Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII on PC in July

A western-localised version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII will be heading to PCs via Steam on 5 July this year. According to Koei, this is the end of an eight year hiatus. I’m 99% sure this is real and not an April Fool gag.

Despite being pretty into Dynasty Warriors and Dynasty Warriors-related activities, I’ve never actually played a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game. From what I can gather, they’re much more of a traditional strategy game. City building, overview maps, diplomacy options, all that kind of stuff.

There’s apparently a ‘Hero mode’ of play, which “acts an in-depth tutorial, closely following historical events while teaching players all of the game’s mechanics”, as well as the regular Campaign mode, where it “stays true to the most profound of strategy games by allowing players the freedom to choose a starting year and customize the board to their liking before attempting to beat the game”.

Either way, your favourite chaps from Dynasty Warriors/RotTK will be involved. Here’s an announcement trailer, which manages to not show any gameplay whatsoever (there are some people playing the Japanese version on YouTube if you look around for that).