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I am vaguely aware of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but haven't ever read the source material or a good translation.
Anyone have any suggestions? As I've declaimed and disclamed before, my Chinese is limited to nihao-ing at some fine ABGs. A solid translation, or visual media would be fine. Subs or dubs, don't care. It just has to be faithful to the source
I mean... it's really long, and really old, and really Chinese. It's not something you can just read casually. It's practically a whole field of study in itself.
I grew up playing Koei games like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" series. If you're... a certain sort of nerd, you'll appreciate them. The downside is, they sort of assume you already know the story, so they can be confusing. But they'll still give you part of the story, and a good appreciation for the overall strategic situation and map.
"Dynasty Warriors" is more story based. It's pretty much nonsense, but it gives a good sense for the myths and legends, which is what most people remember it for anyway.
For a slightly more academic approach, I really enjoyed this blog series: Chinese history for white people. Still very limited and oversimplified, but it's a good read.
Beyond that, I think you just have to read Wikipedia articles about the specific people and battles involved. Or commit yourself to learning Chinese lol. I think it's still lacking in proper English-language material.
My introduction to romance of the 3 kingdoms was Dynasty Warriors (I think 3) and I learned beyond a shadow of doubt that Lu Bu is not to be trifled with.
Also my poor pronunciation means seeing Cao Pi's name (which I read as cow pie) always gets a giggle from me.
See, for me, it was playing the strategy game "Romance of the 3 Kingdoms" series on NES. Which tells you absolutely nothing about these characters except their stats. You can recruit all of them, but there's a hidden loyalty stat for how the story is supposed to go. So I kept trying to recruit Lu Bu because he had the best combat stat, and he kept on betraying me XD. I suppose that's a very authentic experience to the story!
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