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I once tried one of these Paradox strategy games, and I hated it so much that I didn't buy anything else from Paradox for 12 years. But Sengoku uses one of my favorite historical settings, and I liked that it included aspects of managing an empire instead of merely fighting over one. So I said to myself, "Surely Paradox has learned lessons in those 12 years, and they must have fixed much of what was wrong with their game designs," and I bought Sengoku. Nope. 12 years later, Sengoku suffers from every one of the same problems that made my first Paradox purchase such a miserable experience.
Firstly, the manual seems to have been written by someone who was only vaguely familiar with the game. It covers NOTHING of importance. This is of course not uncommon for computer games, but it's a serious issue for Paradox strategy games because they are complex and yet have clumsy interfaces, and it would be really nice if there was *something* to tell the player what was going on.
Example: The manual points out that generals have "martial" leadership ratings, but nothing explains exactly what affect these ratings have on battle outcomes or the general's performance.
Example: Terrain also affects the outcome of combat, which is not mentioned anywhere in the manual.
As I noted, Paradox games also have horribly unhelpful interfaces.
Example: When you raise troops, this expense is only figured into your income on the first day of the following month. This means that you can quite easily raise more troops than you can pay for without realizing it. And if you go into debt, rebellions can arise.
Example: There is a map overlay which supposedly displays where rebellions are possible. However, there are two types of possible rebellions, and the display only shows the likelihood of one of them. The other can arise at any time, without warning, anywhere.
That second kind of rebellion is one of the game's most infuriating messes. It is perhaps not historically unrealistic for the Ikko-Ikki faction to be formidable (actual Japanese warlords of the time had great difficulty dealing with them), but in Sengoku, this is reflected by the sudden appearance of an army which can easily be larger than the army your entire clan can raise. So these rebels can outnumber you, they also always get to fight with any potential defense bonuses because they are generated already within one of your provinces and you have to kick them out to get your own province back, and best of all, if you fail to defeat them, that one single rebel province is able to replace ALL of its casualties faster than your whole faction can raise a new army to send against them.
There is also a terrible lack of control in these Paradox games.
Example: Some generals are better than others, but you do not get to decide which one is put in charge of your own army. I raised an army and I thought it was under a rank 15 general, but when the battle started, it turned out that some rank 4 clown was in charge, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Example: One of my province governors became so unhappy with me that his loyalty rating dipped into the range where there was a possibility he might revolt against me. I ordered him to give up his governorship, and he simply refused. So I ordered him to commit seppuku (suicide for disgrace), and again, he simply refused. And then, well, then I did nothing, because the game gave me no other options. Sengoku is supposed to be a simulation of a time when tyrannical warlords cut down anyone who defied or opposed them, and yet the game leaves the player helpless to discipline a recalcitrant subordinate. There was nothing I could do but wait and see whether this character would rebel against me.
Sengoku also suffers from some of the flaws that are common for computer strategy games. Like so many games, diplomacy is just about useless, as AI-controlled factions almost never agree to ANYTHING you offer.
Example: Defeat all of a rival warlord's armies, capture all of his other provinces, and lay siege to his last province, then offer to let him live if he agrees to become one of your underlings. The AI faction invariably chooses to be eliminated from the game rather than survive to try rebelling another day.
Then there's some just plain stupid crap.
Example: Ninjas kept damaging my diplomatic relations with my religious faction, and when I finally caught one, it turned out that they were being hired by my own heir! Why was the idiot sabotaging the kingdom he stood to inherit? And again, there was nothing I could do to stop him.
In short, I would not recommend this game to anyone, even if you, like me, are fascinated with feudal Japan. Sengoku is laborious, baffling, infuriating, and the player's inability to exert any control over important aspects of the game leaves the whole thing to feel like an exercize in helpless futility.
Addendum: After fighting with these headaches for a while, I finally got a campaign that was going well. And then the rebellions started up. My own provinces were fine, but my idiot vassals seemed incapable of maintaining order in their own, and their AI was ridiculously inconsistent about addressing the rebellions. I was having to divert my own troops from war with another faction to prevent my clan from losing territory to rebellions in my vassals' provinces. And it was a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, because no sooner did I defeat one than another would arise. Typically, there were 4 rebellions waiting to be addressed at any given time. That was when I decided to just cut my losses and erase the game. Except its uninstall doesn't work properly and froze, so it took 2 tries just to get this piece of dreck off of my hard drive. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS GAME.
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