To be honest, when I saw the name "Hulai Three Kingdoms 2", I was stunned for a while. Hu Lai Three Kingdoms, that was back in 2010. I was still in college at that time. Four people in the dormitory were crowded in front of a laptop, taking turns to collect food, recruit troops, and attack the city, just to top the rankings in the dormitory next door. I remember that at that time, web games had just become popular, and there were many things like stealing food and parking spaces, but what really kept me up late was this Hu Lai Three Kingdoms game.
The gameplay at that time was actually quite simple now, just planting flags to occupy land, recruiting generals, and upgrading buildings, but the feeling of slowly operating and getting stronger little by little was particularly addictive. What impressed me most was that in order to gather the five tiger generals, I spent a whole month recruiting, refreshing countless times every day, and finally Zhao Yun jumped out of bed that day and almost scared the brothers on the upper bunk to fall. Thinking about it now, it seems a bit silly, but those days were really happy.
So when I saw that the original team of Hu Lai Games made "Hu Lai Three Kingdoms 2" and polished it for three years before it was released, to be honest, I was a little bit looking forward to it. After playing for a few days, I feel that the old flavor is still there. The classic gameplay such as planting flags, alluring the city, and military commanders are all retained, and the feelings are still in place. But what I didn't expect was that this sequel really didn't rest on its laurels in terms of gameplay. It added a macro map with thousands of people on the same screen. When fighting a city, the entire screen was filled with teams running. The scene was indeed a bit shocking, and it was countless times better than the petty web game graphics of the year.
There is another detail that I have to praise, which is the precise positioning of longitude and latitude, and the guilds competing for territory on the real map. This design is quite interesting and makes an old player like me feel a little fresh. The voice system may be commonplace for young people today, but for people like me who have played in the Saipan era, I used to press the keys one by one using the Jiugongge to type. Now I can directly speak and command the siege. This experience is really like another world. 😭
But to be honest, this game is not without its shortcomings. The pace in the early stages is a little slow, and the novice guide may be a bit too informative for those who have never played the previous game. I roped in a colleague and he was basically in a state of "who am I and where am I" for the first half hour. But fortunately, after this stage, the sense of strategic management has returned.
What I particularly like about this game is that it doesn't widen the gap between veteran players and new players. You can directly join the alliance just after registering level 1, which was unimaginable before. Back then, when we established an alliance, we needed to develop it slowly. Now when new members join, they feel a sense of belonging. I think this change was made with care.
By the way, when I was playing this game, I searched for the current situation of the company Hu Lai Games and found that they have been making mobile games with the Three Kingdoms theme over the years, and they are quite dedicated. Although the competition in the mobile game market is fierce now and various masterpieces are emerging one after another, it is still worthy of respect that it has been able to persist in the Three Kingdoms Strategy category for so many years. At least it's much more reliable than those companies that just change the skin and say it's a new game.
If you have played web games from back then, or like strategy mobile games but haven't found one that suits your taste, you can try this. I'm not bragging, but in this era of fast-food games flying all over the place, it's really rare to find a game that's willing to calm down and play the strategy of the Three Kingdoms.
Okay, it's one o'clock in the morning. I just created an account on the new server and played it until I couldn't stop playing it. This game really kills time. Dear Three Kingdoms fans, see you in the game. 🔥