It wasn't nearly as good as I had expected.
While in single player mode, the first thing you do is establish who you want to play as. either as a custom character, or as an original team leader. You can play from yuan shao to dong zhou to cao cao. After you have your character, you get to choose what two things your going to do this turn politics wise. four of your officers will suggest two things to you. It costs a certain amount of gold and if you don't like any of them, you can also choose none of them, and you just gain gold. this political system suggests you keep your troops to the max however, and beware, if you let anyone else get too much land, they will plague you. next is your moving turn. you can invade, help an ally invade, defend, or just sit there.
when you go into battle, You have your officers, and they pretty much do whatever they want. there are bases on the field and if you kill every enemy soldier you take over that base. you win if you take over the enemies main base or kill they're leader.if you defeat an officer, they will revive soon enough and you can defeat them again. defeat them three times, and they challenge you to a duel. defeat them, and they don't come back. Beware, the enemy leaders are very very difficult after the first fifty turns. they do about 80 dmg and hope you have high health and defense.
The biggest flaw in the multi player, is ther is no co op. there is just versus. The versus however is very well done. There isn't a one on one showdown, but the rest is very good. The two major flaws in the multiplayer, is you only get one level, and half of the types of matches you can't hurt each other. If your bored though, and you don't have a friend over, you do have the choice to play vs the computer, and I think that is a great achievement all in itself.