Records Mode Gameplay Reveal

[JackDionne]

Highly disappointed.

Records mode is just Romance mode except generals have bodyguards and can’t demolish everything in sight. Whoopty doo...

And “Shu-Han Kingdom” makes zero sense, especially in eastern China and in the “historical” records mode.
1) “Shu-Han” was never the name of Liu Bei’s kingdom or empire. Ever. Neither was it ever called ”Shu”.
2) Liu Bei’s territory was called “Han”, and as a continuation of the Han dynasty usurped by Cao Pi and the state of Wei.
3) Shu was the name of an older kingdom in western China, which was conquered by Han when it united the country after Qin, where Liu Bei eventually became based. Having Shu in the east is just lazy.
4) ”Shu-Han” is literally not a land or title or anything. It’s contemporary made-up nonsense.
5) Liu Bei’s Han is incorrectly referred to as Shu or Shu-Han only to differentiate his dynasty from the one usurped by Cao Pi.
6) Liu Bei was King of Hanzhong, not King of Shu; the latter title never existed in this era. So “Shu-Han kingdom” makes zero sense.

So having a “Shu-Han kingdom” led by Liu Bei, in eastern China, not even remotely close to the actual land of Shu, is just sloppiness on CA’s part. It would not be hard to make King/Emperor titles to be dynamic. The names literally would be wherever the clan leadership has their primary title and base of power. Hence Wei, Wu and Jin were named so because the ruling family’s base of power was located in those older kingdoms and, per tradition and precedence, named their dynasty after it.

C’mon CA, this was supposed to be an historical title. Again, highly disappointed.

Where did you learn all the stuff on Ancient China?

[zoner16]

Where did you learn all the stuff on Ancient China?

The nomenclature will come up if you start researching the era from the original Chinese sources or read the author notes in the more diligent research papers, hence why a lot of westerners, even those familiar with the events era, often miss it, because the translations, research, or summaries they work off paraphrase quotes, use later names, and don't make the distinction clear because they don't think it's important. You can try reading some more direct, if more difficult, translations here: https://threestatesrecords.com/

If we want to go one step further, none of these state would have been called "Duchy of X" or "Kingdom of X" or heck even, "X Empire." If talking about a state, the sources (and by extension, the people of the era) would just use the state's name, so "Liang" or "Qi" or "Han." The noble rank of the ruler wasn't made part of the name. Especially since Chinese noble ranks have some different connotations than their congruent western translations.

However, people who aren't raised with that particular tradition would want things to have names and forms that they recognize, and so a lot of people started calling these states "Kingdoms" and "Empires" a long time ago, so I guess we're using European feudal descriptors now. Not really that bad, since that's ultimately just an addition meant to give more information at a glance, and it's not like the names in many other Total War games aren't any less anachronistic.

The connection of the names to Bronze Age Chinese states is a little more specific, but you'll be forced to learn them if you ever dive into the Spring and Autumn or Warring States Eras. Those states lent their names to the regions they inhabited, and later dynasties borrowed those names for the prestige based on where they were founded.

[Searry]

It looks pretty disappointing as most of their recent games. At least we have the classics.

[NostalgiaFan]

Yeah I know this is kinda necroing a thread almost a month old but it has been a while since I have posted here so I just wanted to say what my thoughts on this is.

Got what I expected and still just as disappointed. Unit collision looks as bad as always, cavalry crashing into infantry looks as awkward and over the top with units flying back like the gravity got lighter, Arrow trails look cartoony again, UI and AI are both unremarkable, the former just looks way too gamey and immersion breaking and the latter is just acting even stupider than usual. English voice actors trying to sound Chinese just does not work and I hate the banter, it's more annoying than funny or engaging. And The battles just feel so small thanks to the unit sizes, which I doubt are going to look any better with the "huge" unit scale.

All in all the battles are once again the parts that seemed ignored in favor of the campaign nowadays, which is the only thing that seems to have some interesting features. I hate that I have almost nothing good to say about this because I wanted to like this game but CA has just made everything about this feel more like a lazy attempt to copy Warhammer and continue pushing this engine that cannot do melee right. Would not trouble me so much if it was not that after all these years this is the Chinese TW we finally get and it's just a barely half-assed clone mimicking a fantasy game instead of a historically authentic one. Even worse that I dread the day we might get a Med 3 like this which will suck since the battles are going to continue using this same outdated engine and the combat will continue to be worse than a game that came out over a decade ago.

[crpcarrot]

I was highly disappointed in the video mainly as they seem to fight battles like it was romance mode and they expected to win without forming any battle lines covering fire or anything resembling that. it was the same in the previous set of playthroughs but i put it down to being a romance mode playthrough. if these are the guys testing the battles then its no wonder that we get really bad battle engines in the finished product.