Platform: DS
Developer: Box Clever Interactive
Publisher: Namco
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Rating:

Pros: Large-scale strategy; games don’t take forever
Cons: Weirdly limited, gimmicky mini-games, pushover difficulty

So you want to be the Shogun. Namco’s Shogun Empires: Real Time Conflict makes logical use of the touch screen of Nintendo’s DS hardware and is a rare example of large-scale, turn based strategy on a handheld. On the other hand, despite its honorable intentions the game doesn’t quite live up to its epic intentions.

Empire for One

As one of two brothers vying to inherit their father’s title of shogun, your mission is to conquer the map of provinces stretched out before you. None of the war making feels complicated, so players can raise their banners and jump right in. You touch the banner of one of your armies, you touch a neighboring province, and you get ready for touching battles. Physically touching--your stylus sends swordsmen, and archers into small-scale battles and orchestrates a variety of mini-game-like challenges such as castle siege and ninja duel.

Touching Battles

After subjugating a few neighboring provinces and winning a few battles you’ll realize there’s not much left you haven’t already done. Whether you’re asked to liberate a village, eliminate all survivors, or seize the enemy banner, each regular battle is a slight variation on the same theme. No matter which army you’re in control of, you’ll have the same three units (one of each type) to work with in every battle and see the same maps used over and over again. Pressing select will send your warlord galloping automatically across the map, smiting everyone he comes across, but this hardly seems necessary and can lead to a big fat game over if he falls. There’s nothing wrong with simplicity, but Shogun’s battles feel weirdly limited—there just isn’t much to do. You can upgrade your units with honor points rewarded for your victories, but each battle feels easier than the last.

Outside standard battles, other matters require your personal touch as well. Routing an enemy army has you chasing the enemy general down by horse, launching arrows and moving side to side to avoid arrows aimed at you. Battering down castle walls or fighting ship to ship requires you to aim big guns (well, arrows really) at the opposition, which is not a bad idea but suffers a bit from lack of precision and blurry visuals. You can also hire a ninja who will try and assassinate a rival warlord, but weird indirect control unfortunately negates the ninja cool factor altogether.

War War

It’s short. It’s simple. It might be neat for a while, but unless you’re stuck with this game and this game only and isolated from any other source of entertainment, you’re unlikely to get more than a few hours worth of entertainment out of Shogun Warriors. As the art of war goes, this is a hasty sketch at best.