Niahak's Place

I’ve been playing sandbox-style strategy games for a long time. One of the games instrumental to my fondness for sandboxy games is Uncharted Waters: New Horizons which I’ve written about a fair bit elsewhere. Horizon’s Gate puts Uncharted Waters style exploration front and center – simplifying some of the simulation/strategy elements while fleshing out exploration by adding land combat and classic tactical RPG elements.

Sailing Era went one way with its inspiration from UW – focusing less on role-playing elements and more on storyline, trading, and ship management (like the Uncharted Waters sequels unreleased in the West). Horizon’s Gate goes the opposite route, substantially simplifying trading (each port only sells one trade good) and ship customization (more limited ship selections, but they have accessory slots). While the net result is less relaxing than Uncharted Waters, it feels like a more complete and interesting game – and one that offers a more engaging use of the player’s time. By taking place in a fantasy world, it also removes one potential mental disconnect in Uncharted Waters: as long as the player knows some geography, they really can’t get into too much trouble exploring. You’re typically “exploring” for something you know or suspect is there. Exploration in Horizon’s Gate, on the other hand, can be surprisingly risky as the further you get from the core areas, the fewer and farther between towns are. Likewise, the on-land exploration segments get harder. Thankfully the map supports annotating locations with icons so you can track which ones are dangerous or unexplored.

UFO 50 is a compilation game with a “found collection” aesthetic. Although it’s not quite exactly NES in terms of capabilities/music, it’s close. Most games have some indie sensibilities, so it doesn’t feel exactly like a found collection, but more along the lines of “what your nostalgia told you games were like”. I’ve enjoyed playing it over the past few months, and although I don’t feel I’ve given every game a fair shake, I’m down to about 5 or so that I want to dig into deeper. Each game has multiple different completion options: Item (typically an hour or two into the game), Gold (think of as “beaten”), Cherry (completed a “challenge”).

I wanted to write up some quick (or not quick, in the case of Avianos) impressions to give some idea of the flavor of games in the collection I felt particularly stand out. Since there are so many of them, and this order represents the (roughly, as it’s from memory) chronological order, I decided to split this post into several to keep things straight.

For decades now, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series has been a gaming comfort food for me. Its more traditional, ruler-focused entries are relatively simple grand strategy games. Complexity comes from the vast supporting cast of history, with even the earliest games having hundreds of officers. Koei assigns various stats to officers based on what they did either in the novel or in historical documents (typically splitting the difference a bit where they disagree). This typically means that, like the Paradox grand strategy games, there is a massive set of playable options with varying degrees of difficulty. The player can either try and role-play or break the mold of history from the start.

In 2000, Koei released Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII. This was the first entry to allow playing as a subordinate (or free) officer, allowing you to influence things as a “bit player”, more like a Crusader Kings count under a duke. The RTK officer play entries involve take a more restrictive, but also more focused view than Crusader Kings – while intrigue can happen, it’s not as much the focus beyond officer rebellion/recruitment. As a subordinate officer, you receive monthly goals set by your governor. You can also play as an advisor, governor, or viceroy (commanding your own sub-force although still not able to do your own diplomacy). Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII came out a year later, with more focus on inter-officer relationships (marriage and sworn siblings in particular). Although I personally favor VII of the two, VIII is one of the more popular entries in the series and thus got recently remade.

First, a disclaimer: I played this game on the Switch, mostly on version 1.03 and 1.04. It sounds like the current versions and other platforms perform better, which I will be grateful for when I return to it for the DLC. I’ve tried to isolate performance/crash stuff to its own section.

It’s going to be a little hard to confine everything I felt as I played Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes to a single post. Or even, really, to the written word. A mixture of relief, frustration, sadness, and joy in different measures and different times will have to do. It took me months to gather my thoughts enough to write the bulk of this and months more to refine it and each time I’ve felt a little different.

When I discovered the original Mount & Blade I was really impressed by the sandbox approach it used. You play as one person in a world that continues to move as you do. It’s fundamentally pretty similar to some earlier games – Uncharted Waters, for example, took a similar approach. M&B added an excellent combat system, though – one that was very well suited to keyboard + mouse controls, that incentivized (but didn’t require) a shield and allowed the flexibility of mounted combat. It also brings in a character growth system that extends to companions in your party. While other games might see you becoming a “superman” in a few hours, you never really feel immortal in M&B – mighty, perhaps.

As revisions came in for the original games, new factions and weaponry were added and eventually Mount & Blade: Warband came out. A standalone game that could be considered Mount & Blade II, Warband added more complex politics and a couple of new factions as well as multiplayer. Importantly, though, there was enough of a fanbase and the system was extensible enough that mods were plentiful. Although my favorite was The Last Days, the LOTR mod that still receives updates, there were several fantastic total conversions as well as a lot of smaller mods that extended the “Vanilla” experience.

The “actual” Mount & Blade II, subtitled Bannerlord, isn’t a bad game per se, but it misses the mark a bit on what made Warband so addictive. It seems to focus more on set pieces than sandbox features. Diplomacy is somewhat middling, the “campaign” quest seems tacked on, and while the family and aging system has potential it isn’t particularly exciting due to its extremely slow pace. It may have been more interesting if the “Realistic” death settings were realistic in the least (or allowed for percentage chance of death in combat based on age, for example) – requiring a character to switch characters frequently to inherit the legacy of their predecessors.