Kensai7 said:
What do the reviews over amazon.jp say? I see 3 out of 5. Are they harsh? This is a game about Japanese history so the opinion of Japanese players matters the most!
Not really too negative-pretty much like a cross section of the board here. Lots of comparisons to the 'Nobunaga No Yabou' (Nobunaga's Ambition) series, which tells me these are largely console gamers and not PC gamers. There are issues with the game being too difficult (especially when playing as a kokujin), hard to get into (esp. the interface), and lacking a complex diplomacy element (they don't consider the plotting to be diplomacy). The dearth of ronin and ninja was mentioned. One guy said it was too much like Crusader Kings, but that it might be good because some of the CKII features might be adapted to Sengoku at some point.
They do like the historical accuracy portion of the game and the plotting. Most of the reviews really liked the game (Japanese tend to rate items lower on Amazon than Westerners do) and thought that it provides a solid base to build on.
Hister said:
Awesome! Do you guys also play Shogun 2 Total War?
The most played game is Takeda 3 followed by Takeda 2. Even though it's a couple of years old, It's the most accurate Sengoku-era game out there that has tactical battles, and also a great strategic side to things with a heavy emphasis on supply and command. It's also easy to insert custom banners for your troops, and even officer portraits. Plus my father-in-law (who heads up the club) and myself are characters that appear in the game, so everyone gets a kick out of that. I'm a gaijin firearms-ashigaru general in Nagao Kagetora's (the future Uesugi Kenshin) army.
Shogun 2 gets played a bit, but it's really too much for our computers to run, and gets hooted at a lot because of all the ridiculous ahistorical and anachronistic unit types. Fall of the Samurai will REALLY get laughed at.
I think Sengoku will prove to be very popular because it starts in the Onin war, gives a ton of options, is historically accurate, and because it IS difficult. Our guys like a challenge. We've got four terminals so we can have a nice little LAN game going on to make things easier in the early game, until someone gets too close to winning.
