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Four hours of repetitive, can't lose minigames

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: February 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I really had high hopes for this game. Samurai. A Shogun gameboard. Strategy and real time action. I am very sorry to say that this game is pretty atrocious.

First, the plot. There are 2 sons of an ailing shogun. One is the diplomat, the other is the warrior. Whoever takes over Japan gets the magic sword and the rule.

In essence this is one of my favorite board games, Shogun, done on the Nintendo DS. A map of Japan, divided up into provinces, is randomly scattered with four types of forces. There are your units, your brother's units, a third lord's units and random bandit zones. There are also grey areas that can be taken over without a fight.

To take over a location, you can either fight, or try to negotiate. The idea is that you go, then your brother goes, back and forth until someone takes over the whole area. Now here's the ironic part. I did my first play-through as the negotiator. I hardly EVER won a negotiation. I had to fight my way through the provinces one by one. It took about 2 hours to win the game. So then I played through as the warrior. He won pretty much EVERY negotiation.

Also, while the brother did go once, after that I plowed straight through and he never went again. Why? Because I pretty much won every single battle, in both playthroughs, meaning I could keep going. It was that easy.

When you battle, you randomly get one of several mini-games. Maybe you're firing arrows at archers. Maybe you're firing arrows at archers ... on a ship. Maybe you're moving little soldiers around on one of 3 map sets, against enemy soldiers. You have the option of splitting your soldiers into groups and doing tactical work - but why bother? You always win simply by massing them into a group and plowing at the enemy one by one. I've never lost.

The AI is awful. I've seen enemies stuck on a wall. I've seen my own forces stuck on a rock. One time, my forces teleported across a body of water. My favorite has to be the "gate" minigame. You're supposed to destroy the gatehouse to open the gate, and then go in and fight with the soldiers inside. However, you can pick off half of the enemies with your archers, without them firing a shot. Even better, somehow some of your guys can slip THROUGH the closed gate. Apparently this is so unbelievable to the enemies that they don't see you at all. You can walk up to them, one by one, and slay each one without them moving a muscle. You can win the entire level without a scratch.

The game gets very tedious very quickly. Since you always win, there's no challenge at all. Since the missions are all the same, you know exactly how to win one as soon as it loads. Luckily, I suppose, you can win both sets of missions (i.e. both brothers) in about 4 hours. Once you do, there's nothing more to do.

Rent if you must, and only if you want to play minigames for a few hours.

An Insult

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: December 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Graphics are terrible, the artificial intelligence is an insult, and the gameplay lasts for as much as 2 hours. That's it. In 120 minutes, you'll have finished the game and you'll never want to touch it again.

I've been fooled.

Do not buy this game.

Game has bugs, I want my $30 back!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: December 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I was so excited to see a Nobunga's Ambition clone return to the gameboy platform. Unfortunately, this game feels like it was written by a programming team who never played any of the previous Nobunga's Ambition classics.

The key to the game, is to not think, just how fast can you move a stylus to shoot or kill 5 to 8 samurai?

Game does not shift screen to the province that has the focus.
You cannot control the game with the keypad, you must use the stylus.As a result gameplay is slow.

The attack mini games are well... stupid. A second grader could master this game... in one night. I beat the game in just a few hours.

The statistics in this game are very basic. No trading for rice or gold here, no recruiting soldiers, no training your warriors for battle, no fortifying of castles, just how many honor points can you get. You use honor points to upgrade your archers, swordsmen and so on.

Finally, it took me longer to beat the game because when I attacked the "Kenshin Bandits", the game locked up!

Pros:
1) The stylus works with this game.

Cons:
1) Locked up during battle.
2) 3D Graphics look animated rather than drawn realtime.
3) No one would play this game more than once.
4) Box Clever Interactive ruined this line of games for the Gameboy, with a horrible first release. >:|

HORRIBLE GAME!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: November 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Don't buy this game. I thought it would be like Shogun Total War which is an old PC game, but I was terribly disappointed! This game is no fun at all. I took over half of Japan in about 15 minutes, no kidding!!! If I would have kept going I could have beat it in an hour, but I took it back to the store instead. DO NOT BUY!!!!

Baught it to pass time...oops

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game was fun at first only because it is incredibly easy. I expected it to get harder as the game went on but it only got easier. It only has 5 battle scenarios. 3 of them are battle fields that you can win without playing at all, your troops will win just by defending them selves. After many of the battles you will have to chase the enemy general on horse back and fire arrows at him. You can't really aim, all you do is fire the arrows and you will beat him. The ninja this is also stupid. I hired one and never got to use it. All in all the game is fun if you don't like being challenged, otherwise its crap. If you are going to buy it, buy it used. It's not worth 30 dollars.

It's okay...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I thought it might be similar to Ages Of Empires - but it isn't. It just isn't very exciting.

No strategy, no challenge, no fun

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

What a waste of time! I just bought this game yesterday, looking for a solid strategy game, and found none on it. As already stated, it's a very poor and lame strategy wanna be game. Too easy, too short and no challenge at all. Nice cover, but that's all. It's not even worth the 7 bucks I paid for it.

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