First Impressions: Pokemon Conquest

"I choose you Gabite!"
"Aw, fu...."

Welcome to First Impressions, the only review of a game you'll find based on 5 hours or less of play.  Why?  Because a game might be old news when I start playing; you shouldn't have to wait until I finish to get a review!  So here are my impressions from just picking up the game and giving it an honest chance, but not seeing it through to the end (just yet)!

Now, when I hear the words, "Samurai Warriors spinoff game," I usually run and hide.  I consider Samurai Warriors a clunky spinoff of Dynasty Warriors anyway, and Koei's spinoffs have historically been nothing but terrible.  Here's a quick list of things I like happening to me better than playing a spinoff of Dynasty Warriors (or the first person version on Wii for that matter):

Be subjected to the full length Nyan Cat video
Get hit on by a sweaty obese crossplayer
Have my own Navi in real life
Get cut on by Kratos
Live the rest of my life in a Pokeball

How did Nobunaga get a shiny?  I want a shiny!

Anywho.... when Pokemon Conquest came my way, I had to at least check it out.  I don't have faith in Koei's spin-offs, but Pokemon spin-offs have always been good for their genres.  Mystery Dungeon is only good if you like step-based dungeon delvers, but if you do, it's a pretty awesome game.  Pokemon Snap actually has a ton of depth for a photography game.  So I wanted to see how these two franchises could work when teamed up.

Fortunately, Samurai Warriors is really only a motif.  The game takes place in the Ransei region, where Pokemon and Warriors fight side by side....  Well, the Warriors mostly scream from the sidelines and occasionally toss the Pokemon a buff.  The Warriors are following a legend that whoever can unite the kingdoms under one leader will be able to find a legendary Pokemon of immense power, so everyone is scrambling to be the guy who gets it all together.  But aside from a unification of kingdoms plot line and a few recognizable characters, there really isn't much interference of the Samurai Warrirors mechanics, which is good, because they just don't translate well outside of a standard Warriors game.  What you do get is pretty solid tactics game.

Are you a boy or a girl?
This game feels like Pokemon from the get go.
I chose the adorable anime boy, obviously.

You start with just two characters: your hero and Oichi, a charmingly befuddled kunoichi.  You start with Eevee and she sports a pretty haus Jigglypuff  (though you'll find Eevee outgrows the marshmallow Pokemon pretty quickly).  As you go on defeating other Warriors and claiming their castles, the game picks up pace exponentially.  You'll quickly run into a variety of Pokemon.  At just 3 hours of play, you can easily have 30+ characters, each with at least one Pokemon out of a solid 5 or 6 types.  The pace seems to pick up even more just a few battles in, when you gain the ability to link with new Pokemon, giving your Warriors a bit of versatility in battle.  You can only use one Pokemon per Warrior, but the difference between Scraggy and Shinx goes a long way when you find a kingdom populated largely with Flying types.

The battle system is a bit familiar; I've been calling the game, "Pokemon Tactics Advance."  The Pokemon immunities / resistances / supereffectives all stay in place, meaning you have to choose your team more carefully than in other games.  It's largely about who you're attacking and not as much about forming a team that fights well together.  Moreover, each Pokemon has only one move, and moves have a specific target area, which means you have to be very careful when you choose where to have your Pokemon stand to ensure your enemies are in the target range.  Selecting a team with a variety of attack ranges allows you to stockpile attacks on a single enemy. 

Looks like Empoleon is using Bubblebeam.
Notice those weird balls?  Neither does Empoleon.

Where the game falls short is that it is underwhelmingly easy.  You'll find that other than major boss battles, you won't really need to change your team much or worry about strategies.  You just throw the Pokemon you like at them until they die.  Interactive scenery in the battlefields doesn't really mean much either.  Most of the time, you'll just ignore it to take a cheap shot at an enemy.  I often even forget that terrain exists, which is a big problem for this game.  It shouldn't be as overly complicated as Suikoden Tactics's use-an-item-to-make-the-ground-your-element system, but with a game as Type-dependent as Pokemon, a little more interactivity with the environment would have been nice.  There is some presence of Type mattering: Fire Pokemon walk through magma and Water Pokemon swim, but it really doesn't seem to make a major difference in the battles, other than Flying types being insanely useful.  Fortunately, you can up the difficulty by trying to recruit new Warriors or Pokemon during battle to make up for this.

The true maximum for links is 100%, but only the right
Warrior-Pokemon combination can reach them.

The other major complaint is that the menu system is clunky at best.  It turns the game's greatest strength - an incredibly wide variety of playable characters - to its greatest weakness.  Each character must be managed individually, which would be okay, except that you can't see what Pokemon they have access to until you enter their submenu.  What's worse is that the Warriors only have a handful of avatars, so it's easy to confuse them.  Depending on how you enter the menu, there may not even be a button to move to the next Warrior.  Instead, you have to back out of the Warrior's stat screen, look through all the ones that look the same as him, and then find the one that you like just to check and see if his secondary Pokemon was a Starly or a Charmander.  A limit to the number of Warriors who can chill at each castle also serves to make this more annoying, as you'll be shuffling Warriors around constantly.  You can delegate pieces of this process to the computer, but I never trust an NPC to do it right, so I get stuck looking at every detail and engaging in battles with a single Zubat over a teeny tiny exp gain.  Then there's the perfect match Pokemon.  This is when a Pokemon is a perfect match with its Warrior, and they can reach the game's equivalent level 100.  Most Pokemon you recruit will get capped somewhere between 30 and 90.  Unfortunately, after you recruit the Pokemon, it's hard to tell which is which anymore, because the menu barely differentiates, so you have to hope you remember.

The bad aside, this game is addictive to play.  The scenarios manage to stay fresh enough that you can enjoy it, whether or not you do the hardcore grind the way I do.  The Grass kingdom wants you to race to banners and gather them all at once.  The Fighting kingdom won't join you unless you can defeat them at king of the hill (one of my favorite levels).  There's also something wonderfully nostalgic about this game.  It feels like you're back playing Red / Blue when you suffer with Magikarp and finally turn around and your Gyarados demolishes the other Pokemon.  Teams of 6 Warrior-Pokemon pairs gives it that feel of a Pokemon game that you just don't get with other franchises.  That's what makes Pokemon Conquest a success.  Other tactics games are out there and good, but somehow, the charm of the Pokemon world comes through with a sense of discovery I haven't experienced from the franchise since it started.

I can't tell you how I'll feel by the time I get to the end of the game, but at a first glance, Pokemon Conquest gets 4 eventual Eevee evolutions out of 5 (... well 7, but 5 -- You know what I mean.)

Eh... you're really only a 6, but sure.

PARTY NEWS

With my birthday party last week, I'm still exhausted!  <-_-">  I want to thank everyone who gave me a present, though!  It was awesome, and you can rest assured, I'll have plenty of games to play for a while!  The next edition of Hardcore @Vlada is almost a month away, coming up on August 15th, but I can tell you already -- We're going classic!  We'll have an N64, SNES, and PS2 on hand, and when I think about classic gaming, I can't think of a better big screen game than Pokemon Snap, so get ready to impress Professor Oak with your photography skills!  Until then, if you want to party and dance the night away in a non-nerdy fashion, you can find me at XL every Thursday and Saturday.  And I'm always available to hang out and kick some ass!

Charizard just got someone a ton of points!