Summary
Close to 600 years after the events chronicled in KOEI's better-known Romance of The Three Kingdoms,the weak royal court inspired the rise of legendary bandits who proclaimed themselves kings.This game is best described as a more difficult RTK, because although the setting and gameplay remain the same, you start out in exile and must fight many stronger opponents. Personnel management and resource allocation, therefore, become much more important here. A good game, if little differentiated from RTK.
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I just wanna say that as of now, Apr 2009 (some 20 years later), I am still playing the Bandit Kings of Ancient China (albeit the chinese version of the exact game) with almost the same zeal as when I started playing my first strategy game ... in fact, just yesterday~! ~_~
Its like a shorter version of the older RTKs, hence the fun, but without the need to conquer the whole country; however the time limit is always against you since the computer always develops the provinces better than you (including your own AI controlled ones though, use it to your advantage).
Surprising, this game is very well-balanced as well. For example, the player character chosen is normally a morally "high" person, that means he can usually recruit and lead people with the same moral values easily. However, a high moral value is usually bad in another way.
Song4 Jiang1 (the number denotes the proper way to pronounce the names) in Scenario 4 has a Mercy of 100, and after a year where the famous Liang2 Shang1 Bo2 is created, he can easily get most of the intelligent heroes of the land, since they tend to have high Mercy too, making him easily the easiest cheftain to play with ... But but but ... "The Welcome Rain" is also Merciful on his taxes, and you will soon realise that the little taxes he raised yearly will not be enough to feed the great army already present in his provinces, posing a great problem to the inexperienced player.
If you have a weekend free, and you like old Koei games, this is a must try.
~_~