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I’m going to start off by saying that I love Medieval Dynasty. It was just the relaxing first-person city builder I never knew I wanted. So when I heard there’s a similar game from the same publisher that placed us, the player, in the Sengoku period in Japan, I couldn’t be more excited. However, we need to remember, if you, dear reader, are also a fan of MD, that this is not made by the same developer. So, let’s take this game as a whole new experience and see if this might be the next game you pick up.
Sengoku Dynasty starts in the classic RPG scenario, with your customizable character waking up on a beach after a ship wreak, trying to figure out where they’ve ended up. Let me start by saying that the character customization could do with some extra choices, especially if you play solely in the third person, since you’ll see your character’s nice haircut from the behind for many hours. And it doesn’t help that my only haircut choices were bald, bald but with a man-bun, and normal man-bun.
Anyway, the game then presents the basic mechanics and then starts you off with the main “quest,” which is establishing a powerful, self-sustaining village. And it gives you the chance to do something very interesting by presenting the opportunity to take down a burnt-down village and rebuilding it however you want to. This is probably one of the coolest starts to a city-building game, since it also allows you to follow the positioning of the destroyed buildings, to try to build something similar to what was before.
When it comes to the villager mechanics, I have to say this is an improvement from Medieval Dynasty, mainly due to how easy it is this time to manage the village. You have a main storage where all of the resources will go. As opposed to this game’s predecessor, you can access those resources at any time as long as you are in the village’s vicinity, which means you don’t have to run around from chest to chest, trying to see if you encumbrance meter will fill up or not.
This allows the player to build very efficiently and it actually makes you feel like the building process is not something you do completely by yourself. Yes, you’re the only one with a hammer that keeps creating new structures all over the village, but at least those resources your villagers are collecting will directly help you without you having to check the common area chest with each opportunity.
Speaking of the structures in this game, I have to say I’m very impressed by the architecture and the variety of buildings. Every time I unlocked a new production building, I was always surprised with the blueprint that appeared before my eyes when I tried to place it. I expected most of them to have similar structures, being basic cube houses with different furniture, but you can tell there was a lot of work put into the designs of the buildings. They all look very different, have different layouts, and also allow a lot of customization. The city building is very impressive in Sengoku Dynasty and you can really make the villages you start up around the map to look extremely nice.
The progression loop in general is very satisfying in Sengoku Dynasty. The rise from collecting resources yourself and working hard to get those logs and stones, to building structure after structure as your villagers get all the resources needed for you feels very good. After slaving away at the start of the game, trying to get another log for the new building you’re trying to finish, it feels really nice to spend most of the mid to late game only fighting and creating the most aesthetically pleasing village in all of Japan.
However, there’s something I had a problem with, and that is the fact that there are too many things to build that are generally useless. They either had different uses in previous versions of the game, or they might do in the future, but some items are just pointless. There are around 8 types of storages you can get, but you can really play the whole game using only one type, the general one, and be really happy with the time you’ve spent not looking at a million different chests.
Another decision that was made for this Sengoku Dynasty which further pushes it from Medieval Dynasty, is the choice to make all villagers the same. They don’t have any stats and they’re all as efficient as any job you give them. This simplifies the automation process of the village, especially considering you will have more than one village, so that’s quite important, but it also takes away from one of the big things MD had: immersion. You really won’t remember any of your village members, since they’re all the same. They’re numbers, not people. Or automated robots ready to slave their lives away for logs and grass.
Enough about the city building aspect of the game. Let’s get into another thing that most potential players might be interested in: combat.
In the previous Dynasty game that I played, Medieval Dynasty, combat was… bizarre. It was very bare-bones, but it was funny. There’s no better way to explain. So I expected something similar and I was surprised to discover the soulslike combat of Sengoku Dynasty. Absolutely everything about the combat feels like one of the Dark Souls games. You got stamina, you got parries, and you can’t really dodge roll, but you can dodge. The feel of the weapons is also similar, as heavier weapons have that slow attack speed that we all dread, and spears hit with the speed of light.
The only difference from a FromSoft soulslike is that the enemies aren’t a traumatizing experience. Most of the time it’s really fun to fight all the bandits and looters around the map, and you will feel like the upcoming Daimyo of the region. However, this brings me to a part I can’t say I’m a fan of, and that is the lack of organized combat. You are a lone leader of dozens of citizens that fights bands of up to 30 bandits by yourself. That is a bit absurd.
From what I’ve seen in the roadmap for upcoming updates, raids on your village are supposed to be added, and tactics for your villagers will be a big part of that. However, followers are still something that is missing, and it would really make a difference during your “conquests” of the other regions.
And since I’m pilling on the negatives here, let me add something else. The world building is not it. If you feel like you’re also going to maybe witness an amazing story attached to this really fun game, I’m going to have to disappoint you. Most of the time, when you’ll talk to people, you’ll realize that you can quickly get through the dialogue without reading anything their saying. And you won’t really miss out on much. The story of the Peasant Kingdom you’ve found just isn’t… interesting. NPCs will plot dump on you during random side quests, and I can tell you that I barely remember many of the characters that have participated in some amazing battle for freedom against their oppressors.
The last thing I’ll mention is performance. This part clearly still needs a bit of work, as the game is plagued with random FPS drops, usually when leaving and entering a new region. This is fine usually, but it can be a bit annoying during a fight when this happens. Or when you’re running for your life from a black bear… I’ve also had a mostly bug-free and crashless experience, so the game is clearly in a good state. It just needs some adjustments in terms of optimization and it will likely be perfectly fine on this front as well.
Overall I had a really good time with Sengoku Dynasty, and I’m clearly going to spend many more hours playing the game. I’m especially waiting to see what the devs are cooking, because all of the things on the roadmap sound very interesting and the game clearly has some things it can do to further improve.
Sengoku Dynasty
