Recent reviews by Grand Historian

Great Houses of Calderia is the latest offering in the 'inspired by CK2' genre, and probably the best praise I can give it is that it manages to recapture some of that magic I felt when first playing CK2 in 2013 despite still being an early access title; I thought I'd just play for a few hours to get a feel of the game and wound up with over a dozen.

All the basics of a dynasty simulator are here; you play as a dynasty, which has a head, and members of your dynasty will marry, have children, form friendships and rivalries, develop traits, etc. as you set them about working your way climbing up a low fantasy Italian Renaissance-flavored feudal ladder. The ultimate goal of the game is to assume rulership of the eponymous Calderia (or fulfill a secondary victory objective you pick at start, which will affect your playstyle), though the biggest distinction between Crusader Kings and Calderia is that you strictly play as a dynasty in Calderia rather than as a character in a dynasty. There's no real jockeying for succession or subdivision of land upon your house head's death, and part of that his how Calderia handles fiefs. Rather than your holdings just being a jpeg with an attached spreadsheet you can put gold into every year or so to upgrade, fiefs are actually their own distinct entities; different fiefs will have different bonuses and maluses to the production of certain resources, begin with different buildings built and levels of population (which will determine what and how much resources you can produce), and will actually have centers of resource raw production present on the map where they can be attacked by bandits or during wartime and be disrupted, and all of it can be managed by individuals members of your dynasty whose skills will determine their effectiveness. The economic aspect of Calderia is actually one of the most engrossing I've seen in a dynasty simulator; it takes a few cues from Civ/Endless and the result is distinctive mix of 4x and grand strategy that's easily more interesting than most Paradox titles. The economic aspect is not limited to your fief; you can and will trade with other fiefs for needed resources, where you'll send one of your dynasty members to lead a caravan, which will be present on the map and could also be attacked or waylaid and will have to make more trips the more resources you trade. The details of that trade can also be adjusted with a minigame the game calls social conflicts.

Unlike in many games where once you decide on an action it's carried out, Calderia actually allows you to fight over aspects of it in a minigame called social conflicts. Everything from trade agreements to marriage contracts can be affected by this, where the character you have assigned to an action, along with companions that you've unlocked by developing your fief, will fight the other party; it's important to note that you're not fighting over the actual details of an agreement, but its terms. So a social conflict when finalizing a marriage will determine who gets to host the wedding (i.e. which character joins the other house) while one over a trade agreement will determine who gets a discount over the items in question. Thankfully it does not become overbearing; social conflicts are always triggered by an event choice (meaning you can avoid it) and also have an auto-resolve. While diplomacy is between houses at large, your members are your way of carrying it out; you can send them on official visits or to reside in other courts as guests or squires, or to recruit spies. Espionage is also fleshed out; after recruiting spies they can commit a variety of actions (affecting relations, disrupting production, assassination, attacking caravans, etc.) to advance your goals. Overall, despite being an early access title the diplomatic aspects are already fleshed out and engaging.

Calderia is not without its shortcomings. My biggest gripes with its execution are the UI and overreliance on random events. The UI is inconsistent; it'll show you all the information you need to know well enough in some parts, but in others falls into the modern UI pitfall of not showing useful information in the name of streamlining or not having a window popup. One example would be with courting; rather than just giving you a list of people to have your character court in CK2, you instead have to click on arrows to move through the candidates one at a time. Weddings suffer too; getting one set up is harder than finishing the contract because the button to click to start is often 'not available'; it will not say why, nor offer a solution - this is not minor issue in a dynasty sim, especially since characters have to marry to have kids. Similarly, stuff like pregnancy seems to be handled through random events; Calderia, like most Paradox games, will bombard you with random events that you'll stop reading after a while because most of them are nonconsequential, but here they seem to be the only method through which members of your own dynasty interact. While some of this is Calderia still being early access - tournaments aren't in yet, for example, while religion/mathemagic is underdeveloped - the game still seems to lack proper mechanisms for your characters to interact. Characters can develop friendships and rivalries, but the how or why never seems to be shown, and traits only seem to be reactive to events rather than triggering them or actions to trigger them, with there being little for your characters to actively initiate or do in their own court. Even Old World, which is much closer to Civ than CK2, offers more; if I could give the devs a suggestion, expand the incident system (which seems to only exist to spawn bandit armies) to trigger the random events and then add more reactive events to actions the player takes.

The biggest criticism I have would be for Calderia's war system. While I wasn't expecting Total War, I would have preferred a Paradox-inspired system or just a different minigame than the social conflict mechanic being reused for battles. Forming armies is also annoying; there's no permanent garrison/man-at-arms/manpower system, so you only raise troops ad-hoc (instantaneously) and you won't recoup the costs of any survivors when the army disbands (presumably all that gear evaporates into thin-air). Pathfinding is wonky with armies deciding to just return home sometimes even if you gave other orders, armies do not exert an AoC, bandits will constantly pop up in other fiefs and spam you with events harassing your traveling characters, you cannot have a commanding officer offer peace terms to a fief he's just conquered (you have to have your house head travel all the way there) and declaring a claim war is locked unless you have just shy of the worst relations possible, which is actually relatively difficult to achieve.

While warfare is disappointing and Calderia still shows the rough edges of being an early access title, it is one that nonetheless shows immense promise. The management aspects of it are some of the most engaging in a grand strategy title I've seen, and when there is something for you to do the game does a very good job of grabbing your attention without wearing it out; for $25 I can highly recommend it as a potential competitor to Paradox grand strategy.

This is an abridged version of a full review which can be found here: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/koeiwarriors/my-review-for-na-awakening-t25974.html

Nobunaga's Ambition: Awakening is a difficult game to judge since it is the embodiment of the best and worst of Koei design philosophy. Most of the series fundamentals are still here in recognizable forms, but everything must operate within the new emphases on automation and restricting agency, which I feel severely holds back the game. For those who are not familiar with Nobunaga's Ambition, it is a grand strategy series set in Sengoku Japan. The series has traditionally had a strong emphasis on personnel management, with those personnel being historical characters existing in a historical context; many entries in it have also allowed for player management of tactical battles and employed a city-builder inspired system for economic development, which overall gives NA a very distinctive character that defies easy explanation beyond saying that, no, it is not like TW: Shogun 2.

Good:

Personnel Management is fully fleshed out and rewarding. Awakening puts its best foot forwards on one of the series flagship mechanics by making managing your personnel require actual management again. Loyalty is something that has to be actively monitored, hiring retainers takes actual effort, personnel have a hierarchy within your clan, how and what officers you assign where will dramatically affect the policies and strategies available to you, and personnel can be assigned actual fiefs instead of existing ephemerally within a castle. There is also a new system called direct talks where you will be able to negotiate directly with retainers over a number of possible issues.

Diplomacy is also one of the series' better iterations. While Sphere of Influence's Coalitions are sadly missing, its trust system and the ability to broker different actions with it are still around, while it also reintroduces actual negotiation from Iron Triangle (e.g. truces and tribute can be brokered in terms of exchanging gold, castles, treasures, etc. instead of just trust).

Policies are brought back from Sphere of Influence but take a few cues from Iron Triangle's technologies. They no longer have downsides beyond the gold upkeep, but must be researched over time by officers and have their effects unlocked/improved in tiers and will always be active once researched (unless you bankrupt). Requirements for unlocking them may also be dependent on what is physically available to your clan (e.g. no mining policies if you have no gold mines) and what officers you have in your council.

Espionage has also been brought back as a proper dimension after being neglected for many years. You can once again raze castles, sabotage supply lines, assassinate/wound enemy officers, incite riots, disrupt alliances and much more in addition to the usual arranging of defections.

Tactical Battles have strategic consequences. Many grand strategy games divorce the outcomes of their battles from any immediate consequences beyond the material losses of the troops involved. Awakening, however, has a system called Authority, where if a battle is large enough its consequences will spill over into the political sphere. If you defeat tens of thousands of enemy soldiers in a single battle or capture an important defensive base, the officers of that enemy clan will lose loyalty and some may reach out to you to defect, as will nearby castles and counties, and you will gain prestige and the respect of nearby clans (and you can be on the losing side of this).

Mixed:

Warfare is a marriage of Taishi and Sphere of Influence's systems. Roads from SoI have returned, but the county system that forms the basis of the map is an evolution of Taishi's - so while it allows the strategic maneuvering of the former and the army assembly of the latter, does not do either as well. The battlefield is more involved than before, with chokepoints and points of interest scattered across every battle map, but movement is along predetermined paths - meaning that while the battles are more tactical and resolve the total lack of an OOB that SoI/Taishi suffered from, it also reduces player interactivity. Siege battles can also be incredibly fun or annoying depending who is defending.

Counties are a continuation of Taishi's tile system, but better. You can give them out to officers, they each have separate economic values and potentials, many counties host a unique improvement that can be built and some even hold a landmark, which is a unique improvement that provides a global bonus once invested in. The criticism I have of this system is that it is the most indepth part of the game's civil system rather than being a backdrop to castle development.

Bad:

GUI in strategy games have been deteriorating as everything becomes more 'streamlined', and Awakening is no exception: this is probably the worst GUI in a NA game. This is owing to a mixture of clearly being designed with console controls in mind and information often being obfuscated. It's not an unworkable GUI, but there is a lot more clicking and even someone like me who doesn't typically care about GUI design noticed it.

Civil mechanics are also at their worst yet. Rather than requiring any city-building that rewards creativity, investment or interactivity it's little better than a Paradox game where you just slap a building into an ephemeral slot and watch a number increase. City-building has been the biggest casualty of Koei's efforts to reinvent the wheel; SoI, Tendou, Iron Triangle and Rise to Power all had excellent city-building mechanics that rewarded player involvement and offered massive variation depending on location and playstyle, and this just doesn't. Because of how siege battles work you can't even customize/upgrade castles, which is something that even Taishi had in a very barebones format and is a staple of the series.

AI Diplomacy is also awful in Awakening. Not because the AI is irrational or won't negotiate with the human, but because the devs appear to have made the conscious design decision to prevent the AI from forming dynamic alliances. This is a beyond baffling decision - the AI dynamically forming alliances has been a feature of every NA game and it has actually been very good at arranging them to counterbalance the player and other AIs.

Restricting Player Agency has been the theme of this game, and while it is tolerable since the AI is actually competent, it's not something I want to continue - I want to play a game, not have the game play itself for me. NA as a series has had a l impressive history of offering multiple tools to the player to delegate issues to the AI to help reduce micro, but these were either always optional, or could be ajusted by game settings and mechanics - here it is mandatory. It would be tolerable if this game had a dedicated officer play/feudal system, but it does not, which brings me to the final point.

Reinventing the Wheel is something Koei likes doing with these games, and often it just means that interesting systems are never fully developed or built upon between iterations for the sake of giving each game a unique spin. The county system, personnel management and increased emphasis on espionage feel like they would have fit in perfectly with SoI:Ascension's officer play, and if Awakening brought that and proper city-building I could overlook having my agency greatly restricted for the sake of a better feudalism simulation. That is unfortunately not the case, and the result is that while Awakening does not feel unfinished, it does feel incomplete.

Summary:

I would give NA:Awakening a cautious recommendation. The thing ultimately tipping this review in its favor would be that Awakening, like SoI, comes with the PuK (the single, massive expansion pack that Koei always does for these games) by default for the localized version. Get it on sale if you're on the fence.

Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is a heartfelt attempt to capture the feeling of the Ace Attorney series in a fantasy setting by a startup, and I'd say they succeeded. You play as the titular character, Tyrion Cuthbert, who (mainly) defends falsely accused mages in a court system that is allegedly rife with corruption - anyone who has played an Ace Attorney game will feel right at home, with the fantasy elements keeping enough different to keep it from being too derivative.

The good:
The mystery writing. Probably the most important element of the game, thankfully it's more often than not clever enough to keep you invested. There were multiple instances where, despite figuring out elements of how the murders took place before getting to the point where they were examined, I would still be thrown a curveball that had guessing some other aspect of the mystery. I can't really think of a point in the murder-mystery elements of the writing where I felt cheated by a reveal or twist because it does just enough foreshadowing/establishing precedent to make even the stretches work.

The characters. When the character writing isn't being subordinated to the themes (more on this later), it's pretty good. The main characters - Tyrion, his assistant Celeste, his mentor Ruby and the prosecutor Aria - are all well-written, multi-dimensional characters who experience a good deal of growth over the story. I don't think likeability is a good measure of how well-written a character is, but I felt all of them are also likeable (or at least sympathetic) characters, and the writing does bank on you caring about them.

The romance. It's not intrusive, but it is one of the two recurring subplots in this game and is well handled. I feel it was done in part because the writers understood the demographic they were targeting are Ace Attorney fans who have been consistently let down by Capcom - which is a safe bet - but I think the romance can stand on its own.

The fantasy elements. Magic is not just a gimmick, it is an integral part of every case and you will be rules-lawyering the particulars of spells and the who, what, when, where and hows of their uses. Magic is not merely a substitution for murder weapons either - you will encounter cases where the murders were conducted without the direct use of any magic, and magic is pretty well integrated into the setting as a phenomenon.

The price. I got about thirty hours out of a twenty dollar vn I got on sale - especially when put against the games it draws inspiration from (and, in its own way, is competing against), that's a really good cost per hour ratio and I enjoyed the time spent thoroughly.

The meh:

The references. As mentioned this game is a love letter to the Ace Attorney series, but unfortunately it's a love letter that makes a few confessions to stalking its inspiration. I personally don't care about some of the more blatant references, but if you're the type who does you will notice. The overarching antagonist also takes more than a few cues from Doki Doki Literature Club, right down to shameless fourth-wall breaks and meta-references, which I personally did not like, while many of the magical and racial terms don't really deviate from basic D&D/Pathfinder. The generic merchant art also bears a striking resemblance to a SAO side character.

The aesthetics. The character designs themselves are, mostly, consistent and visually appealing. However, the setting suffers from looking (and frankly behaving) like a generic isekai anime, with fantasy medieval and vaguely high victorian fashion trends existing side-by-side in a setting also containing suspiciously advanced industrial machinery and clothes and equipment you would expect to see in an mmo.

The unexplained. There are some things ingame that are never adequately explained, and not in the sense of being sequel bait - this was an indiegogo game that didn't get all of its goals, and so some things had to be cut. None of them are glaring or detract from the mysteries, but you will probably be able to figure out what they are if you think hard enough.

The QA. This game had a number of bugs and more than its fair share of typos, but the devs have been pretty good at trying fix them since launch. I personally didn't notice any that impeded my understanding of the story or progress ingame.

The bad:

The word puzzles. There are points ingame where Tyrion, as part of an internal monologue, needs to piece together a certain phrase to arrive at a conclusion. While it might help the player if they're having problems with the mystery, I can only think of one time where this segment actually did help me. A fundamental design flaw in these sorts of games is that progress is typically gated behind proving to the game that you know how certain aspects of a crime were committed - however, because it's a game, it will sometimes want a specific line of logic that the player might not have used to arrive to the same conclusion, resulting in a frustrated player having to guess on something they already know. The writing in the mysteries itself was typically good enough to avoid this, but these word puzzles are obtrusive.

The theme. The overarching theme of the narrative is 'nobility bad, kingdom corrupt'. While a corrupt court system is part and parcel with this genre, the writing fails to meaningfully substantiate this, and is so insistent on making you hate a caricature of nobility (which typically come off more like the mean kids in high school instead of actual tyrants) that it makes the setting sacrifice its plausibility and causes a lot of issues with the final murderer's reasoning.

The villain. The game doesn't try to hide who the overarching villain is in favor of having her have some DDLC-esque meta commentary. I think it really overplayed its hand on this since I didn't find it compelling beyond an initial chuckle, and I know the writing is capable of throwing decent curveballs. It's a lot of wasted potential, and because twist villains are a tradition in these sorts of games, also forced a character into the role who had no logical reason for doing what he did in the way he did (but hey, it fits the theme I guess). This is especially a shame since both of these are in the last case, which is actually pretty good in the mechanics of its murder-mystery.

Conclusion:

Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is a pretty good first offering for an Ace Attorney-inspired game, some narrative issues withstanding. If you like the genre, you will probably enjoy it, and it is a very good deal for the amount of content it offers.

Lost Technology is a diamond in the rough; I had seen it pop up on my recommended feed a few times, but ignored it on account of its frankly unimpressive graphics and seemingly incoherent setting. Don't let that deter you; having played about ten hours after buying it half-off, I now wish I had paid full price (for reasons I'll go into later). The best way I can describe Lost Technology is that it feels like a low-budget spiritual successor to Pokemon Conquest, or a non-tile based Fire Emblem/Advance Wars/FF Tactics with a bit of Koei-inspired personnel and army management (including the ability to play as a vassal or freelance). Or a strategic, rts version of Battle for Wesnoth.

Strategic gameplay as a ruler revolves around using your income to recruit new units and comrades, pay upkeep, and ally with factions you don't want to be fighting with immediately, as well as moving around units to guard your flanks, and then deploying against settlements not under your control. Settlements on the strategic map are connected to one another by lines, so you only have to worry about invasions from/invading into settlements that have adjacency, creating some defensive chokepoints. However, if you cut off the settlement an enemy faction leader is in and defeat them (no friendly settlements to retreat to), it will destroy their faction and cause the other territories they control to go neutral, so surrounding and cutting off enemies is entirely possible and can save you wars of attrition. Every spot on the map also has a squad limit as to how many can be garrisoned there, but both sides can draw reinforcing squads from nearby settlements, as well as request reinforcements from adjacent allied factions.

Tactical gameplay revolves around directing squads, which will contain up to eight units, with the goal of either eliminating all opponents or breaking their morale. You cannot actually order your units to directly attack another squad; rather, you can order them to move into position somewhere (they will automatically attack when an enemy is in range), order them to attack areas on the map, determine which skills they cannot use or should prioritize, or provide general directional orders. Since the battles are in pauseable real time, and units will automatically attack according to their orders, not being able to directly target enemies isn't an issue. Moreover, you can actually issue orders to individual units within a squad as well, which while clearly designed for vassal/free officer play, is actually very useful for sieges or battles where you need to sacrifice some units and want to preserve your elite ones. Battles typically move fast, and terrain will greatly impact a unit's ability to move as well, so there are a variety of - albeit clunky - tools that can help you keep your squishy units out of melee or better direct the formation of your squads.

Unit gameplay is divided between comrades and generic units, as well as between factions. To cover the latter first, every one of the twelve factions in game plays differently, each having their own rosters. The elves will play differently from the empire which plays differently from the mafia-controlled prison colony turned libertine city-state. All faction's rosters are defined by their generic units - nameless soldiers who make up the bulk of your armies and will die on the map when the hp runs to zero. They will be typically weaker than comrades of an equitable level in a one-on-one, but they are not cannon fodder and every unit has its niche. Units will also grow as they survive battles and get kills, getting better stats every level and a massive boost as they're promoted every ten levels. A sufficiently powerful generic unit can take on a lower-leveled comrade and come out on top - rationing your veterans and knowing when and how to use them is key. Comrades are the named units, who will typically serve as your officers and squad leaders, and some will play roles in each faction's story. They're almost always going to be better than generic units, if their health falls to 0 they won't die (but they will loose experience and it will take money to heal them), and while they won't promote, their stat growth is better and they will gain new skills. Most importantly, you don't recruit through settlements, you recruit through comrades.

Squad composition is where the true depth of Lost Technology begins to shine through. Where a comrade is garrisoned will determine what sort of units they can recruit; some comrades can recruit units that others can't, and some can lead units that other's can't. For example, Agnes, the Reinald Empress, cannot recruit Snow Mages but can lead them. While Baldur, a vassal fire mage, can recruit and lead both fire and snow mages. Generic fire mages, but not snow mages, can lead Imperial squads. Why is all of this important? Simple - while every unit has the typical stats that you would expect of a tactical rpg, they also have resistances. Lizardmen, for example, are good against melee but weak to fire and snow. It's also important to note that comrades have their own innate resistances, and will affect the resistances of the units in their squad. There are restrictions on squad composition as well; for example you can't put a generic footman in a squad of cavalry, and generic units that are outside of a faction cannot typically be led by units or comrades from a different one (as a general rule - there are plenty of exceptions). However, there are plenty of ways to combine arms, and comrades can usually join any squad. There are vast possibilities on how you can structure your army, offset only by the situational opportunity costs of having squads of comrades as opposed to having more squads led by comrades, and you will want to pay attention to your units abilities and weaknesses in comparison to the opposing faction's. The ability to mix and match is only constricted by the fact that some comrades cannot be recruited by comrades they have a low affinity with. Basically, this means that if you wipe out the dwarves as the empire, don't expect to have any dwarven units in your army for a while.

Speaking of comrades, the devs decided that adding in twelve unique factions wasn't enough, and that you should be able to play as individual comrades as well. As a vassal, you command your own squad on the tactical map, and can get promoted into being able to recruit and dismiss your own squadmates (including other comrades) as well as launching independent invasions in your lord's name. That doesn't mean you're stuck to a faction - if you want, you can strike out on your own, and if your squad is powerful enough, attack a settlement to establish a new faction from the ground up. Every single officer in the game is playable, and barring the rulers, can do this. On top of officer mode and the main campaign, there is a free campaign that doesn't bother you with faction stories, a campaign creator, and a dungeon-crawler mode. I would not be exaggerating to say there are potentially hundreds of hours of gameplay here.

Don't let a clunky UI, some missing QoL features and some dated graphics hold you back from getting this; Lost Technology is an absolute labor of love, and I cannot think of a single game in this genre that offers as much depth, replayability and flexibility as it does for just a measly five dollars. Five dollars, unfortunately, has not been enough for a full translation - currently only seven out of the thirteen faction stories in the main campaign have been translated, and the devs have had to sell the OST for ten dollars to help raise money for further translation. However, that's just the story, and all factions are still fully playable in the main campaign; it has no impact on the gameplay beyond the story events that are disabled as a result. Between all of this, and the fact there is even mod support for Lost Technology, I cannot recommend this game enough.

Other reviews have covered the mess of bugs, atrocious UI, audio errors, graphical errors and so forth, so I might as well cover another point of contention: the changes made to make things more 'historically accurate'. You know that when you're greeted with a paragraph talking about how they have removed 'problematic' elements (the dev's word, not mine) to make the game more accurate, you're in for a ride. The changes themselves are relatively minor; some are as simple as recasting fifteen year old lines, others are as game-changing as removing the ability of the Iroquois and Sioux (who I will refer to as such) to mine coin and instead forcing them to trade for it through buildings. Some of the changes for the sake of historical accuracy actually *do* make things more accurate - mainly the name changes to some native units. Others are just a blatant grab at brownie points; such as the removal of all instances of the word 'colonial'.

Yes, a game focused on the period of history that saw the growth of great colonial empires no longer has the word colonial within it - the Colonial age was renamed to the Commerce Age, Colonial Militia were renamed to Revolutionary Militia. Plantations were renamed to Estates, the Discovery Age was renamed to the Exploration age, and - most puzzling of all - Light Infantry was renamed to *Shock* Infantry. Meanwhile, the Sioux and Iroquois have been renamed to use the terms they referred to themselves as (or, rather, the Iroquois have - the Sioux were just renamed to the Lakota, who are not the only Siouan people to exist). This was done in the name of inclusivity. The old names did not prevent these empires from being added in the first expansion a decade ago, nor did it prevent anyone from getting into the game; I also reject the idea that the new names make the game more historically accurate. Not just because there is nothing inherently inaccurate about an exonym, but because of how selective the application of these changes were.

The Japanese, who do not call themselves Japanese, are still Japanese and led by the isolationist Tokugawa in a global empire building game. The Indians and Chinese are still led by the Mughal and Qing dynasties, despite the fact that neither of these dynasties called themselves Indian or Chinese (both those words also being European in origin) or even viewed themselves as being representative of Indian and Chinese nationhood. The Aztecs are still called the Aztecs despite the Mexica being the actual tribe that represented them, if we want to go by the renaming convention for the Sioux. The Ottomans - who were a dynasty - are still called the Ottomans rather than the Turks. I probably shouldn't have to mention that the Germans don't actually call themselves German either. It is not only wildly inconsistent, it is entertainingly inconsistent: in their effort to promote the terms that natives used to refer to themselves, they'd leave the Manchu Qing, who went out of their way to impose Manchu culture on the Han, representing China, or still pretend that India is a uniform civilization best represented under a Turko-Persian Islamic dynasty.

In their quest to make things more historically accurate for two native civs, they've left things virtually unchanged for the Europeans (and Asians). Prince Henry the Navigator, who was never a head of state, still represents the Portuguese despite all other leaders being actual rulers. Napoleon, who gave up France's colonial empire to pursue European hegemony, leads the French in a game that doesn't have European maps, and for some reason still flies the *medieval* Capetian coat of arms. The British, despite their name, still have nothing representing the Scots unique to their roster, and the Germans are just Prussians, with the only thing representing something else in the HRE still being Czech War Wagons of all things. Moreover, while the Iroquois and Sioux are restricted to trade posts for gathering coin in the name of historical accuracy, Europeans - despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of European settlers never set foot anywhere near a gold or silver mine - still get most of their coin through mining rather than growing tobacco, making rum or trading furs like they actually did. The implication of this, of course, is that the devs might think the Iroquois and Sioux simply wouldn't know how to mine precious metal deposits if they were presented with them - given that their removal of all terms referring to colonization also implies that the natives were Noble Savages who didn't engage in empire building or colonization of their own and that the Europeans didn't even colonize the New World, I can believe that the devs are actually that based and paternalistic.

Of course, the actual reason is more likely that the devs just wanted to virtue signal, and went about it in some of the most thoughtless and wasteful ways imaginable. And I do mean wasteful. They spent time, money and effort in consulting native tribes and recasting fifteen year old voice lines because someone might have found them problematic, rather than doing something actually inclusive like allowing all empires to customize their home city (a feature still restricted to the original eight European empires) or otherwise actually applying more polish to their remaster. I would not call this a remaster either. The graphical updates are nice - when they work - and the Swedes and Inca are a plus, but aside from that and having access to the entirety of your card deck from the start there are no further improvements, and the mechanical changes made to the native empires were to their gameplay detriment. This is not a remaster, this is an expansion pack with a graphics update - and the only saving grace is that it is at least priced like an expansion pack and not a whole game.

This is the sparknotes version of a longer review I wrote: http://s13.zetaboards.com/koeiwarriors/topic/9174859/1/#new

I’ll preface my review by saying that I have nearly 900 hours on this game’s predecessor, Sphere of Influence (SoI), and largely draw my opinion from how it holds up to it.
Taishi is a game that makes me wish steam had ‘meh’ as an option. But between good ideas being stifled between bad implementation or feeling incomplete, I cannot in good faith recommend it for $60 when that same price is being asked for SoI, which feels overall more cohesive.

Pros:
Resolves – a unique combination of ideology, growth type and policies. They make playing as clans feel even more unique than in SoI and add a feeling of progression and immediate goals for your playthrough.

Diplomacy – better than in SoI, mostly, with practicality being used as a counterweight against sentiment (I.E no more allying with clans on the opposite side of Japan), with being able to negotiate for various things rather than just spending goodwill, and more diplomatic options all around.

Trade – More involved than in SoI, with you investing in Trade Zones rather than castles. This increases their wealth and your share, but other clans can also invest in unmonopolized trade zones if you have good relationships with them. There are also more powerful trade zones such as regional and grand trade zones. Definitely one of the better trade mechanics in the genre.

Infantry/Militia – Taishi kind of goes back to older NA in having some difference between units – this time with professional soldiers and conscripts. Militia fight worse than infantry and have less morale but also provide some provisions in the fall. Infantry are top dog on the battlefield but require a monthly upkeep of gold. Militia are recruited from farmers and infantry are recruited from refugees (who can also become farmers). It’s a simply system that works well had has good potential for expansion.

Aggression – Basically warscore. Winning battles and capturing castles pushes it up and increases your units morale – losing does the opposite. Nations with low aggression will be more likely to sue for peace. Might help snowballing a bit but it’s a good mechanic.

Mehs:
Agriculture – Also more involved than in SoI, requiring you to balance a variety of agricultural to get the most out of your harvests. The only and massive problem with this is that some of the most important actions require fertilizer and seeds – rather than being generated by buildings or population, they’re just set at a fixed amount of one that can be increased slightly if you enact the right policy. This means you can rule half of Japan and still only be able to fertilize one castle.

Policies – A good idea, but not well executed. Basically, policies are now permanent, unlocked sequentially, require no upkeep and provide only bonuses – but you can only get them by spending policy points, which are only generated by councils (which are composed of six randomly chosen officers). You only have a council every three months and they’re your only source of policy points; points you will doubtlessly have to save to unlock higher policies. Basically enacting new policies is often an RNG-filled waiting game; the changes might be a nice idea, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

Battles – On one hand, morale, wounded soldiers, a clear UI, terrain having an impact on the battlefield, and being able to win by pushing the enemy off the field are all good. Tactics being suggested to you by officers rather than being commanded, aptitude coming back but not really doing anything and the time between planning phases being so short you’re not really planning anything are not good.

Treasures – You can’t buy them from Merchants for some reason anymore (they just randomly give them to you) but they also do more stuff aside from buffing loyalty again. Some treasures also give their historical owners special bonuses.

Religion – Shrines, Temples and Churches dot the map, and the former two will give slight battlefield buffs while all three can give other bonuses depending on policies and resolves. Largely negligible outside of a few clans, but still the most attention religion has gotten in NA in a while and I hope to see it expanded.

Cons:
Castles – In all NA past games, customizing your castles has been a feature. Not here. Just click a button and see that health bar go up after paying through the nose.

Province/Buildings – Dividing the map into counties was a neat idea – but issues arise from the lack of clarity on what county belongs to which castle with no way to take individual counties. Because there are no more castles (provincial capitals that can’t be razed) anymore, Koei also instituted the frustrating rule that all starting castles can’t be razed. Roads are also gone, so there’s not really any strategic checkpoints anymore (or clear paths that are faster to travel). And despite using the county system as the basis for it, he building rework is also a massive step down – only two or three buildings actually affect your economy, with the rest of them either being situational military buildings or ones that slowly increase officer stats in adjacent castles. It won’t require your attention or much planning since none of them benefit from adjacency, and you can set it to delegate and the only thing you’d need to worry about is your gold balance.

Warfare – There are formal declarations of war now. Good. But you can’t actually attack someone yourself if you’re joining as an ally in it, which is silly. You also accumulate war exhaustion – which reduces happiness – just by being at war, not by simply fighting it. So you can go a whole year without a battle after winning a bunch of them and end up with riots everywhere. Which is also silly.

Officer Management – Nothing really here. Don’t worry about loyalty because espionage is gone. You don’t even need to pay officers to join you now. Most of the traits have been nerfed and only offer the possibility of suggesting new policies after councils.

Events – Seem particularly hard to trigger, or there are less of them. I can start as the Mori in 1554 and not have an event for Itsukushima immediately trigger, unlike in SoI. This seems to be true for a lot of major clans and startdates, where event triggers seem to be largely unspecified, as are their rewards.

No Editors – While I get that Koei has a tradition of not including a lot of stuff until the PuK – the officer editor being one of them – paywalling an iconic mechanic is not an effective way to generate goodwill in a fanbase.

Graphics – I don’t think graphics should be a sticking point in strategy games, but this game’s five year old predecessor has significantly better graphics than it because it’s not held back by the limitations of a mobile port. Everything here has less detail and texture than in SoI, and zooming in on the map is pointless because between that and the change to buildings there’s going to be nothing for you to look at.

Rise and Fall is generally good in my opinion, but I can only cautiously recommend it, especially for the price it’s at.

Golden Ages are reintroduced in this expansion, and this is not only the most solid feature of the expansion, but is probably the best version of Golden Ages in the Civ series. Rather than just giving you a few turns of extra gold/production/GP points once you reach a certain happiness threshold, Golden Ages instead are integrated into the Ages mechanic, which in of itself has been reworked (being no long based on just breaching the next era in the tech/civics tree, and instead lasting only x number of turns). Instead Ages are now a flexible-objective based mechanic, with you getting points towards Golden Ages for completing a number of milestones. Get enough, and you’ll get a golden age when the next era rolls around, in which you can choose a powerful bonus to have for that whole era. If you don’t get a Golden Age, you’ll either be in a normal age, which you just get a normal bonus, or a Dark Age – which is what happens when you fail to meet the normal age threshold – in which you’ll suffer more disloyalty. But you’ll have the possibility to get a Heroic Age from a Dark Age, which is a Golden Age on steroids. Overall it’s a very well thought-out and engaging mechanic.

If you missed culture flipping cities from IV, Loyalty is for you – however, instead of eating away at tiles, it works more like a second religion. You’ll actually have to try holding your empire together internally as well as externally, and if a city’s loyalty gets low enough you’ll start suffering rebellions and said city might secede from your empire. This not only adds another layer of strategic consideration – you can passively destabilize another Empire and they can return the favor – but it also means that the days of plopping down cities on the other side of a continent to mess with another player are over. Only fault to the system is that it’s negligible early on, and can get a bit grindy later.

Governors are a hit and a miss in my opinion; they don’t really fit in well with Civ as they are. There are only nine possible ones for each empire, each with their own specialty, and while they’re all uniform you don’t have to compete for them with other civs (none of them are historical either, which further makes them feel awkward in the setting). Cities without governors will suffer more disloyalty, and you’ll have to choose whether to go wide with your governors or use your scarce titles to promote a few – only issue being that half the promotions are not terribly useful, so it’s only slightly better for tall gameplay. In my opinion governors would have been better as a new great person type – think great statesmen from the Colonization games – with a larger pool to draw from that you have to compete over.

Emergencies are a really good idea, but the AI can’t use them very effectively. Still, they’ll have a large impact on any MP game you play. In a similar vein, the alliance rework is a good idea, but the AI still struggles with it. The balance changes in the accompanying patch are good, and the new global content seems to be sound.

The expansion fails to address a number of complaints the fanbase had with the base game, and a number of the answers given seem to be ‘deal with it’. The Governor’s art style is even more cartoonishly disproportioned than the leader and unit art in spite of the widespread complaints about it, and Firaxis has outright stated they had an agenda in choosing the leaders of R&F in the announcement on the official website (this hilariously backfired in the international Youtube reveal of Korea, in which the pushback from Korean players was so bad they unlisted the video and had to redraw Seondeok). And, meanwhile, despite adding in four new resources and the Gold mod being one of the most popular on the workshop, Gold has yet to be added as a resource ingame, while Great Prophets remain the most useless GP type and the power creep between most of the initial release Civs and the DLC ones remains staggering.

Overall most of the mechanics introduced in the expansion are sound: Ages are great, Emergencies and Alliances are fun even if the AI can’t use them well, and Loyalty is a good callback to Civ IV that could use just a bit more work. The rest of the Global Content is also good, while Governors are a hit and a miss, and a few of the civ choices are questionable at best. I’d personally rate the expansion a 7/10, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth $30 either; if you’re undecided on it, I recommend waiting until a sale rolls around to pick it up.

In addition to the Fateful Clash (1582) DLC Scenario, this is the only other DLC for NA:SoI that adds in new events and missions; as the name would imply, this DLC allows you to win the Battle of Nagashino as the Takeda. Though it's much easier said than done; Nagashino as the Takeda is probably the hardest event battle in game, and the Oda aren't easy to overcome even after the battle. This DLC is also quite useful for the Oda as well, as there's a grocery list of items required to trigger Nagashino ingame, so this makes it incredibly easy to jump straight to the event (not to mention without any DLC there's a twelve-year gap between startdates; 1570 to 1582, so this also fills that as well).

Overall, between the new events and missions, difficulty, accessibility and challenge it offers, this DLC is well worth the $3.

Star Wars: Rebellion is a classic grand strategy game that's almost as old as I am, and it shows. A word of warning; many of the negative reviews here (rightfully) deal with issues regarding graphics and loading the game, which can be resolved with a bit of tweaking.

I played this game to death as a kid, even though a lot of my success in it was the result of endless hours of trial and error; the learning curve is perhaps the steepest in video game history, there's no tutorial, and everything that's thrown at you can be overwhelming even for people who are familiar with grand strategy titles (a PDF scan of the old instruction booklet can be found in the folders, though). Likewise, while the graphics might have been cutting-edge in 1998, they're... lackluster nowadays.

But don't let either of those disuade you; Rebellion is one of the greatest strategy games ever made, and could easily give most games nowadays a run for their money. You can play as either the Rebellion or Empire with the ultimate goal of defeating the other faction and liberating/dominating the (size adjustable) galaxy.

At your disposal to accomplish this monumental and occasionally grindy goal will be a near-endless array of space ships that you can command in glorius 32-bit space combat (the spiritual successor to this game; Empire at War, would refine this aspect greatly), dozens of characters from the period ranging from everyone between Luke Skywalker to Thrawn, agents who you can send on missions to subvert the enemy or strengthen yourself, and as many armies, shield generators and Death Stars as your infastructure and technology can support. And as everything takes place in real time, you will rarely find youself without something to do if you play proactively - and the AI won't sit back on its laurels, either.

In addition to everything else this game has to offer in terms of gameplay and replayability, the game also comes complete with an encyclopedia that gives a treasure trove of information about all the units, ships, planets and characters that appear in game, all drawn from the across the entire extended universe lore available at the time. So if you also want to explore the old Star Wars EU, or just dislike Disney's, this is also the game for you.

You can also train Chewbacca as a Jedi if the game smiles on you, so there's that.

Rebellion is well worth the $6 and initial headache, and can be immensly fun, immersive and addicting if you have the patience to learn its ins and outs, and I highly recommend it for any fan of Star Wars or grand strategy.

If you're going to get at least one of the Scenario DLC for NA: Sphere of Influence, then this is the one to get. It provides both a very interesting start, and an alt-history line of events for the Akechi (this is also the only historical scenario you can play the Akechi) with a very challenging battle and position that makes victory all the more sweet. It's well worth the pricetag.