Takeda is a battlefield game, which takes as its overarching setting and theme the life of Takeda Shingen (the “Tiger of Kai”), an upstart lord of the province of Kai and the Takeda clan. Securing his position by battlefield success (and not a little political maneuvering), Shingen represents the epitome of the audacious and daring Samurai warlords of Japan in the strife-torn 16th Century.
The core of Samurai life was battle, and that is the basis for Takeda. You are cast in the position of general, managing the force of an army in any of a number of set piece battles, castle assaults and defenses. You have at your disposal forces of spearmen, swordsmen, cavalry, and archers (eventually riflemen), all represented by 2d sprites.
Starting a battle in Takeda reminds you immediately of the formalism of the period. There is no entirely free setup – you choose the overall formation of your troops and then place the various divisions in the available locations in the formation. Rather than feel hamstrung by the limited deployment options, they prevent you from unrealistically imbalanced deployments that can cripple an army before the combat even starts.
Everything here is based on organization, allowing you to easily command and control nearly 500 troops at a time. In the battlefield deployment screen, you assign forces to their positions in the overall formation you’ve chosen (such as Fish, Tiger, or Dragon).
You put individual generals (and the battalions of soldiers they command) into the left, center, or right wing positions at either front, center, or rear depth for a total of nine tactical positions. You may also assign generals to a flanking role or reserve. Flanking means they are not on the field when the battle starts, but when they do arrive they show up in on a hopefully unguarded enemy flank. Generals may alternately be assigned to a flanking defense detachment that reduces the likelihood of enemy flanking success. You cannot deploy offensive and defensive flanking forces at once, and troops deployed to a flank cannot have their orders changed (i.e. “now attack”) so it’s rare that you would commit any but superfluous cavalry units to flanking.
The Marshall of the army (you) has his own personal troops, and there are two reserve positions to his right and left. As far as I could tell, you could never populate all the positions at once, even if you have enough generals. This means that ultimately (if every general has a full complement of 40 soldiers which is rare), an army can have up to 12 deployed divisions or 480 men.
These organizations aren’t just for deployment, but actually affect the way the individual battalions behave on the field. Battalions of the same division will tend to abandon their posts and help each other if pressed, making it essential that the general (you) keep this in mind if you don’t want an unpleasant surprise.
The roles of the various troops are typical: Spearmen are the cheap bulk of an army, useful for holding ground and occasionally causing some casualties to charging horsemen. Swordsmen are the elite hand-to-hand units, able to attack and hold ground against most other forces. Cavalry are deadly but brittle, and Archers (eventually replaced in part or whole by Riflemen) cause scattered casualties at range, but are mincemeat if melee units make it to hand-to-hand combat. Generals are shown on your screen with a default troop type for which they are best suited, but in a pinch you can usually change their force types if what you have is totally unsuited to the ground.
Divisions (not individual soldiers) are given movement/attack controls through a fairly standard interface, allowing for the expected tradeoffs of speed and vulnerability. Orders are issued instantly without any apparent command radius or delay, giving the player unrealistically perfect control of units no matter how isolated they may be. Units (excepting those under strict ‘stand ground’ or ‘all-out attack’ orders) automatically break off and regroup after 75% casualties, which is useful but far too standardized (elite cavalry breaks off at the same time peasant spearmen do?). Rudimentary commands (advance, retreat etc) are available for the whole army, and you can give them a morale boost by hitting the war drum, useful at the critical point of an attack or when you sense your troops are about to break and run. Don’t hit it too much, because it’s most influential when used sparingly.
The settings are nicely varied, from river crossings and light forests (which will play merry havoc with your carefully-ordered formations), to castle assaults. The battles themselves also look very nice, but devolve into a morass of units. This wouldn’t be so bad, but I couldn’t find any way to zoom in on the action, so extricating units proved nearly impossible. The AI is minimally competent on defense, but (as is the case with most wargames) is weak on attack, lacking any sense of mass, momentum, or force preservation. Cutting down the enemy’s flagpoles (located by his General) is a quick way to breaking his morale, and is far too easy: the AI generals seem prone to throw in the reserves without paying much attention to the situation, letting even a small cavalry detachment nimbly sweep in and accomplish it with little danger.
Sieges look interesting, but similarly prove less than satisfying in implementation. Granted, sieges tend to be brute force affairs anyway, but what’s the point of giant complicated formations and command structure when everyone’s going to end up in a clump, pounding at the gates? There are no siege units, and no sense of drama – you have no choice but to keep slugging, or try a different door. Once you do break in, the lack of decent path finding means you’ll spend most of the time regrouping your troops trapped in corners rather than fighting the battle.
In the campaign, you play the role of Shingen himself as you fight a series of loosely linked battles that trace the situations and circumstances faced by Shingen after his seizure of power from his father Nobutora. Shingen had to immediately consolidate his power and prove his strength before the opportunistic lords of the neighboring provinces, and you will be faced with similar pressing strategic decisions.
This campaign is of the decision-tree type with strictly limited choices such as whether to fight battle A, fight battle B, or rest your army (with the chance that you are attacked while resting). Many times, there IS no choice – you’re going to go to the next battle that they have scripted, no matter what. This system really only serves as a rather rudimentary contextual framework for the battles. Although there’s no fog of war and no limited intelligence, this is not unrealistic for medieval Japan where spying took its highest form. Battle-decision-battle: don’t expect a lot strategically. The situations are historical but the campaign ends with nine or ten speculative battles – in real life, Shingen died shortly after Mikatagohara – which project Shingen’s steps toward seizing the Shogunate.
Takeda immediately inspires comparison with Shogun, and this is unfortunate (for Takeda). Takeda is 2d sprites, Shogun 3d; Takeda has a narrow, focused system built around the linear presentation of Takeda Shingen’s historical battles. Fail at the battle of Nagakute? You must fight it again and win to advance. Shogun, on the other hand, is more like Risk with tactical battles. Shogun involves you with many of the choices made by the lord of a clan – unit production, fortification, politics, and resource allocation in addition to battlefield management. In Takeda you are strictly a general, given troops with which you attempt to complete your mission. Takeda and Shogun share a focus on individual generals, with the troops they command essentially removed from the army commanders’ control: in Takeda you control hundreds of soldiers, Shogun thousands. The interface for Takeda takes a lot of getting used to but is eventually functional, while Shogun’s is intuitive and quickly learned. Even the sound in Takeda is flat and repetitive, while Shogun’s is outstanding.
Magitech, in an effort to recreate history, has repeated it. Some historical sources present Takeda Shingen himself as a tragically flawed warlord. While an able general and a competent administrator, Shingen was ultimately never able to make himself more than a strong regional power. Likewise, Takeda is at its best an adequate battlefield simulation that is fun for a while but lacks in depth. The Tiger of Kai was never able to make himself Shogun, ironically Takeda is in exactly the same position.
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Reviewed by Steve Lieb
