Takeda 2 - English version now available to order

[The Marcher Lord]

Just ordered mine - webpage is here http://www.ezgame.com/Takeda2/home.htm

PS - They are also shipping worldwide for FREE! for a limited time so make the most of the offer!

[The Scourge]

Great I've been waiting for this one .
Thanks and .

[The Marcher Lord]

There will be a demo available by Christmas.The demo will have one historical battle for Uesugi and five random battles for Oda and Takeda.

[nokhor]

thanks for the link. i'm glad they've finally decided to release stuff in english.

[Kraxis]

Smells a lot like STW... If only the pictures weren't so Manga-like.

[Turin]

Yeah, it's basically STW beefed up a bit, but there's nothing wrong with that.

BTW, how do we go about buying it? What country was this game made in? And how do you know there will be a demo by Christmas?

[The Marcher Lord]

Follow the link in the first post and look around the website a little, including the forums. All the info. is on there.

[The Scourge]

Demo's up at 3D gamers .
Waiting in line as I write .

[The Marcher Lord]

Other download links here - http://www.ezgame.com/Takeda2/support.htm

[Androo]

I don't have access to a high speed connection at the moment, which would let me see for myself, so I hope to hear what you guys think of it...

[The Marcher Lord]

Some screens from the demo..........

A pre battle army and formation setup screen. There are historical formations and you can make custom formations which can be saved. There is a facility for recording a movie of the battle. The army can be deployed manually or automatically


Its wise to check commander abilities and unit stats when deploying manually to get the best out of the formation


A typical formation layout prior to a battle




Guard the generals camp at all costs. if the camp is captured the battle is lost


Commanders report progress throughout a battle and let you know how the battle is progressing


Enemy camp captured. The sprites don't look too nice at extreme close up zoom, but they never did in STW either!


Post battle commander stats and report

[Androo]

Cheers for those screenies Marcher Lord.

Well, it looks fairly good to me... I'm far from an expert on the period, but it seems like it might be a degree more accurate than STW (the general's camp, curved formations etc.) However, the unit numbers seem small(?)...

I don't know... wait for Sengoku Jidai...?

If you get the chance, let us know how it plays...

[Turin]

My big question is how is the AI. I downloaded the demo too but it was on a laptop that didn't have a mouse, so of course I wasn't really able to play at all. There are some glaring things I noticed right away though. Your cursor doesn't automatically change to attack when you hover over an enemy unit.

The AI seems pretty bad too. They do come at you all at once, but the formation that they start with melts away and they come all at once, no flanking, no reserves.

[Sjakihata]

Bad game. I tried the demo, it sucks completely. Bad interface, no mood like in stw - I had hoped it was cool, no luck.

[The Marcher Lord]

They certainly flank you on the Kawanakajima battle in the demo as a load of cav come in from the left and take you out fast if you don't notice them or do anything about it.

I did see reserves held back around the enemy camp also and they were a lot more than the usual cavalry guard

[Kraxis]

It looks like there is a permanent Hatamoto at the tent, true?

[The Marcher Lord]

Quite true -they hang back and guard the tent until the very end, as they should

[Kraxis]

Got the demo myself... I must ad mit that it is a very sluggish system. It kills too fast, it is hard to control what is going on, and the commanders are far too important in regards to the effectiveness of their troops.

Takeda can just take the Hatamoto and the two cavalry units and win against any other. Noticed that when I tried the Kawanakajima battle. That flanking unit rolled up every thing, and ripped my Hatamoto led by Kenshin to pieces... I tried to oppose it in the woods with infantry as well, no deal. Inthe end I killed 36 enemies and lost more than 700 simply because the cavalry was unstopable (and took my flags in a direct line, they never stopped, just ran over everything).

[The Marcher Lord]

I stopped the cav flank attack with two blocks of mixed infantry, spear ashi to hold them up and archers shooting over the ashi to hit the 2nd cav line moving in. The advanced forward on the other units. Gameplay does seem a little too fast to me too, haven't found the pause key yet!

[edyzmedieval]

AH good. I'll get the demo. If it's good, a copy is mine.

[The Marcher Lord]

You need to spend some time with the demo to get the most out of it. Most people seem to fire it up, play two battles, get frustrated because they don't know what they are doing (there are no instructions with the demo) and give up. Once you get the controls worked out and work out the flanking manoeuvres control and their subtle timing this game actually becomes quite good fun and is thankfully different enough from STW to be worth buying. Lets face it, we won't see another game based on Sengoku period Japan for a very long time so each one needs to be treasured in its own way

[The Marcher Lord]

Patch 1.2 (5.74 mb zipped) is out now, but no idea what is in it as they didn't include a fix list or readme Rather strangely it was also distributed by email rather than as a download from their website. I am a little suspicious of the file so I have asked them to let me know what the fixes are and whether the file is official or not.

[The Scourge]

That's rather strange .
I take it you Havn't recieved the game yet ?
I ordered a few days ago ,but no patch mailed to me as of yet .
Although they did talk about a possible patch on their site a while back .

[The Marcher Lord]

Yes I have received it - took 10 days from Canada to UK over the xmas holiday.

The game is on a DVD and packaged in a slim DVD case. No manual - thats a pdf on the disk, but there is a card with the hotkeys listed and a short paper guide to installation/uninstalling and accessing the manual.

I asked them if the emailed patch file was legit and they said yes so I installed it - it runs OK and upgrades to 1.2. Apparently the fixes include better defence AI and morale for the ashi spears, better stand ground capabilities for archers plus some other, so far, unlisted fixes.

One big turn off for me at the outset was that they have fixed the gameplay resolution at 1024x768 which looks slightly fuzzy and out of focus on my 19" LCD which has a native resolution of 1280x1024. Why game developers cannot make games that will play at the standard resolution of all 17" and 19" LCD monitors these days is beyond me and automatically handicaps the game from the start in the graphics department.

No tutorial that I can find, I guess the demo was the tutorial! The strat map looks quite basic by todays (and even STW) standards with jagged edges to the map. Zoomed out the names of provinces, castles etc. on the map are unreadable, but OK when zoomed in.

So far I am playing Takeda on Normal without having read the manual and really need to go back and do that before I carry on with the campaign. You need to build an army in each castle from the start as the AI is quite aggressive and I had plenty of people declaring war on me immediately. Having chosen commanders for the armies your army seems to build itself with a standard array of troops unless I have missed some way of queueing different troop types. Your daimyo in the main castle comes with some upgrades already installed and as you move around the map other hidden items of use will be revealed and can be accepted or rejected. These items give eg. better weapons/research/defence/morale etc.

Battles are quite fast. I have had a couple of castle defence battles already and they burn down your wooden gates very quickly and gain entry to the main castle precincts all too fast. This may be because I have a very basic castle type at the start of the game, hope so! Castles are very well modelled and some elements have been taken from standing historical examples.

Diplomacy is in there with marriages/peace treaties/alliances etc.

Ninjas offer themselves for service periodically in return for a gold payment. I'm not sure how these work at the moment but they seem to spot opportunities for subterfuge and will, for example, try to take an unguarded castle by suprise, carry out assassinations and prevent other ninja and spies from completing successful missions. There is a toggle to make them viewable on the strat map but I am damned if I can see them and I have two out there somewhere.

Strat map calculations and movements are extremely fast at the end of each turn and it is impossible to see who is moving where or capturing what so you need to view the diplomacy maps frequently to keep up with events.

So far I would give the game a 7/10, maybe more when I have read the manual and truly got to grips with the complexities (if there are any) of the game.

[The Scourge]

10 days ? That's pretty good .
Some interesting comments , keep em coming ,because the forums a little dead over at the official site . That might change as more people start getting the game .
One problem I always had with the TW games ,is that as long as your economy's doing well ,you just keep churning out one elite unit after another ,which made the game drag out for longer than coming I thought .
The impression I get from the takeda games ,is that keeping your generals alive is much more important ,and you don't have an endless supply of men .
Is this right ?

[The Marcher Lord]

Hi Scourge

Yep, keeping generals alive is a key factor in winning battles. They give a huge morale boost to each division and if they are killed the division quickly loses heart and starts to break up and retreat. Equally, taking out enemy generals becomes a priority if you can get to them.

I like the fact that you don't need to completely annihilate an enemy division to win. Just breaking up their cohesion and morale is enough and you can then move your attacking division on to attack another unit while the division you just decimated wonders dazed and lost around the battlefield.

Marrying off your generals is a good way to keep more future generals coming but you need to be careful who you marry off to or a rival clan could claim your province if the clan leader dies with no heirs.

I have found the method of making up armies of precise units so it is possible and quite easy to do. I also like the way you have a formation option for the whole army and then individual formations for each division of troops also. The type of formation used (defensive, offensive, balanced) also plays a big part in how your battles will play out. There are also means for placing a reserve guard and strike units at the edge of the map which will try to capture the enemy camp, but the latter needs careful timing.

Ninja can be given specific missions and directed towards cities, towns castles or individuals.

Autocalcing battles works better than in STW. STW tended to penalise you heavily with repetitive defeats unless you had amazingly high stat troops. In Takeda you will win more battles if your army is generally slightly larger or better trained, but you are penalised by not receiving troop honour upgrades and increases in rank.

[nokhor]

i got the damn game along with 'strength and honor'. strength and honor installed perfectly but takeda 2 does not. so i'm gonna have to send it back. glad to see someone else got it and its working marcher lord. i am a little mad about the absense of a manual though. this is the second time i have ordered a game online and this has happened.

[The Marcher Lord]

Sorry to hear you are having probs - do you get an error message during install and if so what is it ?

[nokhor]

this is the error message i get.

Error Code: -5003 : 0x5
Error Information:
>SetupDLL\SetupDLL.cpp (1814)
PAPP:Takeda 2
PVENDOR:Magitech Corporation (http://www.ezgame.com)
PGUID:0A6698DC-BF03-42AE-92D1-E37E525B8940
$11.50.0.42618
@Windows XP Service Pack 2 (2600) BT_OTHER 232.64


i emailed patrick and he offered a suggestion that i will try out once i get the time.

[The Marcher Lord]

Definately an installshield error of some sort. Some things to try:

Make sure you deleted the demo files first using Windows Add/Remove then manually delete the demo folder that is left behind at C:/Program Files/Magitech Corporation. Then install the full game.

Rather than letting the autoload run the setup when you put the DVD in you could also try browsing the disk contents with Windows explore then double click on the Setup icon to start setup.

Make sure you are logged in as the Admin on your XP machine and that no other programs are running in the background during install eg. internet, virus scanner, spyware scanner.

I'm not sure if Magitech are using Securom copy protection software on the Takeda 2 CD, but Securom has been known to throw up this error on other games. If you are installing from a DVD-RW drive it may be worth trying install from a DVD-ROM instead if you have one.