Competition for the Total War?

[AtomicPants]

Very interesting--there's a new 16th-century Japanese army battle game coming out in a couple months. It's called Takeda. Check out the article at http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/storie...5933-1,00.html

(Sorry if the URL breaks due to the line wrap.)

It's very amusing that Total War is never mentioned in the article.

Anyway, it's similar to Total War, but generally smaller in scope--no campaign map, for example. All battles apparently take place on the same battlefield. Also, they're actually bringing castles into the tactical battles, using faithful floorplans/dimensions from the actual things. (How they justify different castles in the same battlefield is not explained.) My guess is that this will make EA/Creative add a similar castle implementation to their product.

It's a nice-looking game, but I'm curious what y'all think of it.

[edRonin]

The castle battles look cool. But it looks like it uses the traditional isometric view and is in no way 3D. Not terribly impressed with the graphics. The concept of having brigades and armies with commanders who have their personalities modelled is excellent. Those commanders can increase in honor and capability as you use them. The unit composition is closer to what I have heard is the historic combination of arms (there seems to be a unit which has cav and yari mixed). From what I read there does seem to be a campaign mode and expanded diplomatic options. They also seem to set up a series of battles which is "historically accurate" against the historic enemy commanders who have their behaviors modelled as well.

It's almost as if they have been reading this forum and geared the game towards those player who prefer a more historically accurate game. I am not one of those but I would love to play a demo if they have one.

------------------
All your base are belong to us

[FwSeal]

I've been looking forward to this title for some time, though if we'll ever see it or not is another question. A game that esoteric has a hard time finding a publisher.
This game was discussed a while back in 'Off-Topic'. According to the site listed there, Takeda does not all take place on one battlefield - rather, its a dynamic campaign game with numerous battle maps.
Anyway, I was delighted to read this part of the discussion with the game's designer...

'Indeed, we have done a lot of historical research about the characters of Takeda and the story itself. In the character personality part, for example, there's a general named Baba who fought in more than 70 battles and never got hurt once. People called him "the ghost of Minano." We have implemented this in the game by giving him a very high survival rate. In the battle of Nagashino, when Baba saw most of his comrades killed by the enemy rifles, he refused to retreat and charged into enemy line by himself while the whole army was retreating. We have implemented this by using certain conditions to trigger the event in Takeda's campaign mode. '

Now THAT is the sort of attention to detail and realism I like to see

[Ii Naomasa]

Takeda's actually been bouncing around the heads of the developers for almost as long as Shogun has been, even if the actual work on it only started in '99 or so (the head designer, though, began playing with the idea was far back as '91 or '92). Part of the delay in getting it made (and also the reason the graphics are less than bleeding edge) is because they are an independent developer from Canada.

We discussed this game awhile back, with most people selling it short as a C&C clone. I've been happily following it its development since and am quite happy with a lot of things their doing. I can more than live with the graphics (which are far from bad)...especially the site of hordes of crimson warrior charging the field (after all, I'm biased by my namesake ). The command system looks very, very nice and I like the whole realistic leaders with personalities and opinions (such always is a plus for me). I'm hoping the team can deliver on its promises and that it gets picked up by a decent publisher who knows good stuff and doesn't push them solely on the basis of pure profits.

For the curious, here's their home page.

[FwSeal]

Thanks for the link, Ii. Any game that deals with Sengoku Japan is welcome by me, and I think it would be a nice companion to STW. While 'Takeda' doesn't seem to have STW's eye-candy, it does seem to have more attention to detail and general realism. Here's hoping it ships someday...

[Anssi Hakkinen]

I read the earlier info on it, but this is the first time that Takeda is actually starting to look like it might work. Army formations, commanders with individual characteristics... I like it, although, as the maxim goes, "vaporware always looks good".

Interesting times, with MI looming on the horizon and all... Rarely have there been this many good games competing for our hard-earned (?) money.

------------------
"The warrior's lies are called strategy -- the only honest people are the farmers and townsmen."
- Akechi Mitsuhide

[Choco]

Looks cool

[The Black Ship]

I've kicked this one around for awhile, and I've decided I'll buy it. While it sort of looks like Panzer General gone Samurai it should still be fun. The AI sounds good, individualized personalities sounds good, animations don't look that bad either.

[AtomicPants]

I really like the idea that you can't REALLY control your generals that well. Sounds a lot like Sengoku Jidai Japan, where your generals would generally agree to do what you want--but then decide to stop off along the way to the battle to sack a castle. Or charge the enemy ahead of schedule, making OTHER generals follow your lead. (Perhaps our illustrious Ii representative could tell us a bit about that...)