Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
Fair · Action · 2019
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $39.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 45.6h
- Value
- $0.88/hr
- Reviews
- 82% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, GTX 650 Ti 1GB|HD 7850 1GB|Intel UHD Graphics 620, 60 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Unite Ancient China under your rule through a thrilling blend of turn-based empire building and real-time battles. Use the Guanxi System and diplomacy to forge alliances, and build powerful armies with hundreds of unique infantry, cavalry and war machine units.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
September 2025 is where it bottomed out, at $11.99. 52 discounts in the 8 years on record. They run about 66 percent off, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 5 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 6 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 99 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 85 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Total War: EMPIRE – Definitive Edition ($19.99, scores 84) beats it on value, while it beats Total War: NAPOLEON – Definitive Edition ($19.99, scores 56).
Steam's global achievement data says about 4 percent of players ever finish it. On a 45.6-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 8 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written November 2025 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 63 percent of the 3,883 reviews written there were positive, against 82 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it. It sells extras on top of the sticker price (cosmetic); the score docks it lightly for that.
The main story runs 45.6 hours. Doing everything runs 673, 15 times as long.
It came out 7 years ago and 4.5K were still playing it at the last check.
The drop-off
88% start to 4% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 45.6-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
4,507 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Does the AI even eat food? Does the AI even pay for armies? Does the AI get an insta full garrison when they take my city while it takes me forever to build a pitiful force in a town/city? I just eff around on easy and it feels like I'm playing cheat simulator. This game is frustrating not fun, still.
This is my first Total War game, and I can't really see what it has a Very Positive rating. This is more of a micromanagement sim than anything. Really pretty boring and slow. I like the Chinese history, and the characters are historically accurate, but overall the impression I'm getting is "meh". I much preferred the old Romance of the Three Kingdom games when they were made by Koei. I'll keep playing to see if it...
Honestly, I think Total War: Three Kingdoms is one of the weaker games in the series, sitting somewhere alongside Troy and Pharaoh for me. There's substantially less tactical depth than I usually expect from Total War, and a lot of the gameplay feels simplified to the point where "streamlined" starts sounding too generous. At times, it genuinely feels dumbed down. Not necessarily badly dumbed down, but simplified...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Total War: THREE KINGDOMS scores 60/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/779340/total-war-three-kingdomsThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 11, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.