I'm a long time fan of the series, starting with ROTK IV. But other than that iteration, I probably played ROTK 10 and 11 the most. The former of the two is an almost role-playing style experience where you choose one officer and decide what they do day-to-day. The latter of those two follows the ruler style of play, in which you control your kingdom and make decisions to govern it. ROTK 14 is of the latter sort.

At its core this is a turn-based map painting game. The artwork of the officers is beautiful, the music is sweeping, but extremely repetitive and ill-fitting for the era of the game. The gameplay in this iteration is perhaps overly simple. Most turns are simply spent rewarding officers with cash (a term which was actually used to describe a type of money in ancient China, by the by) to keep them loyal and just agreeing to the suggestions of my officers. In battle, you tell your officers what you want them to do that turn and the AI executes it for you, which often has unfortunate results. The opposition AI seems much more reactive during the combat phase than those following my commands! Doesn't have multiplayer and suffers for that.

It's not a bad game per se, it's just not very interesting, especially if you don't already have an interest in the series or time period. So for that reason I won't recommend it.