Our author Schuhmann accidentally watched the wrong film on Netflix: “Dynasty Warriors” from 2021 ruined his memory of “Total War: Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, one of his favorite games on Steam.
What kind of film is this?
The film adaptation of Dynasty Warriors shows action-packed fights in the trailer
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Watch what you’ve already done countless times in the game once on Netflix
What made me so irritated? The world of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” is featured in many video games: Dynasty Warriors, Dynasty Tactics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and, in the western version, Total War: Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Because there are some gems in these games and because Chinese strategy games have a special appeal, I have spent a lot of time in these universes.
Zombies and Heroes in Ancient China
Each of the games I’ve played starts the same way: you have to put down an “uprising of the ordinary people”: carpenters, carpenters, fishermen who have donned yellow turbans and are rebelling against the chaotic government. This is the tutorial in each of these games. The games suggest that the leader of the yellow turbans, a guy named Zhang Jiao, exudes a kind of mythical aura – something Taoist.
Well, in the movie “Dynasty Warriors,” the leader of the Yellow Turbans is a kind of voodoo priest who uses “white spirit magic” to make his fallen soldiers rise again like zombies.
Then the heroes of the series appear: the mythically revered Liu Bei (Terence Hill), Zhang Fei (Bud Spencer), Guan Yu (a kind of mega superhero) ride in and are introduced with epic music. Each of them can tear away at least 50 “normal people” with one blow.
The “main enemy” in the first chapters of Romane of the Three Kingdoms also appears: Dong Zhou. In the film there is a stocky, older gentleman who rides a horse with 50 zombies stuck to him. And who – simply because he can – does and says very tyrannical tyrant things. In the first few minutes of his screen time, he rides around on horseback with 50 yellow zombies, acts like an ass to his rescuers, intimidates a room full of officials, and somehow makes a young emperor cry. In fact, the part is pretty much the image I always had of him.
Movie spoiled my memory of heroics of a game on Steam
Why did I miss my game? I’ve been playing Creative Assembly’s Total War games for almost 20 years. It started with Rome, then went through the Middle Ages to the fantasy worlds of Warhammer: Normally you have to plan reasonably sensibly here, to ensure that your own cavalry doesn’t run into spears, but rather catches the opposing archers.
However, one game in the series is based on the “Three Kingdoms” and here you control the epic heroes yourself who can also be seen in the film and I have to admit: I tend to play Total War: Three Kingdoms very sloppily. Because the hero figures there are so incredibly strong that it is often enough to forego all strategy and just send out one hero, who then single-handedly kills 50 opponents with one blow of his spear.
I have great heroic memories of how – due to poor planning – I wiped out entire enemy armies with one hero and a tiny group of soldiers by repeatedly pulling the hero back and then sending him charging into the opponents.
But when I saw on Netflix how completely stupid and unrealistic this “Middle Age Chinese man with a spear sends 50 opponents flying through the air” looked in moving images, I got a little confused.
Maybe I should put more effort into planning battles.
By the way, after the Vikings series I really wanted to watch “Crusader Kings 3” – that worked better:
Steam: I started as a lonely Viking – 400 years later I have half of Europe, 12,300 descendants and one problem