Pokemon Conquest

So, here's my next review. I suppose I should say this up front: I'm pretty sure I'm some kind of Pokemon fanboy. I have owned just about every game since Crystal, even some that I really regret (Long story short, since I'll probably never review it: Don't buy Pokemon Dash. Ever. It's not good). I'm also a fan of Turn-Based Strategy games, particularly the Fire Emblem series (I'll probably end up reviewing a couple of these at some point in the future. They are good). So, when I found out that there was going to be a Pokemon-based TBS game, I was pretty excited. So, with that out of the way, let's get started with Pokemon Conquest.

Pokemon Conquest, known as Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition in Japan, is something like the 20th Pokemon spin-off game, and also something like the 26th game in the Nobunaga's Ambition franchise. It is a crossover between the Pokemon and Nobunaga's Ambition series, or, rather, a game in the Nobunaga's Ambition franchise with Pokemon. It's the first Nobunaga's Ambition game released in America, and if it sells half as well as most Pokemon games, it will likely not be the last.

In Conquest, you play as the Warlord of the Aurora kingdom in the Ransei region. A warlord from the far North, Nobunaga, has begun conquering the other kingdoms, in hopes of fulfilling a legend that whosoever rules all 17 kingdoms will gain the power of the creator of the region. You decide to try to conquer the region yourself, in order to stop whatever Nobunaga might be planning.

Gameplay wise, Conquest is pretty standard for Turn-Based Strategy games, at least standard for the ones I've played. You control various warlords and warrior, each bonded to a Pokemon, and fight off wild Pokemon and other warlords. If you defeat a warlord, and fulfill a few other requirements, the warlord can join your team. Your warlords can also form bonds with wild Pokemon, having them join that particular warlord, though each warlord can only have so many Pokemon at a time. In battle, all of your warlords make their moves, and then all of your opponents make their moves. This repeats until somebody wins the battle.

Story wise, this game is nothing special. Basically, it's a standard Pokemon game. You have to get through the 17 kingdoms/gyms, defeating the warlords/gym leaders, adding new Pokemon to your team as time goes on. Honestly, nothing more to say here. The characters that join your team, even discounting the generic warriors, don't really have anything that distinguishes them. Honestly, this game kind of falls flat here. I really enjoyed the story in Black/White, with its examination of whether or not it's right to train Pokemon. And then this is just... blah. It's not bad, it's not good, it barely even is.

At about this point in the last two reviews, I went over something that really stuck out to me in the game, for good or bad, like the Drop mechanic and Flick Rush in Kingdom Hearts 3D, or the narration and soundtrack in Bastion. This time, though... there's nothing. Nothing in this game really stuck out to me. As a Pokemon game, it doesn't do anything new besides be a Turn-Based Strategy game, and as a Turn-Based Strategy game, it doesn't doesn't do anything new besides have Pokemon. I suppose the simple combination of these two does enough to justify the game, but at the same time, there's nothing that gets an emotional response from me. It feels like it should be something that I should like, and yet, I don't really feel anything for it. I don't hate it, but at the same time, I didn't really like it either.

So, do I recommend this game? No. No I don't. It's not that it's bad, it's just boring. If you're a huge enough fan of Pokemon, you'll probably get this game anything, so I hope you enjoy it. But I can't suggest someone get this game otherwise. It's a nice enough time-waster, but that's about it.

So, when I first started this whole review thing, I said that I was going to mostly review older games. But here we are at review three, and all of my reviews thus far have been games released in the last year. But now, we finally come to something just a little bit older. So, be sure to come back next week for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.