So earlier tonight I opened youtube and their little algorithm showed me this video about Three Kingdoms Total War from about a week ago.
Clickbaity title aside after watching it I couldn't really refute the primary concerns of the video which take up most of the first 50-60% I would say, namely the AI, the bugs and the overall poor presentation of the battle part of the game. He uses footage from multiple youtubers who were invited to a preview event around that time (this person is actually blacklisted by CA and the first comment in the video he explains why. TLDR, he's a former CA dev who called them out in 2017 for certain things in warhammer) and clearly shows and explains some extremely worrying things like the duel system being completely broken. For example in order to duel, which can apparently be started no matter how far away forces are, the generals have to "meet up" and depending on where you all are this results in the enemy (or you!) charging ahead alone into a sea of arrows from other units. In the video he shows instances where an enemy general even left a closed fort alone just to do a duel, which is suicide. There are a slew of other AI issues shown too like enemy armies not adjusting to your moves and choosing to stick in a defensive spot whether they have 3 units or 8 to defend with, or them positioning archers right behind a gate that gets broken down. There are also bugs that have been in the series for YEARS that have made their way into this game based on footage.
This is concerning because the game is out in a month, technically a little less because of Feb. being shorter. The youtuber guesses the build they played on was probably late Dec/early Jan. which seems about right for preview events. So that leaves ~2 months for them to fix some really glaring issues. The realist in me says that's not possible and we're in for an...interesting launch to put it nicely. I phrased the thread the way I did not necessarily because CA is doing anything nefarious that I know of, but this studio does have a history of some questionable decisions. Things like making blood and gore paid DLC for most TW games or their infamous Rome Total War 2 reveal (check the comments for a laugh)
But on the less sketchy side of things, and the first video talks about this too, are the odd things that always seem to plague this series. Why have some bugs been ignored for years and years and appear in multiple titles? We criticize Bethesda for this so it's only fair to do it to CA too. Why is AI so frequently an issue when modders have more or less solved a huge part of it in the past? These games, the main ones at least, are built off of each other and yet there's so little growth to them. Battle sizes in this TW game seem smaller than ever with armies seemingly topping out at around 2k soldiers, which is on par with games in the series from 10+ years ago. And they charge a full $60 for these games which they didn't back when some of those older TW games came out.
I don't want to seem like I'm calling for an uprising or anything. They do deserve a chance to actually release the game and then we'll see how much of this applies, but it's hard to think a lot of these issues will be fixed by launch. And if it sucks it's going to devastate me because this used to literally be my dream game. Dynasty Warriors all those years ago got me really into the Three Kingdoms story, so much that I even bought the books DW and RotK are based on. As much fun as I had with a few RotK games I would say to myself "It'd be amazing if CA ever made a Total War in this" although I never actually expected it to happen. Rome 2 launching so horribly hurt bad enough, this would be like the final nail in the "dreams can come true" coffin.
Clickbaity title aside after watching it I couldn't really refute the primary concerns of the video which take up most of the first 50-60% I would say, namely the AI, the bugs and the overall poor presentation of the battle part of the game. He uses footage from multiple youtubers who were invited to a preview event around that time (this person is actually blacklisted by CA and the first comment in the video he explains why. TLDR, he's a former CA dev who called them out in 2017 for certain things in warhammer) and clearly shows and explains some extremely worrying things like the duel system being completely broken. For example in order to duel, which can apparently be started no matter how far away forces are, the generals have to "meet up" and depending on where you all are this results in the enemy (or you!) charging ahead alone into a sea of arrows from other units. In the video he shows instances where an enemy general even left a closed fort alone just to do a duel, which is suicide. There are a slew of other AI issues shown too like enemy armies not adjusting to your moves and choosing to stick in a defensive spot whether they have 3 units or 8 to defend with, or them positioning archers right behind a gate that gets broken down. There are also bugs that have been in the series for YEARS that have made their way into this game based on footage.
This is concerning because the game is out in a month, technically a little less because of Feb. being shorter. The youtuber guesses the build they played on was probably late Dec/early Jan. which seems about right for preview events. So that leaves ~2 months for them to fix some really glaring issues. The realist in me says that's not possible and we're in for an...interesting launch to put it nicely. I phrased the thread the way I did not necessarily because CA is doing anything nefarious that I know of, but this studio does have a history of some questionable decisions. Things like making blood and gore paid DLC for most TW games or their infamous Rome Total War 2 reveal (check the comments for a laugh)
But on the less sketchy side of things, and the first video talks about this too, are the odd things that always seem to plague this series. Why have some bugs been ignored for years and years and appear in multiple titles? We criticize Bethesda for this so it's only fair to do it to CA too. Why is AI so frequently an issue when modders have more or less solved a huge part of it in the past? These games, the main ones at least, are built off of each other and yet there's so little growth to them. Battle sizes in this TW game seem smaller than ever with armies seemingly topping out at around 2k soldiers, which is on par with games in the series from 10+ years ago. And they charge a full $60 for these games which they didn't back when some of those older TW games came out.
I don't want to seem like I'm calling for an uprising or anything. They do deserve a chance to actually release the game and then we'll see how much of this applies, but it's hard to think a lot of these issues will be fixed by launch. And if it sucks it's going to devastate me because this used to literally be my dream game. Dynasty Warriors all those years ago got me really into the Three Kingdoms story, so much that I even bought the books DW and RotK are based on. As much fun as I had with a few RotK games I would say to myself "It'd be amazing if CA ever made a Total War in this" although I never actually expected it to happen. Rome 2 launching so horribly hurt bad enough, this would be like the final nail in the "dreams can come true" coffin.