To be honest, old players who have been playing since the Saipan era have really extraordinary feelings towards strategy games. At that time, mobile phone screens were small and the memory was small, but the game design was really thoughtful, such as the mobile game version of the "Three Kingdoms" series, the Symbian transplant version of "Age of Empires", and "War of the Three Kingdoms", which used centimeter units to navigate the map. Looking back now, although the graphics are simple, the gameplay is solid, and I can play it for a whole day.
I'm not going to brag about it, but strategy games at that time focused on “step by step.” Each decision-making step had to take into account the terrain, the conflict between the arms, and logistics. Once you play it, you can remember it for days. Later mobile games became more and more dazzling, but the core gameplay became more and more streamlined, with one-click pathfinding and automatic combat. As you played, you felt that you were missing a sense of accomplishment of "controlling the battle yourself."
However, I recently tried a real-time national war game called "Across Thousand Years", which made me feel a little bit like I did back then. The game developer is Beijing Chanside. Some friends may not be familiar with it, but to be honest, the foundation of this game is quite solid. The super-large realistic map is not a vain map, but you can really feel the impact of mountains and rivers on marching. The function of intelligent multi-unit marching reminds me of the pleasure of manually arranging routes when playing "Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11" on PC. Now it is possible to achieve similar operations on mobile phones, which is not easy.
What surprised me the most was its combat strategy and treasure bonding system. It is not simply "strong equipment = invincible", but it needs to be combined with the characteristics of the hero and the type of troops. For example, equipping the cavalry commander with a "surprise" tactic, and combining it with treasures that increase movement speed, can really produce a blitzkrieg effect on open terrain. To be honest, this kind of depth of multi-channel troop training is rarely seen in current mobile online games. Many games force you to "draw cards - upgrade - brainlessly push pictures", but "Thousand Years Across" at least gives you room to use your brain to formulate your troops.
The charging mode is 0 (basically no compulsory payment), this must be praised. In the past, playing Symbian games was either a buyout or free, but now many new games are always offering 648 gift packs, which makes it tiring to play. At least for now, this game is very comfortable to play without paying. As long as they are willing to spend time studying the gameplay, ordinary players can also rely on strategies to counterattack the big players.
Of course, I'm not bragging. The pace of the game is slow, which is suitable for an office worker like me to play a few games in a few spare moments. However, if you like the fast pace of "complete a game in ten seconds", you may not find it enjoyable enough. In addition, the picture style is more realistic, not the two-dimensional cute style, which varies from person to person.
Finally, let's talk about nostalgia. In fact, I don't insist on a hard comparison, I just think that in today's world of fast food games, it is quite rare to encounter a new game that is willing to work hard on the depth of strategy. If you are like me and miss the time when you used a physical keyboard to practice tricks and rely on your brain to fight, you might as well try "Across Thousand Years". Old guys, it's time to give your nostalgia a little freshness once in a while 😌