Warlord: Awaji

First thing you're gonna notice about this game is performance. I rarely bring up performance in reviews, but here it's a turd. "Please wait a minute" is something you'll see when you start the game, load a save, quit. Once your army gets to about 50, your fps tanks in combat, while traversing the map, while loading your camp... Second thing you're gonna notice is something called by a fancy term "ludonarrative dissonance". You get an exposition dump about the emperor sending you on a conquest against the remnants of Ashikaga Shogunate. However, the actual gameplay is more reminiscent of Jin Sakai's guerilla warfare on the island of Tsushima. You start with nothing and you earn everything by conquering camps. It's like a Ubisoft game in the worst way possible: in Far Cry you can at least make creative use of varied level design or even stealth the damn thing. But here, you've seen one settlement - you've seen all 332 (three hundred and thirty two!) of them. It's basically a few small houses and a number of soldiers guarding it that influences the name: homestead, hamlet, village. I spent 12 hours and conquered half of Awaji, hoping that at some point I'd start seeing cities or castles. That never happened. All I get is skirmishes against patrols. It brings flashbacks of Skyrim's civil war, where a siege of Whiterun is supposed to be this epic event, but you're fighting like 5 people. This leads to the reality where tactics are just unnecessary, I never found myself in a situation where I couldn't rely on the local version of "F1 => F3". Third thing you're gonna notice Japan here is just a skin. The game follows a very straightforward progression - whatever you get in the next region is superior to and obsoletes whatever you got in the previous one. Naginata is a straight upgrade over yari, and odachi is a straight upgrade over naginata. If you played Shogun Total War you're probably facepalming right now, but wait - it gets better. Do you know those massive wooden shields placed in front of archers to catch missiles - tate, they're called? In this game, they're actually HANDHELD shields you use in the offhand with an odachi or naginata. I wish I was joking. Also, remember how in Shogun 2 you get a battlefield that is essentially dozens of duels taking place at the same time, reflecting the Bushido ideals? And how clans would wear the armor the color of their kamon for better visibility on the battlefield? Here it's your human wall VS their human wall wearing different colored armors - and you differentiate by looking up to those big colored "orb" thingies above their heads. Fourth thing you're gonna notice is the camp building is actually pretty fun. As long as you're biased like me and have been dreaming of a game that lets you build a samurai camp from Shogun Total War's ninja clips for the past 25 years. And if you're not - you'll quickly realize very few buildables serve actual purpose; defenses serve none, as your enemies are passive and will never attack your camp on their own. Also, to keep building stuff you need resources, and to get more you gotta keep capturing those damn outposts... All in all, it's Bannerlord Village Raiding: The Game, and I think I'm being generous right now. Besides the fundamental game design problems I mentioned there's also quality of life issues, like having to manually assign gear to every soldier and constantly promote them and assign to squads as their predecessors get killed; or get off your horse after each battle to manually revive a few dozen soldiers one by one; or having to return to camp after every fight to refill your arrows because your quiver can only hold 18. None of these are massive, yet together they lead to a "death by a thousand cuts" situation. Above all, it desperately needs some depth and variety, like perhaps the Age of Empires 3 "shipments" system or something? The core gameplay loop, while initially engaging, gets dull pretty fast and overstays its welcome halfway into the experience. P.S. Games like this contribute to my frustration with the state of the industry. Indie scene, which was always seen as innovative and willing to tackle things big corporations wouldn't - it has kinda devolved into "mainstream games but worse" by attempting to imitate them on a shoestring budget. As it stands, you may as well play the Japan mod for Bannerlord instead. @Darkmatter Dear developer, while I appreciate you likely don't have the budget for competent community management just like you evidently don't have one for consultant on history of Japan, it's just not a good look on your part to try and dismiss a review as "largely misleading" when you yourself seemingly haven't read into it beyond sentence 2 or 3. To reiterate, I've currently unlocked armors up to advanced, weapons up to odachi and arrows up to flaming. These are straight upgrades over one another, eliminating any chance of tactical choice or consideration the game could have. I've currently reached the biggest settlement size of "outpost" - which icon looks like an imposing fortress on the map, but in reality is the same two houses plus a tower, guarded by a handful of soldiers... At the same time, I've made it past the mountains well into the valley and from the objectives tab, quote, "the valley now shows its true colors". Apparently its true colors are... just more densely-packed outposts? This is actually valuable feedback of and in itself - even if at some point we do get massive or complex battles, you can't be reasonably expecting someone to play through the entire game before seeing them. The map is just way bigger than it needs to be, and the progression doesn't really do a good job of catching up with how the gameplay loop wears off its welcome. But, what do I know.

Warlord Britannia looks poor, but plays better. Warlord Awaji looks better, but plays poor. This is essentially the Warlord series, and it's the issue with this game. At first the Japanese setting sounds like a good idea, just like everyone thinks katanas are cool. But upon looking closer you realize that in reality katanas where inferior compared to european swords. The same can be said about this game. It looks cool, but in reality isn't. It has more resources but only one way to get all of them. It has a larger map, but no variety. The individual NPCs actually fight with different weapons and sub units, but the whole army is just a blob with no tactics. The player finally isn't a killing machine anymore that can take on 50 enemies on his own, like in the previous title. But he also doesn't need to do that because the enemies in this game aren't a threat anymore. The camp doesn't even have a positive aspect xD. A roman fort looks cooler, was more fun to build, and actually had a reason to exist because you got attacked by raiding armies or it cost you a ton of money to replace all the foot soldiers you lost, so having a big wall with towers, archers and legionaries defending the breach was a cost effective way to fend of waves of celtic attackers. And if you moved somewhere where an army was walking around and you wanned to take a town but you hadn't build a base yet you actually had to think about what to do because the base took 5 minutes to build and the soldiers had to be in "worker mode" during that time meaning they had no armor and weapons leaving you vulnerable during the construction time which took 50 soldiers multiple minutes to setup the legions camp. In this game the camp takes 5 seconds to build because it just magically builds it self, you don't need walls or anything to defend because you never get attacked and if you do you just win even in the hard mode. In the previous game a legionary had to be bought for gold and then upgraded and survive 10 days to unlock veteran armor which also cost a ton. He was so expensive that you had to go with a frontline of cheap soldiers and only promote the ones who survived a few battles in basic armor. Here you get random weapon drops that stay in your inventory and can be reassigned with no cost at all. So losing the Centurion Biggus Dickus who had served 20 days had 50 kills and got promoted multiple times, did hurt in the previous game because the investment (his rank, his armor) was gone. Now you just promote the next guy and reequip the iteams. After the demo I already thought this game would have less tactical depth, but I was fine with that because in the demo I got murdered all the time by half naked farmers. So, I thought this would be a small scale version of the previous game with more focus on individual combat. Since the previous game had only very basic combat, but more strategic and tactical depth because you had to manage 200 soldiers + artillery, archers, while keeping your cavalry out of danger to either find the enemy archers without getting stuck in a town or sniped because a single horsemen costed as much as 15 to 25 foot soldiers. But unfortunately the combat is still very basic, and while it's more complex, the issue is that you can revive your soldiers and they don't die or cost as much as before. Which means you don't have to solo a small town because you didn't want to risk losing your expensive soldiers, because you can just steamroll everything with minimal losses. I'm honestly not sure about this game. Some mechanics have been modernized, but the lack of depth in some areas (which is understandable given the different setting), just hasn't been compensated by anything. All the new mechanics are nice to have, but have little impact on the game. For example it's nice that you don't have to press 10 buttons to move the legion around and cycle different formation types. You now have 1 button that you can hold, press once or twice to manage the stances. That's a good improvement to make the basics more manageable while you're fighting yourself. But because the tactics are down to charge and soldiers will fight fine without you managing the formation, you don't get to use the new system very much anymore. Politics is the same. It's nice to have the ability to negotiate, but once you realize that there isn't anything to negotiate because you have unlimited money and nobody has the power to force you to form an alliance to not get overpowered, it becomes just a ritual, rather than a feature.

I enjoy this developers game style, but this isn't for everyone. FOR ANYONE READING THIS DO NOT FORGET TO SAVE YOUR GAME, THERE IS NO AUTO SAVE. @developer, If you aren't going to add an autosave at least put a reminder system in. Just lost 75 minutes of gameplay, have to restart from scratch now. All in all decent game, buggy slightly but a step up from Britanna. I think 30 CAD is step for this game, lots of play time for sure but repetative. Was hoping for a bit more on this second iteration, maybe with some updates it'll improve.

Took my first hamlet executed all the wounded, slaughtered all the villagers and razed all the buildings. Then the Hamlets clan came with 20 dudes and massacred my whole retinue. I felt just like a real Japanese warlord. 10/10

游戏其实只值30。剩下的20是补贴开发团队去日本旅行

This game was a genuine nothing game. What you see in the trailer is it. There's nothing to actually do unless you like building bases with only like 30 tiles gifted to you. The progression tree for troops is tiny, the stats barely matter since you get the estates and farmland back after they die and the weapon play is so uninspiring it's a wonder you don't just go to sleep or look at insta while putting your soldiers on battle charge mode until they're done. I was never once challenged during the entire game and the only times I died were when I tried to kill forts all on my lonesome, or when I clicked off for half a second and drowned in the water because I ended up forgetting I was playing this game. I guess if you like walking simulators with the sounds of people blowing up and stacking sounds whenever you alt tab and come back to your ears getting hit by a "RAAAGH AWWOOOO AUGGHGHHH MOSHIWAKENAI KOROSUWAKEARU!" all in half a second, then buy the game. I cannot recommend it though.

The game has a lot of potential, but its very repetitive, it takes a few hours to even get to interesting towns and forts and even then, the ai doesn't even use the fort, it just charges out and attacks you in the open field. If they actually put some effort in this game it could be legendary, id love to see more interactions between your soldiers, better ai, ability to send out small raiding parties so you don't have to run around to the hundreds of small towns and waste time, it also needs to be harder, right now its very easy to just run around and kill everything, even if your soldiers die you don't lose the equipment. Overall I would buy it if its on sale, but if not I would wait for more content to be released.

Made some improvements from Britannia and took out some of the annoying parts however took a lot of the fun aspects such as guards, worrying about being attacked, setting up proper outposts. It's even more just build camp, deploy army, fight, disband camp rinse and repeat. I'll give it a try further but does not have the same joy that Britannia did.

Congratulations to Darkmatter for the successful launch of Warlord Awaji! With the launch of Awaji came alot of new improvements from rhe previous titles Brittania along with changes that reflect the culture, time, and place the game is set in. Mechanics: - Diplomacy has been added into the game allowing players to view a faction menu. In this menu you can view enemy>neutral>allied factions. You can also spend some of your funds to increase relations and form alliances. You can also call other allied factions to aid you in battles. Im really excited about this being added to the game especially with the potential to grow this system in future titles. - The Economy system has been changed from the previous title reflecting the era the game takes place in. You gain resources and funds from taking over lands and trading with neutral or allied factions. ● In Brittania the previous title the economy was based on taxing lands and resources were also gained from workers for building outposts and your camp. I personally like that the economy in each game represents how each civilization acted during these historical time settings. ☆ sep12th you can now get 2x resources for raising a land! Darkmatter always takes good feedback and considers making adjustments. Before you couldn't get anything extra for raising a land now you get 2x resources. Im glad to see this adjustment so burning down a land isnt a waste now. - The combat system has been improved in awaji with better animations and ability to use various and new weapons. ● In Brittania combat was very basic and you couldn't swap out weapons at all. I love the level of gore and picking up and using various weapons along with unlocking and finding weapons for my weapon rack and retinue to use. - The formation system has also been changed to better reflect the game since having samurai making testudo shield walls with Katanas wouldn't make sense xD. ● In awaji when you open up the army tab you can move your units to where you want them in a battle formation than switch from march to battle and watch everyone set up in formation. This army tab represents your formation and by moving units around you can get pretty creative with this feature. I also like that when acquiring weapons and armor you can equip every individual in your retinue giving the player freedom to custom your army. - The camp building in awaji kept with the same style as Brittania but instead of using workers you use the collected resources from conquest and trading to build your camp and meet the needs of your army. I really like that everyone doesn't just stand guard or walk around like in brittania. Its very pleasing to see a upgrade to how units use the camp and surrounding seating arrangements when relaxing. Each warrior in your army has camp needs that need to be met as well if you want to get the bonus for fulfilling camp needs. ☆ if i could change one aspect of the camp system in awaji it would be that if your needs aren't fulfilled it will only heal the warriors with fulfilled needs making it more crucial to keep your camp needs met. Personally I dont rush through open world games so I enjoy customizing my camp and planning my next move there. - The Graphics and performance has been greatly improved from brittania for most players including myself. ● brittania suffered from a wide variety of amazing and poor PC builds having amazing high FPS performance and others having very low FPS performance. The strange thing about Brittania was some people with amazing pcs and others like me with really low end pcs were playing over 70fps end game where others with great builds had extremely low unplayable FPS. ● Awaji is already performing on higher FPS for most players and there is already talks of updates to improve performance farther. Summary: - in no way is Awaji a copy/paste of Brittania bringing new mechanics to the game why removing mechanics that dont fit into this specific release. Personally im having a blast playing Awaji. - i like that the game is its own game and not a copy/paste I think the diplomacy system is a great addition to be developed and worked on for the next game. I like that the economy fits the time and place using conquered lands and trade to gain resources instead of using workers to gather and build. I find the combat is way more enjoyable which is a + for me. I think the new formation system is really unique and brings potential for future titles and im excited to see where it goes from here I honestly had to buy my wife two games on her switch 2 just so I could distract her when I get off work so I could play Awaji. I love how unique warlords is and the steady growth and improvments between games makes Awaji a must play for me. Im looking forward to the future of Darkmatter Games and getting back into awaji! I recommend getting this game if you enjoy other titles like Mount&Blade, TotalWar, and OpenWorld genre of games. If you're on the fence about picking this game up just do it! Honestly its a blast to play and I cant wait for whats next!