We analyze for Xbox one of the most curious games of this summer, Sengoku Dynasty.
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The team at Toplitz Productions is back with a life simulator set in feudal times, but this time, the involvement of the Polish team at Superkami takes us away from their previous proposal, Medieval Dynasty (which came to Game Pass at one point), to take us to a very turbulent period in Japanese lands.
Sengoku Dynasty is set in Japan’s Sengoku Jidai period, an era plagued by armed conflicts and civil wars where Asian feudal lords fought to gain total control of the country, generating a plethora of legends and multimedia products that can still be seen today.
The story’s framework is shown in the game’s brief introduction, where the player must create the protagonist, choosing between a man and a woman and adjusting some physical characteristics at will; although the range of customization options is quite limited, and I think I’m even being kind with that adjective.
Once the protagonist is created, the game takes us to a shipwreck that occurs after the character escapes from an armed conflict that ravaged their village. The coast we arrive at is the valley of Nata, a land filled with mystery, natural resources, and the hope of a place known as the Kingdom of the Peasants, a territory far from the shogunates and landowners that will be the ideal place to forge a new dynasty.
With an interesting premise set in a unique historical moment, I invite you to join me on this bittersweet journey through the various layers that Sengoku Dynasty offers. In the end, you’ll decide whether or not to make room for it among the titles you’ll buy this year.
Technical Aspect
Graphically, the game presents very contrasting points that are complex to analyze, but worth doing. The design in general is not bad, but if you told me this was a game from the previous generation, I’d believe it. However, the details of the scenarios look very good, as well as the typical Japanese attire of the time and the various armors that can be forged. The faces, on the other hand, often seem quite generic and lacking in distinction from one another, except for features like hair.
One thing that I think needs to be worked on urgently with a patch as soon as the game is released (if possible) is the lighting. The contrast between light and shadow is really bad at times; there are times when it’s impossible to see around in broad daylight while being in the shadow of a sector, and this also happens at night, but I understand that the idea is to use a torch or an element that produces light, but these effects need a substantial improvement.
It’s interesting that the game offers different types of third-person perspective, with various approaches and even a first-person mode, which may not be very practical at first, but certainly captures some situations in the game better.
The UI is minimalist and shows the basic actions that can be performed with the selected items on one side and the character’s vital energy, hunger, and remaining physical resistance on the other.
The game does a good job with ambient sound, allowing the player to hear everything around them in detail, especially the sound of animals in different sectors, which will allow them to enlist for hunting or avoid unwanted confrontations with bears, wild boars, and other not-so-friendly fauna. The music only appears on specific occasions with typical Japanese rhythms, where wind instruments and the sound of reeds or tambourines predominate. The voices, on the other hand, are scarce and are limited to phrases that are repeated quite often when starting to talk to an NPC.
This analysis was done entirely on my Xbox Series S, and while I didn’t notice any performance drops in my solo playthroughs, I do have to say that I observed several bugs worth mentioning. On several occasions, during enemy invasions in villages, enemies seemed to teleport from one place to another and move irregularly, without even being able to reach them to attack; but this isn’t the most serious inconvenience, as after the first completion of a special project, the game would simply close and send me back to the start screen from time to time. While it’s true that the title automatically saves progress from time to time, everyone knows how annoying it is to have to reload the game constantly, and this is something the developers need to take into account when the title is released.
The game’s localization to our language is very well done and covers the entire game, except for the audio, which remains in Japanese. The only inconvenience, which has to do with programming rather than linguistic choices, is that there are often confusions in the protagonist’s gender, regardless of whether a man or a woman is chosen for the main role.
Gameplay
Structurally, the game doesn’t stray from other titles in the genre, so if you’ve already played this type of production, there won’t be much to surprise you, and if you’re new to these games, the learning process isn’t very complex, although it takes time and some patience.
The idea is to gather different types of resources, some more basic than others, like wood, stone, branches, grass, skins, minerals, and various types of food. Based on these raw materials, or the combination of some, tools and some weapons are built that are used for constructions and for defending the settlement or conquering new lands.
The settlement consists of houses of different sizes (each requiring various resources) and production buildings, either for forage or hunting, fishing, manufacturing elements, textile production, etc. Each construction that is made is extremely manual and will only be done by the protagonist, as well as other decorative structures that make a visual difference. I must admit that this idea seemed very interesting to me at first, but after the first few hours I longed to be able to delegate it to some of the refugees who arrived at the place, which is not possible within the title.
Each inhabitant that is recruited must have a place assigned to live and sleep, and in turn, they consume food, heat, and eventually water daily, so the player will have to put them to work on different tasks so that the community maintains an acceptable level of happiness.
Personal relationships are also important, and the passage of time will allow bonds to form within the village inhabitants and with the player, who can get married and have children to perpetuate the legacy over time.
Despite being a game conceived for PC, the menus on Xbox are well optimized and easy to navigate, and yes, there are many, the game is loaded with options of all kinds that will have to be broken down as you progress through the story and the territory expands. From this type of interface, you can manage production, the housing situation of community members, trade, and even improve the skill trees of the main character in topics like leadership, spirituality, warrior, and hunter, which allow improving various aspects of each of these branches.
In addition to the construction and management of villages, which is perhaps the core of the game, Sengoku Dynasty has a combat component of considerable relevance, although not for that reason less rough. In general, enemies are not very complicated to neutralize if you have the right weapons; most attack with melee attacks that are easy to predict, and some throw arrows. The main problem is when attacks come from different flanks at the same time.
The title also features an online mode and will eventually have cross-play. The multiplayer mode allows working together with other players to achieve common objectives, but since the game is not yet on sale at the time of this analysis, I couldn’t test it.
Duration
Without a doubt, the game’s strongest point, with a vast amount of hours to complete the story and another to build all the levels of the villages and conquer all the territories on the map, which is not an easy task, mainly due to the world’s extension.
Translator and video game localiser with a passion for retro titles and simulators. He has never let go of a controller since he was given an Atari 2600. He collaborates with different developers in the localisation of their titles into Spanish through Camelot Translations.
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