I played some of the earlier (SNES) ones a little bit... and I'm kinda' fond of the NES RPG based off RoTK. Nothing more recent than that, though, and I kinda' like my strategy with a bit more fancy than the RoTK strategy games traditionally incorporate, heh. They tend to be objectively good stuff, though.
One of these days I'll play a newer one 
The newer ones CERTAINLY have more "fancy" then the NES and SNES ones XD
EDIT: Hmm looking at youtube on RotTK X and the main map looks pretty much the same as 3, not much improvement after so many years xD
Theres not really much improving you can do on real world geography
As for actual GAMEPLAY, it certainly improved that in spades.
I still play 3 pretty regularly and 7 on occasion. 12 came out last year after something like a 6 year hiatus for the series, but I heard it was really dumbed down 
They're wonderful games, and the novels are a fun read if long-winded historical fiction that often reads like a textbook is your bag.
Yeah I've played 10, 8 and 7. I think I also played that NES RPG, or a flash game copy of it.
I would like to read the novels, but I'm not sure if I could find them in English. Or if the English translation would actually do it justice XD
Just curious, seeing as number 10 is easily my favorite strategy game ever.
I'm curious... what is it about #10 that makes it a great strategy game? This is coming from someone who's never played any of them. I have heard at least once or twice before though that they are truly great. What about RoTK makes it stand out from other strategy games?
7/8 are my favouritest, because they're the most RPG-y. You can travel around China, doing quests and finding items. Exploration was sorta rewarded by talking to people in new cities and getting info unlocks. Even espionage was RPG-ified by having to actually travel to the city you want to spy on, and you know, spy (and try not to get caught).
I don't like the ones where you're forced to control a faction and just do boring war stuff, because China takes a seriously long time to conquer. For me, this was 11 to the max.
Well what I like about 10 is, as h3lblad3 said, that it focuses really hard on your personal character (and if your character dies, any children they have)
As for what I like about the series itself, probably the simple cathartic "heres a map of ancient china, and the tools to mess its history up really really hard. Go nuts"
Also I like 10s actual battles (though unfortunately the "campaigns" are boring) as they really feel as though your strategy and tactics make a difference.
In 7 and 8 I could never really figure out the warfare portion of the game to be honest, but 10 really makes it simple without dumbing it down.
There are a few things I liked more in 7 and 8 though. Specifically the fact that characters had different "ranks" in skills, like ambushing and other tactics.
As well as the fact that actually training skills and attributes ingame took less then 400 years
Also one of my most memorable playthroughs happened in...er......I THINK it was 8. Not really sure, 7 and 8 blend together a bit in my mind.
But yeah, Quinten Tao. I started him off with pretty much nothing, and then I raised him and trained him till he could beat Lu Bu in a fight, Zhuge Liang in strategy and Liu Bei in a popularity contest. Then I made him the ultimate mercenary, jumping from one army to the other, turning pissant cesspools into great kingdoms and being the leading cause of the fall of empires, switching sides whenever I felt like it.
Until of course I became so infamous that no one would hire me, and no one would work for me when I carved out a small kingdom of my own.
Ah those were the days
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Topic: Romance of the Three Kingdoms- Anyone else play this, and what number are we on? (Read 3960 times)