GRANT PATTERSON LLC
TAMPA, FLORIDA

So, who the hell is this Grant Patterson guy? “Grant Patterson is to videogame controllers what John Henry was to hammers.” “When I think of unbeatable, never-say-die work ethic, two things come to mind: Grant Patterson and the Honda Accord.” – local Honda salesman Grant Patterson has spent the last thirty years attached to a videogame console. When he’s not controller-bound, he’s thinking about games; his mind is usually bent on what makes them fun, what makes them relevant, where the industry has been and where it’s headed next. Or, his mind has simply bent from all the stuff he’s played. Take your pick. Of course, I didn’t know what I was doing my first time starting the game, so I went straight for the tutorial. Ultimately, I think I would have been okay without it — it was really lengthy, described the game’s processes in a manner that never felt entirely clear, and spent time interjecting light storytelling with dense gameplay explanations. Besides, in-game alerts on how functions worked popped up the first time said functions were used in the main campaign missions, which basically renders the tutorial redundant. Everything is laid out for players in a very simple manner, and by the time I’d grown accustomed to the basic functions, I was already curious about the deeper nuances. There’s a help file, too, which clarified a few things I couldn’t organically figure out. . Players must constantly and consistently manage not only the military might of each province, but they must keep an eye on civic planning and policy as well as that province’s financial earnings and resources. This attention to each individual town will contribute to the overall capability of your empire-to-be, so when any one (or more) of those aspects are left unattended, the others will cease to function well and your entire operation will suffer as a result. You cannot expect to maintain an army without food and structures for your population, you cannot expect to keep a population growing without developing your cities and managing your policies, and you cannot expect to build new and better facilities without your towns making money. You have multiple ways to accomplish this feat. Combat is very easy to grasp, but has intricacies that may take some getting used to. Fortunately, that quick and easy-to-use help system is at your beck and call, and I found myself a master of close-range warfare within a few skirmishes. A word of advice: never, ever roll on any enemy solo. Bring backup, because a pincer maneuver is always the best option. Against castles, roll in threes, and bring lots of men. Then, when it’s said and done, tell them to go home. Your provinces need the extra manpower to finish local projects. Also, there’s merit in taking out a clan and not executing captured officers. Some of them will talk big about how they’ll “get you next time,” but they just flee back to their dwindling number of friendly bases. Once you take those out, they’ll accept your offer to join because they have nowhere else to go. There’s plenty of great leaders you can put to good use, as long as you keep them alive long enough to serve you. The game’s graphics are quite pleasing overall. A lot of the smaller details of the landscape and armies are nice, but they get lost once campaigns begin to take on a larger scope. Players can zoom in on their castles and armies, but there isn’t much need to; almost all of the game can be played at a level where castles are represented by clan icons and armies are represented with colored blocks. The menus are fairly basic, probably out of necessity — they’re filled with simple icons representing various options and abilities. A little text box icon pops up whenever the game wants to gain the player’s attention, which I found to be a nice touch. These simple visual alerts helped me focus my attention on the proper priorities and opportunities, from treasures arriving in the market to the option to hire ronin roaming the land. The graphics take a big backseat in this game because it doesn’t really need them. It is a game of numbers, statistics and management, and thus does not require a slick and pretty presentation. It just needs to be functional, and in that, it succeeds. I think it would help for it to look a little better, but that’s the epitome of a “want” instead of a “need,” especially in a game entirely focused on its core ideas and mechanincs in the way that I find myself agreeing somewhat, as the recycled speeches and canned statements did get old after a while. The music, on the other hand, was delightful. It was never intrusive, and always engaging. I didn’t get tired of hearing it. The voices do repeat often, as the stock phrases are all that’s used. However, there is an option to turn the voices to their native Japanese, which sells the authenticity just that little extra bit more. It’s a nice touch. might be a hard sell. It’s a very deep game, giving the biggest rewards to players who are capable of putting in time and effort. That being said, it isn’t exactly difficult; a newbie to the genre would likely be able to pick up and start playing quite easily. It isn’t really daunting, either. That’s partially because it’s so much fun, but also because there are a wealth of different options for controlling the difficulty. And though the historical anecdotes might get a little tedious, they do lend a unique kind of charm to the title. . This game is not for people who cannot take time to examine the finer details of a situation, plain and simple. If the idea of managing individual town resource production, castle enhancement, city planning and management, military troop strength, individual battle strategy for five separate and simultaneous conflicts, fostering foreign diplomacy between twenty-something clans and watching out for the best selling price of rice in the late winter doesn’t sound like fun, this game is not for you. Not at all.