So there's very little reason I feel to actually "review" this game, because there's virtually no way you will accidentally stumble across this game without actually looking for it; you're here intentionally. You remember it from 20 years ago and want to see if it's playable and see if "English language not supported" means there's no way to play it if you can't speak Japanese or Chinese.

However, for the two or three people who find themselves on this page and have no idea what this series is:

It's an old-school, detailed strategy/simulation game where you play as a character from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms drama and attempt to unite China (or watch it burn. Up to you). I mean ANY character: ruler, strategist, warlord, common officer, "free"/unemployed officer, or "rogue army" member (rather minor gameplay style, but it's still an option). You can also create your own new officers, or a whole family and start your own kingdom. You can work your way up from a literal nobody and end up a leader, or you can start off as a leader and find yourself defeated and serving the faction that defeated you, or you can play as someone who gets captured, killed and continue as his or her child or spouse or sibling. If you got to this page browsing strategy & military or sim games, you WILL like it.

Now back to why most people are probably scrolling through the english reviews:

No, the game is not in English, but fret not, that no longer matters. There is a fully functional and mostly accurate translation (I mean mostly accurate, the original from the PS2 was not perfect either) freely available. Much of the text has simply been directly imported from the ps2 version, you can type english names for characters, dialogue between characters is in english, even the in-game help menu/tutorial menu is basically implemented, but it's kinda hard to navigate.

The only drawback is the fact that there are some words that have to be abbreviated due to UI space, so if there's a box that indicates "Infantry Unit," it will rather read "Inf. Unt" and some words "overlap" in the tight spaces. Zero impact on gameplay, just a visual effect that's easy to become accustomed to.

If that was your only hang up, problem solved, I invite you to do a quick search of the the Discussions section of this game's community pages and look for "Unofficial English Patch Update 2024." As of the time of writing this out, it's the first entry in the forum but that's likely to change. You can verify that that translation still exists, people use it, it's legitimate, and you can get the game and enjoy it again.

If you don't know a lot about modding and this is daunting to you, but you have done a little modding in other games and understand basic navigation and installation of your computer and game files, it's as easy as this:

Download mod > unzip > drag & drop into game directory > click (add another click if you want to run in windowed mode, but I'll get to that in a minute) > *game start*. It takes you to the launcher, which is still in chinese, but just click the top button lol, it's the one that would obviously be "play". Then you're playing.

If even THOSE instructions are difficult to follow, that's cool, I mean we all have to start somewhere, there is also a convenient ~5 minute or so YouTube video right there in the post also showing how to do it, and half of THAT length is simply telling you about the mod author and updates. If you want the game but can't read oriental languages, you simply don't have to worry about it, anyone can do this.

Now for people who wonder how a 20 year old game will RUN on modern systems:

shockingly well. I built this computer less than 6 months ago, with the oldest piece of hardware being a 3080ti, and I've had no crashes, errors, problems, save file issues, NOTHING. The one issue that doesn't affect gameplay, but does affect my enjoyment, is the fact that the game's resolution is so low that the screen looks absolutely atrocious in Full Screen mode if your monitor is bigger than 720p...

So thankfully, the mod that changes the language also addresses that, and adds a convenient command to enable the game to run in Windowed mode.

I know this is going to be overlooked by most people who would want to play this game again, and by people vainly hoping for an English translation by Koei, and that makes me so sad for them. However, if you, like me, spent the better part of the early-mid 2000's conquering china on your ps2 and remember it fondly, wishing you could play it again, you absolutely can. The icing on the cake? The improvements with the "Power Up Kit" expansion bundled in will make it feel like you are playing a remaster of the original, it is literally better than you remember.

Have fun.

Best RTK in the series.