Heavy is the head that wears a crown. As a ruler, you not only have to look after your own well-being but also the welfare of those you rule. You must play a dangerous game of balancing the noble against the commoner, the plowshare against the sword, expenses against profit, and virtue against practicality.
And if you fail? Don’t worry, you’ll wake up and do it all over again.
Reigns: Three Kingdoms takes place during the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history, a time which I only have passing familiarity with – and as a PC gamer, I’ve never really played the Dynasty Warriors series.
As a time traveler thrust into the final years of the Han Dynasty, you’ll need to assemble a formidable fighting force for either protection or conquest, make friends and political allies, and address both your own needs and those of your budding kingdom. There’s no true way to win – all you have to do is stay alive for as long as possible. It’s a little bit visual novel, a little bit roguelike, and a lot of fun. Oh, and did I mention you will die? You will die. A lot.
Once you’re ready, you can join the time-traveling hijinks brawl via the Google Play Store and the App Store. As Reigns: Three Kingdoms is a Netflix game, you must have a Netflix account to download and play it!
Veteran players of any of the Reigns series should note that Three Kingdoms plays similarly to the other entries; the main difference is the setting of medieval China. For totally new players though, welcome to the wacky world of Reigns, and I hope you enjoy dying!
In this Reigns: Three Kingdoms guide, we’ll be covering:
- The two layers of the game, which I call the civic and the combat layer.
- On the civic layer, we have the four bars, managing them, avoiding death, and making friends.
- On the combat layer, we’ll discuss the card game that’s played whenever combat occurs.
As I believe that much of the fun of Reigns: Three Kingdoms comes from not knowing what card you’ll be dealt next, I’ll abstain from spoilers throughout this guide.
The Civic Layer
There are two layers to the game. These are the civic layer where you talk to people, address your needs, and keep each value in check, and the combat layer where the actual game is played. Mastery of both layers is vital to success in Reigns: Three Kingdoms.
Quick Tips:
- There are four bars at the top of the screen. These roughly represent your material wealth, your popularity with the commoners, your military might, and your virtue.
- Either extreme of each bar will lead to a game over. Your task is to rule evenly and tread the middle ground of each stat.
- Governance is done by presenting you with random cards drawn from a deck. Each choice you make can affect one of your four bars – a small circle means a minor impact, while a big circle means a major one.
- There is no indication as to whether a decision will raise or lower the stat. Pay attention to the event text and remember the names of each bar to make an educated guess as to how your choice will play out.
- Selecting certain dialogue options elicits reactions from the NPC you’re speaking to. You can make friends and foes this way.
- Remember – today’s choices can have massive consequences in the future!
The Four Bars
Before we begin, I’ll introduce you to the four bars at the top of the screen. Always pay attention to them as they can bring your dreams of conquest to a grinding halt and an unexpected death – say hi to Lucy for me.
The first is the sheaf of…wheat? Rice? Let’s call it the wealth meter. The wealth meter represents your material goods, whether that’s food, wood, stone, or coin to pay your troops. Get too much wealth and you’ll be a prime target for everyone else. Have no wealth and STARVE.
The second is the human-shaped meter, which I’ll call the popularity meter. This represents your image with the commoners. Get this too high and the nobles will decide you’re a threat, but too low a popularity score means the working man is just waiting for a chance to stick a knife in your back!
The third meter, depicted with a sword, is your might meter. This represents the military strength of your realm. Get this too high and your soldiers become rowdy, eventually deciding they don’t like having a leader bossing them around. Too low of a might score, on the other hand, means that you’re a sitting duck on the world stage. Expect a swift death.
The last and perhaps most confusing meter is the…tower? Cylinder. Whatever. Let’s call it the virtue meter as it seems to be largely based on values. Kindness, patience, and charity are good things to be sure, but a leader who is too soft-spoken to fight back is easy prey.
If you’ve ever played a little game called Needy Streamer Overload, you’ll know that residing on either extreme of any meter is a bad thing that can result in a game over. If any of your bars are in the danger zone, that bar will glow a bright green to warn you of the impending game over. Too much virtue and your guys will be too polite to fight back, too much popularity with the peasants and the nobles will decide you’re a hindrance, too little wealth and your people will become, shall we say, unaccountably peckish. As a result, temper your choices and live in moderation!
Adjusting the Meters
Now that you know about the dangers of your meters, let’s learn how to manipulate them.
Each choice you make in a dialogue can have an impact on several parameters. Yes, your meters are one of them. If a choice would impact one or more of the four meters, you’ll see a dot appear on top of it when selecting that dialogue choice. The size of the dot reflects how big of an impact your action will have on that meter. If in doubt, play it safe.
The tricky thing here is that you won’t know how it will impact said meter or by how much. Refer to the names I gave them – wealth, popularity, might, and virtue – and you can infer how the meters will move. Anything that makes you richer will affect your wealth, anything that affects the commoners and their rights affects popularity, arming or disarming your soldiers and providing (or withholding) supplies moves might, and acting like an all-around butt lowers your virtue. Yes, get ready to play wildly inconsistent personalities just to survive.
For example, in the image above, the woman is complaining that her husband becomes abusive when drunk. The choices presented are either to straight-up ban alcohol (which would be a wildly unpopular move that will drop popularity) or to speak to the husband for a more moderate solution. Some events, however, are just straight-up weird.
Remember: everything in moderation!
Dialogue and Relations
Talking to people doesn’t just affect your four meters. Your choices can also influence their opinion of you and can help make both allies and enemies if that’s your thing.
Pay attention to the reaction of the person you’re talking to when you select a choice. A neutral expression indicates no change in their opinion, an angry one means you’ll take a hit, a happy face means your relations will improve a bit, and so on.
Choose carefully and wisely, as you’ll need to temper the four meter’s movements along with these relations.
Future Impact
Some dialogue options aren’t a one-and-done deal. Certain cards are only added to the deck if you’ve made particular choices in dialogue trees, so pay close attention to how you answer people, especially historical big shots of that era such as Liu Bei, Cao Cao, or Zhang Jiao.
Remember, too, that this is (theoretically) a simulation, so history may not play out as it did in real life!
Events
Events are big happenings in the world of Reigns: Three Kingdoms.
Events can come as a result of certain actions, while others are based on the real events in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Completing these events doesn’t tangibly give you anything, though it does award you a nice check mark on your things to do.
To see a list of events and achievements you’ve cleared, you can check your profile. Tap the button on the lower right (the location icon), then tap on the 3rd icon.
Where Did We Leave Off?
Note that your progress through Reigns: Three Kingdoms is incremental. Whenever you die and return as your own cousin (seriously, you have a LOT of cousins), you’ll continue where your previous life left off. This means that you’ll still potentially reap the consequences of an earlier action or suffer the consequences of losing a card battle due to story changes even if you’re no longer playing as the person who triggered those events. You’ll also start in the location where your predecessor died. Try not to make the same mistakes they did, yeah?
This also means that event progress is carried over from one life to the next. And yes, that includes their deadlines, so watch out!
The Combat Layer
While ruling the empire is a large task enough to build a game around, there’s a second half to Reigns: Three Kingdoms. That part is combat, and learning the rules and basics of it will help you avoid an early grave and hopefully help you consolidate your power!
Quick Tips:
- Your objective in battle is to reduce your opponent’s supplies to zero. This is done by attacking with your front card.
- Both players take turns rotating their cards. Whenever a card is placed in the front slot, it attacks their opponent’s front card, or their supplies if there is no defender.
- Each rotation consumes 1 action point. Action points are depicted via coins. When you select a rotation, you’ll first get a “half turn” where the consumed action point turns red and you can preview the damage you would do.
- Units cannot take consecutive turns. If you rotate to a card that has previously attacked, the wheel will instead turn to whoever hasn’t attacked yet, in the direction you specified.
- Always ensure that your supplies are covered with a high-health card at the end of your turn.
- Cards have two stats: attack, on the left, and health, on the right.
- There is no countering in combat. Only the attacker deals damage to the defender.
- Some cards have abilities. There are both passive and active abilities in Reigns: Three Kingdoms.
- To manually trigger effects, tap “activate” in the ability’s info panel (top of the screen).
- In the story mode, you can auto resolve battles by telling your generals to go on without you. Note that you can only auto resolve battles that have this prompt.
Combat Flow
Combat in Reigns: Three Kingdoms proceeds as such:
- At the beginning of a battle, you will draw three random cards from your deck based on the cards you’ve unlocked. You can choose to redraw up to 3 times.
- Players take turns rotating their troops. The unit that lands in front will attack, spending one action point. Action points are listed as coins.
- A unit cannot take two consecutive turns. If you make a unit attack, then try to have it attack again, the next card will attack instead.
- Units deal damage to their opponent’s front card equal to their damage. There are no counterattacks.
- When a card loses all its health, it is removed from the field.
- Your objective is to attack your opponent’s supply – the number in the center of their circle.
- The player who loses all their supply loses the match.
The Wheel of Combat
The cursory overview was just that – an overview. We’ll need to dig in to explore the intricacies of the battle system.
As mentioned earlier, you’ll draw cards from your deck – this deck varies from playthrough to playthrough based on the cards you’ve unlocked and your specific circumstances. These initial cards will make up your fighting force. You can rotate your first cards as you wish before entering battle.
In the story, you always take the first turn. Note that the first player in battle always starts with just 2 action points instead of the standard 3.
Your options in battle are to rotate left, rotate right, or use an ability. Each rotation costs one action point, as denoted by the gold coins in the middle left or right of the screen.
Here.
When you choose to rotate, the action point that would be spent will first turn red, and you’ll get a preview of the damage you’ll do. Think of this as a confirmation period – the game’s just checking that this is what you really want to do.
Once you’ve rotated your cards, your new front card will attack your opponent’s front card. Note that there’s no counterattack damage. The opponent’s card’s health will turn red to indicate how much damage you would do.
You can rotate a number of times equal to your action points. Watch out though – a unit cannot attack consecutively. Also, note that action points do not carry over. By default, players have 3 action points, except the first player, who only gets 2 on their first turn.
Your turn ends once you’re out of action points; alternatively, you can choose to manually end your turn by tapping the red X in the middle section of the screen.
Breaking the Supply Lines
Your goal in combat is to destroy your opponent’s supplies – the box in the middle of their circle. This is done by attacking when your opponent has no front card.
You don’t have to kill all of your opponent’s guys to get to their supply stash. By striking strategically, you can decimate their front card and get a few sneaky hits in on their supply pile. But be wary – they’ll be doing the same thing!
To avoid losing, try to ensure that at the end of your turn, you have a healthy or well-protected front card. The more health your opponent has to cut through, the tougher it will be to get to your supplies.
Cards in Detail
Now that you know how to win card battles, it’s time to talk about your cards themselves. While there is a modicum of randomness in that you can’t select which cards to bring into your first wave, knowing how to maximize each of them is very important.
All cards have two stats – attack and health. Attack is found on a card’s lower left, while health is on its lower right. A card deals damage equal to its attack when it attacks another card or your opponent’s supplies. If a card has no more defense, it is removed from the field.
Some cards have powerful abilities.
As you can see in the image above, Sun Ce has a powerful ability that triggers on attack. When Sun Ce attacks, the ally to his left doubles its attack power until the end of the turn. Abilities like these can often make or break the battlefield, so pay attention to your troops. At the same time, watch out for your opponent’s cards as they can pack strong abilities of their own. You can tap a card at any time to read its effect.
Not all abilities are passive, though.
In this image, my opponent has Lady Cai on the field. Lady Cai has a trigger effect, meaning that her player must manually activate her effect. In her case, Lady Cai will drain 2 supplies from her player but, in return, she switches her allies’ abilities into a 1 damage counterattack for the next turn. Not bad!
To activate effects like these, tap on the card in question, then tap the blue activate button that appears near the top info panel. Be sure to read the activation cost, though!
Bringing Back the Dead
Just because you’ve lost a few guys doesn’t mean the end of the world. Fallen soldiers can easily be replaced, so long as you still have cards in your deck.
When a card is destroyed, its slot in the circle doesn’t vanish but is instead replaced by a “tombstone” card. This tombstone cannot attack, but it can still take turns when placed in front. If a tombstone takes two turns, you can then draft a new card from your pile to replace it.
Both players can keep reinforcing their ranks so long as they still have cards in their deck.
Auto Combat
During the story, you have the option of whether you want to play battles manually or resolve them automatically. If you find that just going through the story is more fun than playing the card game, this option’s just for you.
Usually, one of your aides will comment something along the lines of “This will get bloody”. You’ll then have the option of delegating the strategy to your generals. Hopefully, they’ll win.
Note that auto resolving combat has no repercussions on the story – the only thing that can alter events is whether you win or lose that battle.
Arise Again, Isekai Warrior!
…for that is our curse. Until Synaptic has the data it wants from the Three Kingdoms period, we’ll be stuck in this loop of death and rebirth. So, kick back, relax, and take everything in stride. Life’s a game, after all, and the only problem we have to solve is how to make the most of it – until someone comes for our heads again!
That concludes guide to Reigns: Three Kingdoms, and I hope I was able to help you progress from mindless scrolling with no idea of what you’re doing to mindless scrolling where you have -some- idea of what you’re doing. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this guide or want to share some tips or tricks of your own, make your voice heard in the comment area below!
Bengt
Wednesday 14th of February 2024
What are the possible endings?