Heroes of Chaos: Let's Play Legend of Cao Cao

The novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is one of the classic Chinese novels, tells of the fall of the Han dynasty and the chaos that followed and led to the establishment of the Three Kingdoms period. If you are familiar with this story, chances are it's from either the Dynasty Warrior series or the RoTK strategy game series (or possibly some of their spin-offs like Dynasty Tactics or something more obscure like Destiny of an Emperor). Most of the games using the RTK setting are produced by the company KOEI, and Legend of Cao Cao is a PC game by them that takes place in the same setting.

The titular character Cao Cao (pronounced T'sao Tsao, not "Cow Cow") is one of the most important characters in the story, being the eventual founder of the Wei kingdom. The other major characters are Liu Bei, who founds the Shu kingdom, and the Sun family, who found the Wu kingdom. In the novel and in most depictions of the time, Liu Bei is portrayed as the underdog hero while Cao Cao is the tyrant villain, although sometimes the opposite perspective is used (Wu is almost always a third wheel in any story). I bet you can guess which way LoCC's plot will focus.

This game actually did not come out in the US market, but it has been recently translated thanks to the help of a few people on the Scholars of Shen Zhou forum, so if you end up liking it, give them your thanks. You can also find the game there if you want to play along.

If you'd like to actually read the story, you can find an online version here. I'll post individual character bios as we encounter them in the game. For reference, here is Cao Cao's bio.

Legend of Cao Cao is best described as an SRPG similar to Fire Emblem or Shining Force. You move around on a grid map with units of different classes, taking advantage of terrain and layout to strategically fight larger forces, and so forth. We'll take a closer look in a moment when we get to the first stage.



As the game opens, Cao Cao is just a local cavalry commander. He and some soldiers are in a hurry to go squash some religious rebels, the Yellow Scarves, who are stirring up trouble. First, though, he gets stopped by an old man in the street.



Cao Cao introduces himself, and the old guy (Xu Zujiang, also known as Xu Shao) mentions that Cao Cao has an unusual aura about him. Cao Cao asks what his aura reveals about him, and Xu Shao replies he could be "an capable minister in peace, but you will go down as a crafty hero." When Cao Cao asks if he's implying the peace is about to end, Xu Shao just laughs him off.




This is one of several choices during the game that affects your alignment bar, that red-blue bar in the upper right. At a certain part in the game, the storyline branches depending on which way the bar has been filled, with the Red path being the "Conquerer" path and the Blue path being the "Hero" path, more or less. This first question will give a pretty nice boost one way or the other, although we have enough of these choices to flip back the other way if you so choose.

So, first decision: agree with the old man, or try to be humble?

I would have named this thread "Better to betray the world than let the world betray me!" but that is way too long for a thread title. Oh well...

I'm going to say "be humble", even though TT is filled with pricks who are going to send you into the red every chance they get and I'm fighting a losing battle here. =p

(actually first came across the story via RTK games, and then went and read a couple different translations. good stuff!)

I'll go with 'Be Humble'. Cao Cao usually struck me as being a bit of jackass anyway, so may as well go against the grain.

Cao Cao should be China's humblest skull-crushing warlord.

The old guy said Cao Cao is going to be awesome. Who're we to disagree with our elders?

this looks excellent.

I agree with the humble path.

It's a trick question. The first answer is boastful, whereas the second conceals his intentions - it is the craftier, and appropriate, response.

Um, we're awesome, and everyone likes confidence.

What is a hero, but a man who disagree's with his elders?
~Edward James Olmos

I'm assuming he said some combination of those words at some point in his life.
SO SAY WE ALL!

Cao Cao decides that although he's apparently going to be a Big Damn Hero, he isn't one yet, so he replies as such. Note that our alignment bar is more blue now.




Battle 1: Battle of Yingchuan

Here we have the Yellow Scarves rebels, beating up on some government troops (in orange).



The Imperials don't seem to be doing too well.





They're referring to Cao Cao's troops here, but of course Cao Cao decided to ask an old man about the future so we're a little late.



These two mage-looking guys in the middle are the Yellow Turban ringleaders, Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang. They decide to finish off the government troops, and the first turn starts.

Turn progression in LoCC works in a "player phase, enemy phase" system, so since there are no player units on the map yet, the orange troops take the chance to take a few swipes at the Yellow Turbans.



This is the full screen for the battles, which I'm showing here to take a look at some of the features. The rest of the time I'll just crop most of this out so the pics aren't so big.

At the top we have the Battlefield name, and the turn counter (current turn and maximum amount of turns). The picture of the landscape tells you what the weather is, which can alternate between Sunny, Cloudy, Raining, and Storming; this mostly just affects whether you and/or the enemy can use fire techs. And slightly below-right of that is the Mini Map window, which shows you the whole battlefield along with player and enemy unit locations. Normally it is just off-screen to the right, but I moved it in here to get it in the shot.

The picture buttons along the top are things like Title Screen, Save, Load, etc. They're mostly informational so there's no need to go into too much depth here.

The archer shooting the rebel needs no explaining, I hope. In the same vein as Fire Emblem, every physical attack triggers a counter-attack if the enemy can hit back, although there are no counter-counter-attacks. Since the rebels are all melee attackers, this one can't hit back.

Eventually, my allies all take their turns and it's the enemy's turn. Since the government troops are outnumbered more than four to one, you'd think this would be a pretty short battle. Fortunately, some reinforcements arrive.





Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei are some of the major heroes of the novel, and we'll see a lot of them in this game. At this point, they had recently sworn an oath of brotherhood and raised a volunteer army to fight the Yellow Turbans.

The three of them move down to the north wall of the camp while the enemies attack the Imperials. The archer from earlier was already weak and he gets killed off by one of the grunts.)



On our next turn, Liu Bei seems to realize that things are bad.



Liu Bei: ...try to set fire around here.
Guan Yu: Right! If we can draw their attention this way, perhaps we can demoralize them.
Zhang Fei: Right, I'll go torch the place now.
Liu Bei: I don't want too many innocent deaths on either side. Do be careful.

Even in this game, Liu Bei can be annoyingly virtuous. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei move to start a few fires. Unfortunately, they're not very effective.

Fortunately, they get by with a little help from their friend, the old man. Somehow he got here before Cao Cao did.
He uses a fire spell to spread the flames a little.







The rebels are understandibly upset that the back of their camp is now on fire, and all of them become confused. In this game, Confusion prevents them from attacking or counter-attacking, and their evasion drops to zero, so they're easy pickings now. Liu Bei decides to charge in to scatter them.



Of course, now that all the real work is done, Cao Cao and his buddies decide to show up.



Horseman: Captain! It looks like the fire was set by those men over there, but they don't look like our men...
Cao Cao: Hmm, looks like a volunteer force.

Cao Cao decides it might be a good idea to meet his future rival.



By "styled Mengde", he is referring to his style name, which is something like a formal nickname. You would refer to someone as their style name if you were particular friends with them. Most of the major officers in the novel had such names.

Cao Cao: I have orders from the imperial court to attack the Yellow Turbans. May I know your name, sir?
Liu Bei: I am Liu Bei, style Xuande. Though just a peasant by birth, I saw that the realm was falling into chaos and thus I raised an army for saving the people. I hope you will allow my two brothers and me to aid the official forces. We are completely at your service.
Cao Cao: It was thanks to you, sir, that the Yellow Turban units became confused. There is no other command that I would give you. All we need to do is to defeat the two men in the fort. You should fight independantly. See you later!

Fun fact: Before forming their army, Liu Bei was a weaver of mats and maker of shoes, Zhang Fei was a butcher, and Guan Yu was a wanted criminal.



And now the battle begins in earnest. You can only control Cao Cao, though, so most of it is still out of your control.

(Xu Shao actually shows up here and offers to give Cao Cao a tutorial, but we'll just skip that part since it's nothing particularly necessary. He also has some options for if you've completed the game, which we haven't done yet anyway.)



Here's our movement layout, with the blue squares showing where you can move. Note that you can't move past an enemy, regardless of their condition, only next to them. You have to wait until the next turn to move past. This helps with forming bottlenecks. The red transparent squares are Cao Cao's attack range.

We'll move down and attack this grunt on our right.



The game is nice enough to show the expected damage along with the chance to hit. The actual damage can be a little more or less than the number shown here. Since this enemy is confused, we can't miss.

We also trigger a conversation with one of the enemy commanders, Zhang Liang. You can trigger conversations like this by having certain officers move next to certain allies or enemies in battle. Most of the time it's just talk, but sometimes it can be important.



Zhang Liang: Save your breath! I'll kill you first!
Cao Cao: Hrmph, a rebel is a rebel. Not being able to know the fortune of times, you are not a worthy commander.

Now our allies do their thing and kill a few of the enemies. On the enemy's turn, confusion wears off on Zhang Bao and a random grunt, so Zhang Bao casts Poison on one of my cavalry soldiers.



Poison is an unusual spell here: It can do damage and poison a person, it can do damage but not poison, it can poison but do no damage, or it can do nothing.

Our turn again. This time we'll move onto one of those tents.





We find some Recovery Beans: these heal 30 HP. Not great, but they're free. We're done again, so more ally attacks kill off more of the rebels.

On our fourth turn, our path to both Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang is clear, so I'll go smack Zhang Liang. This puts me next to Zhang Bao for another conversation:



Zhang Bao: The fortune of the Han is over, and the world belongs to the Yellow Turbans now. I say you should join too!
Cao Cao: The House of Han will come to an end eventually, but I know you're not the one who will be its successor!
Zhang Bao: You...! You have no need to give your life for the Han!
Cao Cao: I can't turn a blind eye to you and your evil sect ruining the realm. Prepare to die!

Our allies kill more enemies. All of the enemies remain confused except for Zhang Bao, who uses Poison on Cao Cao, but it wears off the next turn anyway. With Cao Cao I move to the other tent in the right corner and grab more beans. Zhang Fei decides to finish off Zhang Liang for me.



After this, one of the cavalry generics moved onto Zhang Liang's tent to hit Zhang Bao. In doing so, he picked up the Recovery Beans from that tile, which is good because I always keep items found by allies.

Cao Cao smacks Zhang Bao to soften him up a little before Guan Yu finishes him off.





Guan Yu picks up Book of Healing from Zhang Bao's corpse. This is one of the game's many unique items, each of which have special effects. We'll take a closer look at this next time when we see our pre-battle menus.

Of course, with the end of the battle comes a little small talk.



Cao Cao: Why don't you come and work together with us?
Liu Bei: There are still many places that are suffering from war. So, although I appreciate your invitation, we must go fight the rebels...
Cao Cao: All right. I won't pressure you then. I have other orders to carry out. Farewell!

Cao Cao and the government troops all leave to the south.

Liu Bei: This man is different from all the other government officers I've seen before. His name is Cao Cao, right...?



Liu Bei: Very well. Let us mop up the rest of the Yellow Turban rebels, and make our way to Gongsun Zan's camp. We can worry about the future when we get there.
Zhang Fei: Good. I don't really care, as long as we get our stomachs filled. Hahaha!

Cao Cao: (Liu Xuande... I wonder if we'll meet again as friends of foes. Only Heaven can tell...)

Next Time: Is Cao Cao a bad enough dude to save the Emperor?

(I'll be a little less comprehensive after this since that battle was mostly plot.)

Oh my god this game looks fantastic.

You didn't mention that the books describe Guan Yu as being rather attractive, what with his fuzzy caterpillar-esque eyebrows and all.

I'm loving this LP so far.

ETA- Great introduction to the forum, dude =)

My mistake. Here are some descriptions of our new friends.

I'd like to say that that description is meant to be symbolic, but he is taunted several times in the novel as "Long Ears". So who knows?

Everyone else: Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of the LP.

Thanks for doing that. I love the physical descriptions in Three Kingdoms.

Here's the first story interlude. Since this is the start of the first chapter it's kind of a long one.

First we have a nice FMV movie showing Cao Cao and his two cavalry dudes riding around the scenery. If you've ever seen the FFT opening, it's pretty much like that.






Chapter 1




This chapter kinda assumes you know a few things about the RTK story, which most Westerners probably don't, so I'll try to clear a few things up.

Emperor Ling gave himself completely to pleasure, and the court grew corrupt. The starving populace were thoroughly disgruntled with the House of Han. At this time...




This, thus, was the beginning of a troubled era.

Zhang Jiao was the one who formed the Yellow Turbans, but he died of illness; he's not shown in this game. Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang were his brothers and co-leaders of the rebellion.

Soon after the quelling of the Yellow Turban rebellion, Emperor Ling died. As there was no one to lead the court, a fierce power struggle broke out within the court. At the end, Dong Zhuo, with his military power, took advantage of the chaos and seized control of Luoyang, the capital city.

This is a pretty big simplification and you can read more about this part of the history in this chapter of the novel. The short version is that several of the government officials in the capital, Cao Cao among them, led a slaughter of the eunuchs that they felt were domineering the court affairs. Troops were called in from the provinces to assist with controlling the area. Dong Zhuo had a large military in the western provinces that he marched to the capital with, and he used it to take control of the capital and become de facto Prime Minister.

By this point in the story, Cao Cao is a court official. In this scene, he is accompanied by one of his old friends, Yuan Shao, a leader from the distinguished Yuan family.




Yuan Shao: The world!? Damnit, that bastard is a beast...
Cao Cao: ...Benchu, just keep that to yourself. Lord Beast is here already.

Dong Zhuo arrives with his strategist Li Ru and champion general Lu Bu.



Dong Zhuo announces that he is going to depose the current Emperor, and replace him with another prince. The generic officers are hesitant about it but choose not to make a fuss. Yuan Shao, however, gets a little angry about the idea. Cao Cao tries to calm him down and make him go along with it for now.




Yuan Shao: Who's Lu Bu?
Cao Cao: You don't know? He's a warrior without an equal in the world. You're going to die as soon as that sword of yours comes out of the sheath. Forget it, it's better to just obey for now.
Yuan Shao: Dammit...

Dong Zhuo notes that no one seems to be disagreeing. He tells Li Ru to go make it happen.



Yuan Shao doesn't want to let Dong Zhuo get away with this.

He asks Cao Cao what he plans to do.



So Cao Cao sticks around for awhile. Later, he goes to meet Wang Yun, the minister of the Interior.



Wang Yun isn't a big fan of Dong Zhuo, but he doesn't really have any way to work against him. Fortunately, some NPC officer happens to show up with the answer.




They get down to business.



Cao Cao expresses his displeasure with Dong Zhuo, and Wang Yun agrees before asking what can be done. Cao Cao mentions that nobody in Luoyang can stop him and none of the regional governors are strong enough to attack him. But then he floats the idea of an alliance of governors.




Wang Yun approves of the idea and mentions he'll get an imperial edict sent out to form the alliance.



Cao Cao points out that he doesn't even have any soldiers or money, so how could he head the alliance? Wang Yun replies that he'll give Cao Cao his Seven Star Sword to sell for money to raise troops.



Shall we boldly accept or try to pass the buck?

Next time, we'll meet our officers and take a look at the pre-battle menu.

Bonus Choice

Cao Cao is both a man of action AND a playa. Choices 1, and 1.

This is a great way to experience Romance of the Three Kingdoms because I'm just too damn lazy to read it. My china literature allotment is reserved for Journey to the West.

Cao is a fighter, not a lover. 1 and 2.

Raise the troops and praise Diao Chan. Can you marry her yourself in this game? It'd be better than letting that punk Lu Bu get her.

This game looks pretty kickass.

1 and 1. We're the heroes here, so it's our job to put our enemies to the sword, and we might as well pick up a hot babe along the way, right?

I agree. Fighting is optional. Babes are far more important. 2 and 1.

Diao Chan is standing right there. Only a dick would say "She's not that special..." to a lady's face. And I believe it has already been established that Cao Cao is not a dick.

1 and 1.

1 and 1. Cao cao is a cunning hero, which precludes being dismissive of Diao Chan.

Answering something earlier, derp derp

Actually, if you drop the quotation marks you'd make it just under the character limit. Want I should change it, or just leave it as is?

This thread title is fine; that scene isn't actually in the game anyway (since it helps paint Cao Cao as a Bad Guy).

Cao Cao decides that since things seem to be going to hell, he'll go ahead and organize this alliance himself.



This gives us a few points towards the red side of our alignment.

Wang Yun summons his daughter Diao Chan to bring him the Seven Star Sword so Cao Cao can have it. While she is away, he mentions that Diao Chan isn't his biological daughter, but he's raised her like a daughter since she was young.

When she comes back with the sword, Wang Yun asks Cao Cao what he thinks of her.



We get a few more red points for this one, so our alignment is about near the middle again.

Cao Cao takes the Seven Star Sword from Wang Yun and leaves to go back to his hometown.





He sent out notices of the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition to all the provinces.



You should know which ones are Cao Cao and Yuan Shao. Gongsun Zan is to Yuan Shao's right, Tao Qian is the old man below Gongsun, Sun Jian is below Cao Cao, and Yuan Shu is to the lower-left.

They were all men of great renown. On the other hand, Cao Cao sold Wang Yun's Seven Star Sword and used the money to recruit his own army.

As Cao Cao begins recruiting troops, some new officers arrive.



Cao Cao: Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, you're here!
Xiahou Dun: How can we not be, when you're raising an army?



Xiahou Dun and Xiahou Yuan are brothers, and distant cousins of Cao Cao. However, Cao Cao's other relatives aren't here yet...



Two other men suddenly arrive as well with more men.





Yue Jin and Li Dian decide to join our noble cause. They'll be pretty helpful.

Finally, Cao Ren and Cao Hong show up.





Cao Hong is Cao Cao's brother; Cao Ren, his cousin. Now we have a good starting officer corps.



Cao Cao goes to arrange the meeting with the other governors coming to Chenliu for the Coalition.



Sun Jian is an army officer who fought the Yellow Turbans and who got his post through putting down a rebellion in Changsha. He isn't a nobleman, but he claims descent from the famous strategist Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War.



Yuan Shu is Yuan Shao's brother, although they're on poor terms. He's pretty arrogant as you can see here.