Legend of Cao Cao: Home

12/14/07: With all the time we’ve spent focusing on older gems such as Destiny of an Emperor it is a wonder that we haven’t properly introduced Koei’s Legends series to you. While none of these five games—Legend of Heroes, Legend of Kongming, Legend of Mori Motonari, Legend of Oda Nobunaga, Legend of Cao Cao—were ever released in English, some of them have very large followings overseas in Asia. Today I’m going to introduce Legend of Cao Cao, perhaps the most successful and the most loved game in the entire series, and also, unfortunately, the last.

Legend of Cao Cao plays like Fire Emblem. In battle your units are deployed on a grid. You and one (or more) opposing faction take turns giving orders. Each unit can be given certain tasks (use an item, cast a spell, attack), and through these actions you strive to defeat the opposing side. After each round it is possible that storyline events may take place, introducing new threats or units, and during battle duels, double-strikes, and critical hits may also take place.

Legend of Cao Cao is extremely difficult to purchase in an English market as, to the best of our knowledge, no retailer makes it available. You cannot import it through Koei. Check back with us later on this. That said, if you do have it, or have access to it, you’re in luck—Lady Wu has been working for months to translate the entire game into English! She has already finished a beta release of her patch, which you can read more about and download at our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou.

We’ll talk more about Legend of Cao Cao in months to come, and we’ll offer new goodies to compliment your new old-school adventure. For now, we usher the game in with a new addition: the Legend of Cao Cao Home Page, currently supplied with handy community links, English-patched Windows screenshots, and a game-guide by Taishi Ci 2.0. Check back for more later!