https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/may/16/total-war-three-kingdoms-review > PC; Creative Assembly/SegaThe battles are as gripping as ever but it’s the melodrama and petty politics that enlivens this first-rate strategy game > This latest continent-sized strategy game from UK studio The Creative Assembly blends the hard graft of empire management with some pleasantly raucous personality politics. Taking its inspiration from Luo Guanzhong’s historical novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it transforms statecraft into a soap opera – or rather, reveals statecraft for the soap opera it often is. The game is set in second-century China, a realm divided following the collapse of the Han dynasty. As one of 12 would-be emperors, you move armies across a lavish, cloud-wreathed map, seizing settlements, nurturing your economy and destroying or assimilating your rivals.