Stick to Shogun
Although fans of historical strategy games like Ancient Art of War might be tempted to check out this little know title, they would be well advised to steer well clear. It sounds decent enough on paper, but in practice, it proves to be a tedious and uninteresting experience that will have you turning off pretty quickly. You take the role of Takeda Shingen, a 16th Century Japanese tactician and must protect your land from the threat of invasion, while you also need to think about expanding your own borders. Your overall goal is to reach Kyoto in search of ultimate political power but fail and you will be wiped from the pages of history. Takeda is a pretty hardcore strategy game that takes place in real time and sees you in control of thousands of units as you take part in a series of accurately recreated battles. There are plenty of tactical formations to choose from, various units to try out and all the other elements associated with games like Shogun. If you are a true hardcore strategy fan, you might get some enjoyment out of this, but for anyone else, it's all going to be a bit too much to handle, with a number of flaws bring down the fun factor. While the scale of the game is to be applauded, with a real sense of the epic, there are major problems with the control system which renders the whole thing a chore, with enemy AI is also highly suspect at times. Visually and in terms of general production values, this one fails quite miserably too, so overall, this has little going for it and is best avoided.
