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Rugpulled under half year
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-Unbalanced damage calculation, your unit scales with your troops count, if you have 2000 soldiers per unit, you will have low Attack and low Defense
-Repetitive off battle scene
-Siege scene is gutted compare to the originally ROTK8
-China is supposed to have special tribal units across different province of the world, but it does not
-No special weather, no food supply constraint, no strat
-Battlefield all have these watch towers to artificially make attacking harder, to slow down your pace, so you don't finish the game too early, because the A.I. is dumb
-Each officer/unit on the battlefield can use their ability once only, it means officer that are dumb/weak historically with no skill, they are screwed for eternity. Also, you can't use any ability if you have low morale for some reason, which is not fun
I get tired of brainstorming to point out the flaw of this game, because it will take more time than the developers put into "Remake" this game.
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Below is further extension of my thoughts after being patient, hoping things will be better
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As of April 2nd, 2026, when all the PowerUp kit DLC has released and settle, where Koei claimed there won't be a PowerUp kit for this game.
Note : I did not buy the DLC, since it has such poor review ratio, I will not bother. I've seen some fixes, but if you have to keep bug fixes, game balancing changes exclusive to DLC, there is something wrong with Koei's head.
Disclaimer : This is mostly just an original ROTK 8 appreciation read and comparison. During this time, I have gone back to the original ROTK 8 to refresh my memory, since it's been 20+ years. The tl;dr version verdict is that the OG ROTK 8 is a better game by far. But, I will keep everything as short and summarized as possible. I will list out the good of the 8 Remake first, and then list the good of the OG 8.
1) Obviously, the new 8 Remake has better graphics, modernized UI, BGM fade out when game not focused. All the modernized crap that you could think of, voiceline effects for immersion, hotkey customization, scenario setup all can be modified.
While the original 8 is played at some old 4:3 resolution such as 1024x768, there are tools such as Magpie that will upscale it, but pop windows gonna be buggy. No in-game audio slider.
2) During combat, the new 8 Remake uses hexagon grid unit system which allow units to cling onto each other nicely, it is in my opinion superior than the old 9-sub box grid unit system, it was clunky, doesn't fuse well into each other.
3) You can save game at any moment during battle, but you can't do that in OG8.
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I just can't point out anything good from 8 Remake that catches my attention. Now, onto why OG ROTK 8 is better, and I'm gonna focus on battle scene mostly, since off battle home town scene is just your boring 9-5 job.
1) In the OG8, during the Pre-War planning stage, you have to analyze several things, the map terrain, enemy troops count, enemy reinforcement, where enemies camp are, the general strength and weakness of the officer you will be facing, because there is this thing called "Tactics" that you must pick for each battle. I played the game in Chinese language, so I don't know what they are called in English, but basically Tactics such as Blitzkrieg (Fast movement/High Morale for first 10 round), Traps Sniffing (Because traps are very damaging), DragonBoat (If map terrain is revolving around water), Long range shooting (Great option if you have a lot archers), EagleEye (Increase view range), Teachings (Lower the success rates of enemies skills, great pick if you expect a lot of high INT officer), Brilliance (Increase the odds of your own skills success rate).
And then, you have to allocate your strategem points, war howl (+Morale), Thunder, Weather modification, Wind direction alteration, Wall weakening, Internal conflict, quick extraction etc.
As a defender, you have the option to start off the battle right inside your own castle, if you expect you are going to be heavily outnumbered before your reinforcement arrive, the trade off is that you will lose morale constantly.
With that said above, you can imagine, why it is very crucial to pick your troops type carefully, cavalry is great for quick push, on foot soldier are great for blocking enemies and high INT officer who are not good at killing.
The thing is ... 8 Remake has NONE OF THESE ... It's all dem pu33ies hugging their own castles, towers so they can have free hits.
2) In the OG8, during War stage, I mentioned high INT officer a couple of times for a reason. Because there are many executable skills involved, "Taunt" (to get someone hooked onto the taunter), "BattleScream" (to cause panic mode onto enemies), "Confusion state", "Traps induced immobilization state", all of these status effect can be cured, and high INT officer have significantly higher chance of curing these status effect. On top of this, there is "Extinguish fire" and "Calm ally" skill, which also scale heavily with higher INT. So, you see every officer unit, whether they are dumb or not, at least have one or two skills/tasks to perform each turn.
The issue here again is ... 8 Remake has NONE OF THESE ... No heavy emphasis on high INT officer. If your officer unit has nothing to do, (Nothing to calm, nothing to taunt, no Fire to extinguish, nothing to attack), you will just wait for your next turn.
Onto the next subject, Morale. In OG8, this metric is an indicator of your Attack/Defense, also decide how likely you will go into panic mode, very low morale will cause troops to flee. However, in 8 Remake, Morale isn't related to any of these at all, it is a gauge to determine whether if you can use your ability or not, you recover a little per round. And if you are under certain Morale threshold, you cannot use any ability, plus abilities are all one-time use only, what the freaking hell ... Koei?
In the original review I wrote way above, I mentioned how your unit's Attack/Defense is directly proportional to your unit's troops count. That is a HUGE issue, but I didn't go into full detail explain why that is bad, you won't understand why it is bad if you have only played the 8 Remake. In the OG8, under the right circumstances, a low troops count unit (5000) can beat a high troops count unit (20000), if you inject it with panic/confused status, low morale. In the 8 Remake, it always feel hopeless for a low troops count unit going up against a high troops unit, because skills are lacking. The high troops count unit already has man advantage, and that's enough, why should it have 2nd layer of advantage, allowing the system to scale Attack/Defense with troops count? In Layman's terms, Koei is basically saying a high HP character will have higher Attack, higher Defense, when in fact high HP should only mean the number of hits you can take before you are out.
In OG8, the defenders location are hidden, you can get ambushed very easily if you move your unit too quickly beyond your armies view range and bump into standing army. Battle usually take place in the center camp, there is a dotted line showing cutting across the center camp, and if attackers cross this dotted line, you will lose backline support and lose 5 morale per round, which is perfect because it doesn't force you to stay before the line, you could play beyond the dotted line all you want. Another thing is, you are not allowed to project your movement, by virtually placing your units to an enemy to preview how much exact damage you will do, etc and then right click to revert.
In the 8 Remake, defenders location are basically revealed, view range are extremely broad, no element of surprise at all. It's usually going through these stupid tower turrets or defenders hugging their castle.
