Liu and his brothers' funniest adventure begins.
Three Kingdoms Story is a series of Turn-Based Strategy game developed by Taiwanese company T-Time Technology. Compared to most other works based on the Three Kingdoms, this game is notably Lighter and Softer with a lot of funny moments and humorous dialogues. You hire generals, train them, and take over the world by defeating your enemies in battles...but probably not before you and your enemies give some exchanges that make you chuckle. The first two games are non-linear: you're free to create your own Alternate History by finishing various events in different orders. The third game on the other hand is more like a traditional linear RPG game, where the main story's events happen in a fixed order, and you also travel on the map as a team instead of directly managing the towns and characters you own.
Games in the series:
- Three Kingdoms Story (PC, 2001)
- Three Kingdoms Story 2 (PC, 2003)
- Three Kingdoms Story 3 (PC, 2005)
All three games, as well as TKS3's expansion, are avaliable on Steam. The Steam version of TKS3 nixes the account feature altogether unlike the Steam version of M3K4 and makes the online bonus missions avaliable to the base game (though you have to connect to the Internet to ever be able to play the game).
Not to be confused with Kingdom Heroes or Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which are games that have similar Chinese names, or Three Kingdoms Story Conussia, which has a similar English name. See also The Millionaire of 3 Kingdoms, a series of computer board games created by the same company.
Tropes:
- Alien Invasion: At the end of TKS3, it turns out that Emperor Xian is an alien who is escaping from his home planet which is nearly inhabitable and is trying to find a new habitable planet, and he has masterminded the entire game's events under the disguise of an emperor in hopes of taking over the Earth after setting up everyone else to defeat each other. He eventually gives up and leaves the Earth after being defeated.
- All There in the Manual: In one missions in TKS3 you have to correctly defeat the three designers of the game. The game developer that greets Liu Bei tells him to look up the manual to find the three person's name, and even asks him if he is playing a pirated version when the latter is confused, since legal versions will come with a user manual.
- Anachronism Stew: In TKS3, the story is still taking place in your Three Kingdom, but you have takoyaki, Nintendo DS and even aliens.
- Anti-Hero: The main cast of TKS3 are made much more incompetent and with even more flaws than they are typically depicted as. Every member has some obvious fatal flaws and often messes things up. It turns out that the designers of the game are responsible for making the protagonists like this in-universe, and you can help Liu Bei get his revenge on them in a specific mission.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: There are more characters you can recruit than ones you can carry; you need to place the ones you don't (immediately) need in the inn.
- Back Stab: Attacking enemies from behind deals extra damage. However, if the enemy is facing you, then you can't move behind them.
- Big Bad: In TKS3, Cao Cao eventually becomes one like how the Romance of the Three Kingdoms plays out. Then it turns out that he, along with all other antagonists and even Liu Bei himself, were all manipulated by Emperor Xian who's actually this.
- Liu Bei becomes this in the expansion.
- Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: In TKS3, in order to stop Liu Zhang from spending too much time on raising his pet dog, Fa Zheng tries to poison the dog, and is caught red-handed when Guan Yu proves that he has spiked the dog food with poison by... uh, feeding them to Liu Bei. Then after defeating him twice, Fa Zheng says that he has a lot more products made from animals or used to poison animals (many of them have punny names too), and goes to the inn.
- Bragging Rights Reward: In TKS3, after beating the final stage and meeting certain conditions, a Brutal Bonus Level will appear where you'll help Lü Bu fight against Emperor Xian and a bunch of aliens. Since this is the most difficult stage in this game, and is the only optional mission in the Final Chapter, chances are that you're getting him just to actually finish this game and there's nothing left for you to do, unless you really want to collect all other legendary equipments. The same also applies for Emperor Xian.
- Can't Drop the Hero: You can't drop your main character in the inn.
- Copy Protection: If you try to run a pirated copy of TKS3 and the game detects itself as such, characters will level up very slowly.
- Elite Mook: Some characters have exactly the same sprite as a regular enemy, but with names and different stats and skills.
- Evil All Along: Emperor Xian turns out to be this in TKS3. While he has already shown himself to be quite unpleasant as soon as he's introduced, his true intention isn't revealed until the very last stage of the game. Though he's also an Anti-Villain who is just trying to find a new planet for his people.
- Expansion Pack: Three Kingdoms Story 3 has an expansion called Cao Cao's Tale, where you play as Cao Cao and his friends, and your goal is to stop Liu Bei from doing something horrible.
- Fluffy the Terrible: In the endgame of TKS3 there are some alien enemies who have obscene stats... and cute names like "Sister/Brother Fruit/Insect''.
- Infinity +1 Sword: In TKS3 there are some extra missions that require some gold to enter and give you special equipments when cleared. There are some legendary equipments with unique names that you can only obtain from these missions, and some of them are even exclusive to certain characters. Most legendary equipments on their own aren't much better than other late game equipments, but as you collect more equipments for a specific set, powerful stat bonus will begin to apply.
- Killed Off for Real: In the first two games, while losing all HP in a battle will just cause your character to retreat from battle and they can recover later, failing certain missions can cause some characters to be killed off permanently.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Guan Yu thinks that their phony counterparts that appear in Chapter 9 are born from the hatred from "a force that has been controlling them". He probably means the player.
- Lighter and Softer: This series is much more lighthearted than many works based on the Three Kingdoms, with a lot of the conversations being quite funny. The third game even becomes Denser and Wackier: Who'd thought that Liu Bei would be a boy wearing bunny headband, or that your favorite Mr. Sleeping Dragon would be a Pajama-Clad Hero? Or that the War of Chibi/Red Cliffs is caused by a rice dumpling Eating Contest? Or that people are being transformed into pandas?
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members:
- In TKS3 at one point in Chapter 3 there will be three missions, and you can finish any of them to progress the story. Finishing the East army mission can give you access to missions that unlock Mi Zhu and Ji Ling, while finishing the North army mission unlocks Xu Shu. Since the other two missions will disappear once you finish one of the missions, you can't get all these characters without editing the save file. The expansion also has some mutually exclusive missions that will lead to different potential partners.
- Also in TKS3, after beating the main game with most character recruited and having three specific characters on your team, a secret level appears, and beating it adds Lü Bu to the inn for you to recruit. If you lose it, another level where you recruit Emperor Xian will appear, so you can't have both characters in one save. In the expansion, the same goes for Lü Bu and Liu Shan.
- Nap-Inducing Speak: In TKS3, during Chapter 2, Emperor Xian holds an anti-Dong Zhuo conference and delivers a speech, and it's so boring that everyone attending it falls asleep, including Lü Bu who is spying on the conference.
- Permanently Missable Content: You can permanently lose a party member if you lose certain missions thoughout the series. Doing certain missions in the wrong order will also cause some missions related to a character to cease to appear and thus deny you of that character. In fact, almost every character other than your starter characters is this.
- Relationship Values: When hiring new characters in the inn, you can have characters try to negotiate with them, and they'll offer a lower price if successful. Characters that are close to each other (Like Zhuge Liang to Huang Yueying) have a higher chance to lead to a successful negotiation. Also, in TKS3, there is actually an "affection" value: characters in the inn will gradually lose their affection towards the team and may charge for gold when you have them join you again.
- Resting Recovery: Characters need stamina to carry out actions like participating in battles or taking lessons. Having them recovering their stamina by letting time pass is officially referred to as resting.
- Sequential Boss: In TKS3's expansion, the story's final boss is against Zhang Rang and Zhao Zhong, then after defeating them and their underlings you immediately fight against Liu Bei and his friends in their One-Winged Angel forms.
- Shout-Out:
- The mission in TKS3 where you recruit Zhao Yun is literally called Dragon Quest.
- A mission in Chapter 2 is called "The Last Supper".
- The cutscene image of Chapter 10-3 shows a giant robot with the character "Iron" written on it emerging from the middle of a lake which is "cut in half", similar to the scene where the Steel Titan is activated in Live A Live.
- An Infinity +1 Sword that can be obtained is called the Lightsaber (though its icon is somehow a plunger, the alien enemies properly uses a lightsaber if they use a polearm).
- A mission in the expansion is called "Sun Quan's Moving Castle''.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In TKS3, the story has some characters that originally gets killed survive the story and/or even join your party (if you succeed in their missions later). For example, Wen Chou is saved by Liu Bei after being transformed into a panda, and you can later save him again from being killed by the giant octopus and have him join you, in contrast to the usual story of Liu Bei killing him and Yan Liang.
- Status Effects: Poison, Sleep, Confused and Snare. In TKS3, only the first two are present.
- Taken for Granite: In TKS3, you can use the Stone Spell to transform yourself into a statue, which has increased defense, but you can't move, use items or skills. An upgraded version of the spell instead transforms you into a rock golem who can also walk around.
- Timed Mission:
- Some battles have time limit that you have to finish under.
- In the first two games, sometimes a mission indicator will begin to flash. Not dealing with them in time causes you to fail them, which will cause serious consequences (like you losing a town).
- In TKS2, you have to beat the game before your master reaches 100 years old (that is, in roughtly 320 turns, since each turn lasts for a season).
- Toilet Humor: There are a lot of these in TKS3. Of particular note, the hell in that game is a massive toilet where people are forced to do things like eating other people's poop for eternity, as testified by the characters Cao Cao brought back from hell. Even its entrance is a toilet!
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Even more so than the novel. Even having stuffs like Alien Invasion!
- When Trees Attack: TKS3 features tree monsters. During one mission in Chapter 9, the team investigates some reports on trees attacking people, and finds that a masked brute is animating the trees with his spells... but not before Liu Bei gets hit multiple times on the head by the tree monsters and gets knocked out.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Lü Bu has white hair in TKS3. Though he Took A Level Of Kindness and warms up to the party in the post game.
