A strip down version of its predecessors; as far as strategy goes, with nicer graphics.
1. Beautiful graphics;
2. Lots of Officers (mostly non-fictional) from the three kingdoms era (all come with beautiful water painted portraits and nicely implemented stats, attributes, skills, and biographies);
3. The option of creating own officers. Here you have a lot of attributes, stats and skills to choose from (you can also write your own biographies for each created officer). You can also set relationships between officers such as parents, siblings, spouse, friends, &, hated officers.
4. The technology tree is a nice touch;
5. The "debating" & "dueling" mini games (Here you can challenge other officers to 1-on-1 combat which can influence many battles or debate the enemy strategists when trying to form ceasefire or alliances etc.
6. Very stable game.
THE BAD:
1. As far as strategy goes this game is a stripped down version of its predecessors only with nicer graphics;
2. This game lacks diplomacy;
3. Incredible dumb AI (even at advanced difficulty) makes this game very quickly a bit unexciting.
4. Six months on & still no patch or PUK (power-up-kit) option for the English version (this is enjoyed by the Asian region and brings more options to the game, smartens up the AI, & adds more game content. Once again it seems Koei doesn't give a $hit about its "western" based players.