I suppose it was closer to the book but it still felt off to me. The story modes were bad due to lack of choice, they were too short for all kingdoms, and they didn't feel very connected. Well, the story modes between kingdoms felt disconnected. The battles for each kingdom's story felt well connected, of course, but that's because they oversimplified the plot. Lately I've been having more and more the feeling that KOEI doesn't have any idea what made the games good. They've been focusing on characters, especially female characters, and weapons, while neglecting story and tactical aspect of the games. In the end, all that's left is mediocre gameplay accompanied by bad story and bad characters.

...I kinda went beyond the story part there. Oh well. I'm just a bit frustrated by how KOEI handles the series when it has so much potential.

But it was literally the story of the book. The reason why the did not give choice is because they do not want the player's agency to effect the outcome of the battle. The outcome has to conform with the book. This was actually one of the big criticism that they attempted to address because earlier version of the game was getting more and more 'what if' with Lu Bu taking over china or Shu winning etc and fans were complaining that it was drifting too far from the canon story.

And of course they have to simplify the plot. Romance of Three Kingdoms has a staggering amount of text that covers a very long period. They simply don't have the budget to undertake it, especially with how hard the transition been for most Japanese developer.

There is definitely flaws in the game, the tactical aspect key amongst them but DW7 was probably the best attempt they did on story since DW3.

I always felt DW5 handled story the best. If offered a good amount of depth for story yet it didn't seem like it was expesive to pull off. Of course it was less cinematic than DW7... But I certainly didn't mind. I know they took the story from the book and I appreciate them doing so, but I think they didn't do it very well. And the explanation about having to make it so that the player can't affect the outcome of battles is flawed: They managed to pull it off in all of the earlier games, they just had to resort to remarks like "Despite X's heroic efforts, Y was forced to withdraw." etc. and it worked just fine.

Anyway, I think I missed my own point... The lack of choice I was complaining about wasn't them making battles have a 'forced' outcome. It was about lack of tactical approaches to reach the same outcome, as well as about lack of character choice. In DW7, you could play each story battle with just one character, which was very annoying. I hear they somewhat fixed that in DW8, which is good, but I'm still not happy about it. I think they shouldn't have gone the cinematic route, it simply doesn't work with the amount of effort they're putting in the story so they end up losing more than they gain. Oh, in case it wasn't clear, I attribute a lot of these changes to their cinematic approach, so that's where that came from.