Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII is my favorite in the series, and one of my favorite PS2 games.
I've been a big fan of the Three Kingdoms story since I played Dynasty Warriors 3 on Xbox. I like strategy games too, so I fell in love with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Rot3K) games in college.
To those unfamiliar with the series, they're a special breed of strategy titles, especially on a video game console. The Rot3K story makes a great backdrop for a kingdom-management strategy game, with it's big wars, varied scenarios and stable of hundreds of historical characters. The old novel fictionalized the story a bit, and thus these games do as well, which adds that tiny bit of mythic proportion to history.
These games are special because they are quite dense. Koei spares every resource in production value to offer tactical depth beyond any of its competitors. Of course, with depth comes complexity, and this will make the series daunting to most.
In this game you play a single character in the Rot3K story, in a given point of the timeline of your choosing. The goal is to unite China under one rule (be it yours or the liege you serve.) Through contextual menus, you declare your character's actions each month. The sheer number of options are staggering. Politics, domestic development, personal improvement, logistics, warfare... all of these things are possible at any given moment. The game represents all these concepts through abstract statistics, which can make the game feel a bit stuffy. There's no 3D models, not much animation and absolutely no real-time feedback. A plan is executed through a series of minute movements over the course of months in game-time. To put it simply, only those with the most patience will ever be able to finish a game. A single playthrough can take 20 hours or more. With hundreds of officers (you can create more, too) and a dozen scenarios, this game will long outlast any want for feudal amusement.
Simulation is what the game is all about. What makes Rot3K games fun is that literally anything can happen. Alliances being forged and broken, generals defecting in the middle of a war, territories changing hands, succession, disasters... all of these are commonplace in the game. It's one of the few games where you can really have a significant impact on the outcome (or go out in a blaze of glory).
I've played every Rot3K game except V, which to my knowledge was never localized. Rot3K VII is my favorite entry in the series. Those that came prior were good games in their own right, but VII really threw the doors open in terms of replayability and tactical options. No longer do you have to play a ruler, you can be any character and change allegiances as you wish. You can hunt for items or develop skills by training. You can defect to another ruler or start your own new kingdom at any time. The battles are still occur on turn-based grid maps, but they move briskly and the AI is competent.
What VII has over the newer games is that it is more a solid title. The newer games (which expand on tactical possibility even more than VII) seem to be troubled by poor design choices or incompetent AI. VII brought a lot of new ideas to the table, but kept the game (relatively) simple, for those familiar with the series. VII just seems to move more briskly too, as there are a distinct lack of complex sub-games and the AI is relatively aggressive. The one thing I do miss which the newer games do is injecting more of the Rot3K story into the gameplay. Aside from officer bios and a handful of cutscenes, the story can sometimes be obscure. Granted, after the opening sequence, gameplay will largely diverge from the "real" plot... and that's what makes this game so rewarding to play!
The Verdict:
Know that the Rot3K series will appeal only to a small subset of the gaming population. You know who you are. This game will do absolutely nothing to win your attention... you have to be interested in the subject matter and compelled by complex simulations.
If your idea of fun is watching a carefully laid plan slowly unfold, gathering troops and supplies for a coming war, and rising from nothing to a prominent political figure of an ancient dynasty, then this is your game.
If you don't have the patience for reading lots of text, learning to understand logistics and domestic readouts, or executing a strategy one single step at a time, you won't tolerate the game long enough to see the fruits of your labors.
Other entries in the series may be more complex or viscerally appealing, but Rot3K VII is the one PS2 installment that does everything it sets out to do... and does them well, I might add. For me, it was the perfect balance of politics and warfare, and the battles are well-simulated and satisfying. This is the definitive PS2 strategy game.
+Tons of characters and dozens of scenarios from the fantastic Rot3K story
+A good blend of politics and warfare, comparable to previous games in the series
+A fun battle system with a reasonably competent, aggressive AI
+A million things to do every turn
-Graphics are poor
-Relatively few music tracks (and some are bad)
-Complex menu structure
-Most in-game actions are handled with text and numerical readouts
-Slow, incremental play can cause the game to drag at points
-Will definitely be daunting to all but hardcore strategy gamers