Graphics: RTK XI is a visual feast. Tiny flocks of birds fly under cloud layers in constant motion. Puffs of smoke rise from structures under construction and from the chimneys of mints and workshops. Flags flap realistically in the breeze, and changes in the season are vividly rendered, from the white gloom of winter to dazzling sunrises in spring and summer. You can even see which way a river’s current is flowing by watching ripples and whitecaps as they move downstream. All of this detail runs at a solid 60 fps, even with all graphics settings maxed out.

There are, however, a few problems. Colors are somewhat washed out in the opening cinematic, no doubt to enhance the idea of an aged tapestry, and Chinese characters occasionally display on the screen without English translation. Certain sequences, such as those leading to debates or duels, are the same every time, no matter which characters or situations are involved, and the cut scenes at the beginning of the scenarios don’t have nearly the level of detail found in the rest of the game, but the strikingly designed maps and the little touches to be found on them more than make up for these minor issues.

Interface: Strategy interfaces can become more unwieldy as gameplay factors are added, but RTK XI manages to avoid this problem with a very intuitive and well-organized screen layout. In the upper left is a box that shows all of the cities and structures under your control. Attached to the top of the box are tabs that lead to displays of your individual units and characters. Clicking on any of these items instantly snaps the map to their locations, and they are grayed out when their AP are exhausted, so you don’t have to remember which ones you’ve already adjusted. Unit movement is simple: just click on a unit and all of the possible spaces to which it can be moved are highlighted. Choose one and the unit moves immediately to that spot.

Unfortunately, as good as the interface is, it sometimes forgets that too much of a good thing can be bad. RTK XI is encyclopedic in its wealth of information about the period and the characters, offering many more facts than you really need to play the game. Scholars might appreciate this level of depth, but it can easily be played without reading any of it. Also, the opening splash-screen menu’s options utility failed to make the changes I requested in the game’s setup; I had to do them all over again using the main menu. There are no build-queue progress bars, which is a problem when you build an item that takes more than one turn to complete.

Gameplay: Control freaks will find everything they crave in RTK XI. Almost nothing is done for you, forcing you to make decisions about almost every aspect of gameplay during every turn; forgetting small details can make a significant difference in each turn’s outcome. This could sound like a bad thing, but, surprisingly, it’s not. As you become more and more comfortable with the interface and the game’s mechanics, you get into a turn-by-turn habit that has you playing like a pro before you know it. The biggest gameplay drawback is length. In the general scenarios, your task is simple: conquer the country. The more focused campaigns have more concrete objectives, but can still take many hours to complete. I spent seven hours alone on one of these newbie missions and didn’t even come close to my final objective, but the game has enough “just one more turn” addictiveness to lighten the time-consumption blow.

Sound FX: Background effects are limited to drums, cymbals and exclamations in Chinese by characters as their units start moving, but they are placed liberally enough to enhance the ambience of the game. Subtitles would have been nice, but I can live without them since the dialog doesn’t advance the story.

Music: Composer Yoshihiro Ike’s rich and interesting score beautifully complements the gameplay. The theme music that plays during the opening cinematic has hints of movie soundtracks from the 1940s and ‘50s, with brass-heavy orchestrations and block chords mixed with delicate melodies. There are at least three repeating themes heard during the game that help bring the player into the action, and in a nice touch, there are 24 background tracks that can be sampled individually on the options menu. The score’s weakest link is the music heard during the tutorials, which has a more Western flavor than the Asian-oriented cuts used during the actual game, but Ike’s music for RTK XI is some of the best composed for a game in recent memory.

Intelligence: Remember in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the cartoon knights were being chased by the Legendary Black Beast of Aaaaagh? Just as they were about to be swallowed, the animator had a fatal heart attack and the creature disappeared, saving our heroes. Something similar happened to me while playing RTK XI. One of my cities only had one tiny army unit remaining in a battle with a substantially larger force when, in between turns, a pop-up window explained that the opposing warlord’s army was defeated on the day in which the scenario was currently set. When it was my turn, my enemy’s units had disappeared and I lived to fight another turn. This is an example of things that make me scratch my head about the AI in this game. There are times when the enemy AI is surprisingly clever, diagnosing my tactics and quickly countering them, and other times when it is dizzyingly stupid, choosing to retreat when one more attack would have utterly wiped out my units. Perhaps this is because I played at the Beginner difficulty, but the rest of the game is so smart that you wonder why it lets you off the hook so easily.

Difficulty: Despite the user-friendliness of the overall package, RTK XI is tough, even at the Beginner setting. The learning curve is steep, and it took me several hours just to complete the tutorials which I found myself returning to several times for a refresher course. Compounding the difficulty of the game is the sheer length of the campaigns, each of which could take an average player more than 20 hours to finish. RTK XI welcomes new players, but only those with micromanagement experience or lots of time on their hands (or both) need apply.

Overall: I haven’t spent much time with strategy titles lately, so it took a while to get back on the horse, but once I got into the groove, explored all of the interface’s features and settled into a gameplay pattern, I was rewarded with a fascinating, beautifully designed game that had me wanting to run home and jump back into the action. The enemy AI is a bit dodgy and the lack of a multiplayer mode is a serious flaw, but I can’t think of a game I’ve played this year that has surprised me more than this one. Normally I uninstall a game as soon as I finish with it, but Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI will be on my hard drive for a long time to come.