passively increasing corruption, Lu Bu also made the economy very tight, and could only raise half a team of soldiers all year round, mainly relying on sacrificing diao cicada for a living.

And this DLC combined with some of the past abuses, but also amplified the past has been a problem. In Total War: Three Kingdoms, if the player's power reaches a certain point, then it will force the king, and then force The Three Kingdoms to break relations with other powers, this mechanism sounds fine, in fact, the problem is very big, especially in this DLC, more obvious.

In this "world of desertion", because the player is difficult to manage the internal affairs, so the player can use the way of mercenaries to earn extra money. For Lu Bu, this was the main source of income in the early days. Because it can not play a multi-line attack, can not get enough domestic resources to support, in the early stage, Lv Bu often need to vassal to other powerful forces, and when you slowly hoard resources to prepare for the rise, but because of the "forced three kingdoms" mechanism, resulting in a loss.

The loss of diplomatic support and internal instability caused the forced state to become a paper tiger, unable to cope with the enemies around it. In this regard, the situation of Sun Ce is more comfortable than that of Lu Bu, because in the pace of expansion, Sun Ce can also fund the state administration through farming, ensuring the level of infrastructure construction of the power.

In this DLC, there are also many new arms. For example, Sun Ce can get five special units, which is really very enjoyable to play, but it also needs to be realized after the force is firmly established, otherwise in the early stage, the same needs to rely on the basic arms to maintain the game.

After several updates, in terms of game mechanics, Total War: Three Kingdoms has been relatively complete. After this update, the battlefield experience has become better, players can build arrow towers, set up horses as obstacles, to enhance the control of the battlefield. At the same time, due to the emergence of new props and new recruits, it has added a lot of interest to the past game, players can form an array and lay traps, induce the enemy to go deep and then annihilate in one fell fell, at the tactical level, it is much richer than before.

Along with this update is a new character - gangster Yan Baihu. It belongs to a member of the mountain thief, but in the DLC script, because it grew in the sparsely populated Jiangdong area, so the growth environment is much more comfortable than Zheng Jiang and Zhang Yan, by connecting the bandits network across the country, you can also get special troops and bonuses, the role is about equal to other forces of science and technology tree.

Overall, the goals of this update are clear: Through the reward and punishment on the game mechanism, encourage players to play fast attack, but the slight difference is that Lu Bu's early expansion is more comfortable, but the difficulty will be increased in the middle because of the game mechanism and faction punishment, and Sun Ce although the freedom of the early opening is low, but as long as you can stick to it, you can directly convert the opening advantage into the later advantage.

These two new characters, as well as Yan Baihu's participation, have brought a lot of new elements to Total War: Three Kingdoms, but these elements, combined with the game's past ills, make the ills more deadly, and invisibly constrain the player's game strategy. If you are eager to build up achievements as quickly as Sun Ce and Lu Bu, then this "world of abandonment" may be quite distinctive, but if you are a farm player, then the two new roles of this DLC are not so attractive, perhaps in this DLC, the use of traditional forces to experience a new start is more attractive to you.