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The Three Kingdoms: Fate of the Dragon

By: Nikola "Bunny" Zakic
Date: Wednesday, March 14, 2001

It would be a pity to think that all has been said in the gaming industry, and wait until hardware manufacturers decide to produce a new something that might revolutionize gaming, as we know it. I mean if the monkeys had waited for ladders to be invented, they'd never come down from trees, and we wound nowadays mostly spend time pealing bananas. Still, it is even worse if a good idea goes to waste because of technical flaws.

Ugly looking units.

OMG, a black fog is all around us.

The former passage accurately describes the situation with Overmax Studios' The Three Kingdoms: Fate of the Dragon. The game is based on Luo Guanzhong's novel from the 14th century, and it was supposed to revitalize the good old RTS genre with some interesting novelties. Unfortunately, the final product only displays the potential to actually introduce anything new, while it still lacks any visible innovations.

I already wrote an optimistic preview for this game, which contains the story and all that has been promised by the authors.

This text will, on the other hand, deal with what had actually been achieved and how.

The game describes a turbulent period at the end of the second century in China. After emperor Ling died in 189 AD, China fell apart, and a lot of smaller kingdoms got formed on its former territory. Each of the rulers of these newly found kingdoms wanted to succeed the throne of the late emperor, and in the bloody civil war that followed, three of the largest kingdoms Wu, Shu and Wei fought for dominance. It will be up to you to assume the role of the king of one of these kingdoms and use arrow and sword to unite China and secure the throne. Each of the factions has thirteen scenarios that deal with significant historical events. Before each mission, you will be given an in-depth briefing, which will inform you about the current political and tactical situation. The mission goals are versatile and far from easy. You will have to defend your and allied cities, conquer enemy strongholds, secure convoys, perform assassinations, and look to it that your hero remains safe.

Most scenarios will require you to build recruitment centres first, then build up an army and then go and defeat the enemy. The big novelty in this game was supposed to be the extremely complex economic micro-management. This aspect should make this RTS somewhat closer to management sims like Civilization. The game features seven resources and agricultural structures with multiple functions, which allow you to produce different resources depending on what you assign your peasants to do. Work-force manipulation is crucial, but far from tedious and tiresome. The most important thing is to set everything properly from the very start and react wisely in case of any major crisis; the computer will do the rest. Peasants will intuitively decide their next move: in case they're idle and there's a building being constructed in their vicinity, they will automatically go to help their piers, if a nearby building is damaged, they will start repairing it without you even noticing it. If you don't like them to act too intuitively, their intelligence can be turned off.

The combat is also a bit more complex. The combat efficiency of your soldiers will depend on their food supplies. Hence, if you want a proficient army, you have to develop strong economy and supply lines first. Food supplies in supply camps are spent quickly, so you have to establish caravan routes that will keep bringing resources to military outposts. The generals, whose characteristics determine the efficiency of your army on the battlefield, further enhance the combat system. Each of the generals is a historical figure with a complete biography, and twelve upgradeable characteristics and special powers. The possibility to use those generals as advisors in a certain field is yet another treat. For instance, if you proclaim a very intelligent general to be your science advisor; you will be able to build technical contraptions, which would otherwise be unavailable. You can give your generals titles of Public Security Officer (important if you have a lot of people in your cities), Sacrifice Officer (in charge of religious matters) and Administrative Affairs Officer, which enables diplomatic options.

Overmax Studios offered an interesting solution for presenting the battlefield -all the cities are presented on separate maps, which are only accessible when you enter a city, and the complete theatre of war is represented with a regional map. This map also contains neutral villages, which provide you with money (taxes) if you conquer them. This solution broadens the battlefield, and still presents each city in great detail.

I have to help my mentor.

What's cooking?

Many of these possibilities and options have already been seen, but the programmers wanted to borrow several of the best features in other games, mix them with some new ideas and create a game that would be equally appealing for the fans of both genres. Unfortunately, Fate of the Dragon turned out to be a mediocre game, which could only be interesting for people who are really mad about Chinese history, or for hard-core RTS fans that simply like to play any RTS game that appears on the market.

The first thing you'll notice about this game is its outdated graphics engine. Even though this is a 2D game this segment shouldn't have been ignored. The game supports 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions, and is done in 2D. The terrain, water and units look pathetic, the buildings are relatively decent as they are animated and in proper size in comparison to the units. I wouldn't go this hard on the graphics it the game were some other genre (the graphics wouldn't be that important in a sim game, for instance). The cut-scenes are pretty good, but there's only few of them, and most of the briefings will come down to a bunch of monotonous text crammed with barely pronounceable Chinese names which could only have a meaning to someone who is really into Chinese history.

So, we come to the matter of sound and music. I suppose that the units speak to you in Chinese, yet even though I'm not too good at it, I don't think they know many different words. The sound effects and music are poor and negligible.

Ok, I know that the audio-visual experience isn't the most important thing in a game, but some other far more important elements don't function here properly either. Complex resource management was a good idea that probably attracted a lot of sim players, but the necessity to build up the entire base with each new mission severely affects gameplay dynamics. The peasants are intelligent and functional, but when you still have to wait for the grain and meat to be prepared before each attack after thirty missions, the magic of the game simply withers away. I mean, most games have mills and farms, but taking care of seven very slow resources is definitely not an advantage. Another thing is that all buildings become accessible after the first couple of missions, so you might just get tired of the game afterwards.

The necessity to build supply outposts seemed to be an interesting feature, but it proved to be less than functional in practice. The soldiers tend to spend their supplies relatively quickly, and getting new supplies is a slow and annoying process, so you'll often attack the enemy with hungry fighters. Your armies will consist only of three different types of soldiers: pike-men, swordsmen, and archers. You will be able to give a horse to any of your units, but the mounted soldier will only be a bit quicker and have several hit points more. Your men will be able to use several different war-machines and several ships, yet still with all that the game can in no way be compared to Age Of Empires or the likes. What's more, regardless of your choice of kingdom, you will always control the same units with identical characteristics and same color.

Fate of the Dragon had a chance to be a real success, but something obviously went wrong along the way. The 32 skirmish and multiplayer maps don't improve the general impression. This is an altogether playable, yet mediocre and average game in any sense.