"As the drums of war sounded, the cavalry took the lead in charging, and for a moment the sound of drums, horses' hooves, roars and metal collisions intertwined in the rolling sand of the iron hooves, making the sky darken a little." This kind of grand and blood-boiling ancient war scene is a scene that many strategy games try to restore for players.
Looking around the world, China's 5,000-year history is undoubtedly the best soil for breeding this type of game. Whether it is the Shang and Zhou dynasties, which are full of myths and legends, or the chaotic Warring States, the Land of China under your feet has not lacked conquests and strategies since ancient times.
However, at present, most of the strategic mobile games on the market often only pay attention to the commodity value of IP in the theme, and habitually choose the most well-known and most flattering background of the Three Kingdoms era, and with the increasing proliferation of similar themes, players have long been from the initial passion and gradually fallen into the dilemma of aesthetic fatigue.
This is not empty talk, open the official website of the State Press and Publication Administration, enter the keyword "Three Kingdoms" in the game version number query, and you can see as many as 576 "Three Kingdoms Games" that have obtained the version number. This is only a work that has a theme on the title, and if you add overseas and games with relatively obscure titles, the number can only be more. On the other hand, the "Warring States" label, which ranks second in the selection of the era topic, can only find 24, which is a world of difference.
So no matter how deeply the interpretation of the IP of the Three Kingdoms is excavated, or the more objective and multi-angle interpretation of the characters, these works are difficult to jump out of the limitations of the subject matter. In the case of the indiscriminate bombardment of the Three Kingdoms theme and the lack of other historical categories, players are also more eager to appreciate more historical eras through the game.
From the perspective of war alone, the era of the rise of the masses and the deceit of others is indeed innumerable in this land of China, and there is still a huge room for domestic strategy games to choose topics. For example, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the history of the Qin Dynasty, the disputes of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States, and the embellishments of the remaining dozen large and small countries can all put together the stories and pieces needed for strategy games.
In the same way, the Sui and Tang dynasties were also a good script theme, and more well-known characters such as Li Yuanba and Cheng Yaojin, as well as the ready-made plot scripts of "Sui and Tang Dynasties", can give strategy games great room to play. Even mythological or fantasy themes, the "Fengshen Yanyi" with the Shang Zhou as the background can fully meet the IP needs of the game for the times and characters, and it is possible to make a good work by combining the historical characteristics with a little deep cultivation of gameplay.
But today, domestic strategy game manufacturers have not made too much effort in jumping out of the "Facebook" Theme of the Three Kingdoms, and players who love strategy games want to play a little bit of their own historical elements, and even most of the time have to rely on the "handouts" of overseas manufacturers.
Fortunately, with the rise of China's stand-alone market in recent years, more and more overseas manufacturers are willing to join the faction based on Chinese historical elements in the game. Of course, these ways of relying on the game are not free, but targeted publicity for the huge domestic market, and it is also a kind of propaganda that is more effective than any advertisement.
It is just that this kind of "propaganda" is based on "value", and once the surplus value is insufficient, it will become an outcast at any time. The best example is the previous "Total War: Three Kingdoms", at the beginning of the theme of the pleasing, commercial benefits, the game to the players to make a succession of update commitments, but when the follow-up game only a few fans and old players of the series left, CA flatly ended the update, wholeheartedly into the production of Warhammer 3.
Of course, whether it is "Total War Three Kingdoms", "Civilization 6", "Age of Empires 4" and other works, the Chinese elements in them are remarkable, including the Aurora Empire of Warhammer 3, which is also very good. However, due to long-term cultural differences, the content of Chinese elements produced by overseas manufacturers is inevitably lacking in detail, and the details will always give people a feeling of "British Chinese", and the experience for players is also somewhat awkward.
Under the long-term accumulation of this sentiment, the hearts of domestic strategy players have always looked forward to seeing an authentic historical strategy game.
"No Regret Huaxia" is a work born under this emotion.
In terms of script theme, "No Regret Huaxia" really satisfies the player's thirst for history, from the Three Emperors and Five Emperors to the Qing Dynasty, the entire five thousand years of Chinese history are included in this game.
Such a span of timeline is naturally difficult to integrate into a script, so it chooses a more flattering approach. Just like the plot timeline divided according to different events in "Total War: Three Kingdoms", "No Regrets Huaxia" also divides the dynasties and dynasties of these five thousand years according to different eras.
In the script of this total of 14 eras, there are warlord melee periods with the stage of the struggle for hegemony of the princes, and there are also two armies fighting each other mainly in large battles. Players can relive the historical moments of the Qin King sweeping the Liuhe and unifying the land of China in the game, and can also manipulate the plot to provoke wars in other countries and sit and watch the dynasty collapse. Although the game currently only has four era backgrounds of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, Xia Shang Zhou, Spring and Autumn Warring States, and Qin Chu han, the subsequent historical periods have also been put on the agenda, and will soon meet with players.
As a strategy game with history as the stage, "No Regrets Huaxia" has also produced corresponding era characteristics according to different historical periods. The ancient period of advocating sacrifice, the Shang and Zhou periods in which divination and mythology coexisted, the Spring and Autumn Warring States spawned by hundreds of sons and strategies, and the Chu and Han dynasties with siege equipment and large-scale city battles began to appear with the development of technology, and the characteristic gameplay of each era can allow players to appreciate the historical atmosphere of this era through tactical and internal political strategic considerations.
At the same time, the game has made interesting adaptations of the events of different dynasties, allowing players to experience very interesting events while understanding history, and even I have encountered a strange story of HouYi's silly head shooting down ten suns and nipping human civilization in the bud.
In addition, unlike the current mainstream strategy mobile games, the gameplay of "No Regret Huaxia" is also more biased towards a single machine, and players want to win by exploring the game mechanism, considering tactical strategy and internal affairs. Although the game also has a less pleasing card draw mechanism, the characters obtained from it can only act on the civilian subjects, providing a very limited bonus for some internal affairs and buildings, and can hardly bring a balanced impact on the battle.
These restraints in the kryptonite part also allow one to see from the other side its desire to jump out of the established framework. When "No Regrets Huaxia" jumped out of the traditional topic selection thinking and profit model, even an unknown new work can welcome up to millions of players.
When the raindrops cover the smoke, the noise returns to calm, the excitement of the war will eventually be restored, and those grand scenes may disappear from the deepest parts of memory after the passion is burned out. But at least at this moment, "No Regrets Huaxia" will bring some different colors to domestic strategic mobile games with novel gameplay through a detailed interpretation of historical themes and times.