Paradox Interactive, publisher of the Mount & Blade series and the developer behind the funny but popular Magicka series, have released a new strategy game called Sengoku. In Sengoku you play the leader of a noble family in the feudal era of Japan. Your goal is to lead your clan/house through the warring states period, wrestle control of 50% of Japan's 360 provinces and become Shogun of Japan. To accomplish this goal, several tools that are at your disposal: Ninjas, armies of Samurai, Roaming bands of Ronin that will randomly attack your enemies and secret political plots to attack or dishonor those who would stand against you.
Get used to this map... you will see it... A LOT!
The Game:
Sengoku plays a lot like Risk, minus the turn based aspect and with an additional layer of politics thrown over top of it. Players will build up their castles and villages, raise armies and send those armies to capture other factions territories. Battles are fought automatically and are resolved via dice rolls that the player can watch but not participate in. So, arm-chair generals who like to directly command their forces in battle may not find anything particularly interesting here. The amount of troops you bring to the fight tends to win out over the quality of those troops but armies that have been on the battlefield longer tend to do better in 1 to 1 match ups. You can upgrade your provinces with guilds that are supposed to give bonuses to your troops but the actual benefits of these bonuses were not readily apparent to me in the battles that I watched.
The political aspect of the game materializes in the form of "Plots". Plots are centered around attacking enemy clans and are a way for the player to get other clans to assist them in taking down a common enemy. This part of the game was the most difficult for me to test out. Most of the clans around me were either neutral towards me or an enemy. Neutral clans would not engage in plots with me and I could not find a way to improve my relations with those clans. I tried giving them money, arranging marriages between our off spring... nothing seemed to work. I ended up never successfully executing any of my plots.
Plots... how do they work? Is it a miracle?
Time is controlled via an interface at the top right corner of the screen and can be speed up, slowed down or stopped at any time by the player. Rather than presenting a tactical advantage, the ability to control time simply allows the player to keep track of the myriad of changes that can (and does) happen in an instant in Sengoku. Another way that the game tries to help the player keep track of important changes is through a message system; located at the bottom right corner of the screen. Everything that affects you directly is tracked in this area of the interface and messages are separated into two categories: normal and important. Normal messages can be things like "your forces have arrived in x province" or "you have appointed x person to x position". Important messages can be things like "your heir has died" or "x clan has declared war on your clan". Important messages will pause the game and allow the player to react accordingly to them.
Players can choose to start the game from one of several perspectives. Players who are new to the game can start off as a Provincial Lord under the control of a Daimyo (Daimyos are the lords who control multiple provinces). Provincial Lords only control one province on the map and have few interactions outside of their Daimyo's realm. As their honor and prestige increases, their Daimyo can offer them landed titles which gives them more provinces to control. Adventurous players can skip straight to being the controlling Daimyo of a clan. However, I would not personally recommend this because leading a clan can be an overwhelming experience to the novice player.
My thoughts:
You can tell that the developers behind Sengoku have a lot of love for the source material here. The loading screens are decorated with wonderful looking paintings depicting ancient Japan, the music sounds rich and authentic, the names of the clans and provinces are historically accurate and even the names of the characters seem to be pulled straight from a Japanese history book. From a design standpoint I can't help but like Sengoku. However, from a gameplay perspective, I do have some problems with Sengoku.
Sengoku, the ultimate island with tiny flags all over it simulator
While the game tries to provide the player with tips (in the form of pop-up screens) on some of the basic principles of the game, Sengoku can still end up being a confusing experience for the beginning player. When I first started playing Sengoku I became extremely frustrated with the game when several aspects of the core gameplay didn't work the way I thought they should and couldn't find an explanation of why they didn't work (like plots for instance...see above). Had the developers provided some form of in-game tutorial, perhaps I would have had a better experience with the game. At times the interface can be confusing. I often found myself digging through multiple menus just to find out basic information that should have been easier to access. Too many times, information that would be helpful to the me is not available at all (Detailed Income vs expense, army upkeep costs...etc). Again, if this information is easily available somewhere (that I missed), it would have been helpful to have been shown this in a tutorial or something.
My experience Sengoku was not all bad. I kind of like this game. There is a lot here to keep an old Risk player like me interested for hours on end. However, interface issues and mysterious game mechanics kept me from overwhelmingly recommending this to everyone. If you like Japanese history and love strategy games (like Risk), then I would definitely recommend Sengoku to you.
In honor of the love the developers of Sengoku have shown to the source material, I wanted to end this game review with a mini review... in Haiku form:
Sengoku was fun
Despite some confusing play
Strategy fans buy!
