The first Romance of the Three Kingdoms game (or Sangokushi in Japan) is probably the densest game I have played on the NES to date. Many NES games are action, action side-scrollers, or RPGs, and even if they may be cryptic at times, these games have a "pick up and play" attitude whereby one will understand basic gameplay mechanics not too long after playing for a while. Meanwhile, Sangokushi starts you off by setting up the game with four different scenarios (that are basically the same in terms of winstate and are not too different from each other, save the fourth one), and then throws you into the game. You are assaulted by a basic map of China and stat menus with tons of numbers and the whole thing seems incredibly confusing and obtuse. If you are like I was about 4 years or so ago when I first got my copy, you probably saw the start of the game and promptly turned it off and popped in some Castlevania or something.

For some reason, a month ago I decided to move past that first instinct and give the game more of a chance. This was the first NES game I played where I needed to thoroughly read the instruction manual to understand any part of what was going on, and even then I messed up a lot of things for the first few hours. As the hours went by, though, I really began to enjoy the game. There are frustrating moments, sure. For example, many times I would enter into a war with another country and there would be a constant push-and-pull where I would take one of their states, and they would take one of mine. While frustrating in the moment, this tug of war really wove an interesting emergent narrative specific to my campaign, and made victory all the sweeter. Seeing the color of your empire gradually spread across China as you conquer more and more gave me the same exciting feeling as playing Civilization V. Unfortunately, Sangokushi is definitely not as visually appealing as the latter. This is obviously due to technological limitations, but the representations of the states and even the battle screens leave a lot to be desired visually. The game is also incredibly slow in terms of how quickly the game executes your commands. There is not much variety in the soundtrack, and even when you do conquer more areas of China, you will really only hear three tracks for the map during the whole game. As previously stated, reading a PDF of the instruction manual is also a must, especially since there aren't as many guides on this game online that I could find. While I was still able to get used to these factors, this might be a deal-breaker for some.

Its unfortunate that Koei's historical sim strategy games never really took off in the West as much as they should. Sangokushi 1, Nobunaga's Ambition 1, and Genghis Khan are relatively easy to find in used game stores and online for a good price, but Sangokushi 2, Nobunaga 2, Bandit Kings of Ancient China, L'Empreur, and the rest of the NES Koei games are all incredibly rare and expensive by comparison. When I would search for info on the first game, or the series in general, on Youtube or Google, I would not find many results at all. It sucks because I really love these games now and they have actually got me interested in the real history they are based on. The instruction manuals include biographies of some of the generals you can play as and some more historical background that is still interesting even though it only covers a fraction of the history at play. If you are willing to really learn a new game and have any interest in the old school, strategy games, history, or any combination of those, I can't recommend this game enough.