Kitsune
01-23-2007, 12:52 AM
Several years ago, a revolution hit Japanese arcades and it all began in a little card. This little guy is often called the IC card and it allows you to save data in arcade games. With that little advancement, arcade operators could offer you much longer laster and more fulfilling experiences in a wider variety of genres than the usual practice of skill types like fighters, shmups and rhythm games, and could also expand those types as well.
A little while later, games like Key of Avalon and Quest of D showed up, dungeon hacks, most notably run on cards that a player put on a special touch screen which recognized the cards and could track their movement. In combination with IC cards to save data, a new generation of RPGs, sims, strategy and such were born in the arcades.
At the same time arcade games began to go online to offer national rankings and increased ability to play players around all of Japan, but that wasn't as important as the card interfaces or IC cards.
All of these innovations were pioneered and nurtured by Sega, and back in 2005, they released Sangokushi Taisen, which gradually became yet another megahit in this trend. It translates out to Three Kingdoms Tactics, but as that might be confusing with Dynasty Tactics from Koei and all their games, I'll simply call it SanTai. In any case, SanTai has never been ported to home consoles or PCs due, obviously, to the nature of the interface. But now that Sony is working on that Eyetoy technology for Eye of Judgement and the DS's two screens, Wi-Fi and touch screen makes approximating the arcade game much easier. And Sega has chosen the DS to accomodate SanTai's first trip home.
The arcade SanTai is focused on bouts with the surprisingly strong arcade AI, or other players within Japan, local or national. There is a huuuuuuge ranking of all the players in Japan that gets updated constantly. The home version, however, while offering such play, will expand it into more traditional campaign modes as well.
This is how the game is played.
You begin with a starter pack and register your commander. At the beginning of every battle, you see your enemy's card and your own and the battlefield. At this point, you also pick your strategy, which can only be chosen once per battle and is a big thing.
After that, you place your cards down onto the battlefield (via a touchscreen which recognizes them in the arcade game and the stylus in the DS version), which looks like your typical strategy game breakdown. After everything is placed the battle starts. You move your cards as you would in a strategy game or an RTS and they battle units or structures they run into as you command them. The way you place your cards can determine which way they face in battle.
As well, there is a little gauge with twelve dots on it. As the game advances in real time, a smaller line fills and when it does, a dot will light up. Each card has troop tactics it can use that consume these dots, but I'll get more into that later.
So the cards are obviously a huge part of this and there's a lot of info to take into account.
First of all, they are based on the various groups and factions which make up the Three Kingdoms universe and storyline, including the three main kingdoms and a fourth category that includes the other groups that are involved beside them. This is important because mixing and matching in your cards can determine how much of a maximum troop tactics pool (the previously mentioned twelve dots) you can draw from during the battle. If you're fighting with only one force, then the gauge can fill up to all twelve, whereas if you start mixing alliances with other forces, it can go down to a maximum of six only.
But that's getting a little ahead of ourselves. The cards have other values. Each card has its own life energy represented by a bar. As well, it has a cost to bring into battle from one to three and you can only have a maximum of eight cost points to expend, so a maximum of eight cards or armies lead by generals, which is what the cards represent.
Next, each card has a strength rating for direct fighting and an intelligence rating which influences troop tactics. Both of these attributes can be modified during battle. The card also has its troop tactic shown and how many dots it will cost to use the tactic; each trooptactic also has a diagram showing the area of effect that it has on the battlefield.
Finally, cards can also have a trait, like being good at one-on-one duels (which are a little separate from the main-game and involve a little mini-game for their resolution) or charisma which raises troop morale and powers up your troop tactics dots quicker. They will also have a type, falling into five categories that all: spearmen, horseriders and archers have rock paper, scissors weakness and strength to each other; siege and swordsmen exist outside that triangle.
To expand on that there are also special considerations for each type, such as an area of effect they have even if in not direct battle, a certain counter to a certain move or how quickly they move. Archers drain other cards without drawing them away from trying to destroy a wall, but other units will momentary distract them from the wall. The more special surprise attack type of unit use involves "burying" them so they approach stealthily but slowly and then when they hit a unit, suddenly come out from hiding in a surprise attack. And so on and so forth.
So you move around your units via the cards on the battle screen, with a map that shows your army area, your wall area and the enemy's as well. Terrain includes stuff that slows unit movement and barriers that you have to bring down to get through, as well as the castle walls.
Castle walls can form a big part of the strategy of the game because destroying them is one way to win the battle. But also because once of your units loses it health it becomes a wounded unit with a skull on it and you'll need to retreat to behind the castle walls to revive the units for battle again, which happens as time goes on.
This all goes on a brilliant 3D map that shows the troops marching around, attacking, rallying, yelling and such. When tactics and such are used, there are cutscenes that play to show them being carried out. Troop tactics are quite varied. There are of course, lots and lots of different types of attack, defense and healing tactics, as well as those which increase stats, but also those which cause weather or field effects which decrease or increase effectiveness in certain areas, or those with special effects like sacrificing yourself to save another unit or cancel an enemy troop tactic.
Strategies, the ones you can only select one of the beginning of the game affect the battle on a much larger scale than troop tactics. They do things like affect the strength of your horse riders or make your speed better or have healing effects and so on. As you play and win battles, depending on how well you do, these will level up and last longer or be more effective. As soon as your main commander (the embodiment of the physical "you" placing the cards) levels up to a certain extent, you will learn the next strategy, kind of approximating a commander gaining battle experience and wisdom.
In any case, that's the barebones basics and the DS SanTai adds more modes to play, to make it more one-player feasible, like campaigns where your success or loss in battle determines how the story turns out, linked battles which is a succession of battles linked together in a way different from the arcade game or more isolated challenge battles against the computer. It also supports Wi-Fi online card trading and battling for multiplayer (as well as local of course). As well it includes bonus cards from famous artists, as might be seen in SanTai 2, whose upgraded tweaks and rules are what it's based on.
I thought the grognards here at QT3 would be interested in reading about a game like this, so there you are.
-Kitsune
A little while later, games like Key of Avalon and Quest of D showed up, dungeon hacks, most notably run on cards that a player put on a special touch screen which recognized the cards and could track their movement. In combination with IC cards to save data, a new generation of RPGs, sims, strategy and such were born in the arcades.
At the same time arcade games began to go online to offer national rankings and increased ability to play players around all of Japan, but that wasn't as important as the card interfaces or IC cards.
All of these innovations were pioneered and nurtured by Sega, and back in 2005, they released Sangokushi Taisen, which gradually became yet another megahit in this trend. It translates out to Three Kingdoms Tactics, but as that might be confusing with Dynasty Tactics from Koei and all their games, I'll simply call it SanTai. In any case, SanTai has never been ported to home consoles or PCs due, obviously, to the nature of the interface. But now that Sony is working on that Eyetoy technology for Eye of Judgement and the DS's two screens, Wi-Fi and touch screen makes approximating the arcade game much easier. And Sega has chosen the DS to accomodate SanTai's first trip home.
The arcade SanTai is focused on bouts with the surprisingly strong arcade AI, or other players within Japan, local or national. There is a huuuuuuge ranking of all the players in Japan that gets updated constantly. The home version, however, while offering such play, will expand it into more traditional campaign modes as well.
This is how the game is played.
You begin with a starter pack and register your commander. At the beginning of every battle, you see your enemy's card and your own and the battlefield. At this point, you also pick your strategy, which can only be chosen once per battle and is a big thing.
After that, you place your cards down onto the battlefield (via a touchscreen which recognizes them in the arcade game and the stylus in the DS version), which looks like your typical strategy game breakdown. After everything is placed the battle starts. You move your cards as you would in a strategy game or an RTS and they battle units or structures they run into as you command them. The way you place your cards can determine which way they face in battle.
As well, there is a little gauge with twelve dots on it. As the game advances in real time, a smaller line fills and when it does, a dot will light up. Each card has troop tactics it can use that consume these dots, but I'll get more into that later.
So the cards are obviously a huge part of this and there's a lot of info to take into account.
First of all, they are based on the various groups and factions which make up the Three Kingdoms universe and storyline, including the three main kingdoms and a fourth category that includes the other groups that are involved beside them. This is important because mixing and matching in your cards can determine how much of a maximum troop tactics pool (the previously mentioned twelve dots) you can draw from during the battle. If you're fighting with only one force, then the gauge can fill up to all twelve, whereas if you start mixing alliances with other forces, it can go down to a maximum of six only.
But that's getting a little ahead of ourselves. The cards have other values. Each card has its own life energy represented by a bar. As well, it has a cost to bring into battle from one to three and you can only have a maximum of eight cost points to expend, so a maximum of eight cards or armies lead by generals, which is what the cards represent.
Next, each card has a strength rating for direct fighting and an intelligence rating which influences troop tactics. Both of these attributes can be modified during battle. The card also has its troop tactic shown and how many dots it will cost to use the tactic; each trooptactic also has a diagram showing the area of effect that it has on the battlefield.
Finally, cards can also have a trait, like being good at one-on-one duels (which are a little separate from the main-game and involve a little mini-game for their resolution) or charisma which raises troop morale and powers up your troop tactics dots quicker. They will also have a type, falling into five categories that all: spearmen, horseriders and archers have rock paper, scissors weakness and strength to each other; siege and swordsmen exist outside that triangle.
To expand on that there are also special considerations for each type, such as an area of effect they have even if in not direct battle, a certain counter to a certain move or how quickly they move. Archers drain other cards without drawing them away from trying to destroy a wall, but other units will momentary distract them from the wall. The more special surprise attack type of unit use involves "burying" them so they approach stealthily but slowly and then when they hit a unit, suddenly come out from hiding in a surprise attack. And so on and so forth.
So you move around your units via the cards on the battle screen, with a map that shows your army area, your wall area and the enemy's as well. Terrain includes stuff that slows unit movement and barriers that you have to bring down to get through, as well as the castle walls.
Castle walls can form a big part of the strategy of the game because destroying them is one way to win the battle. But also because once of your units loses it health it becomes a wounded unit with a skull on it and you'll need to retreat to behind the castle walls to revive the units for battle again, which happens as time goes on.
This all goes on a brilliant 3D map that shows the troops marching around, attacking, rallying, yelling and such. When tactics and such are used, there are cutscenes that play to show them being carried out. Troop tactics are quite varied. There are of course, lots and lots of different types of attack, defense and healing tactics, as well as those which increase stats, but also those which cause weather or field effects which decrease or increase effectiveness in certain areas, or those with special effects like sacrificing yourself to save another unit or cancel an enemy troop tactic.
Strategies, the ones you can only select one of the beginning of the game affect the battle on a much larger scale than troop tactics. They do things like affect the strength of your horse riders or make your speed better or have healing effects and so on. As you play and win battles, depending on how well you do, these will level up and last longer or be more effective. As soon as your main commander (the embodiment of the physical "you" placing the cards) levels up to a certain extent, you will learn the next strategy, kind of approximating a commander gaining battle experience and wisdom.
In any case, that's the barebones basics and the DS SanTai adds more modes to play, to make it more one-player feasible, like campaigns where your success or loss in battle determines how the story turns out, linked battles which is a succession of battles linked together in a way different from the arcade game or more isolated challenge battles against the computer. It also supports Wi-Fi online card trading and battling for multiplayer (as well as local of course). As well it includes bonus cards from famous artists, as might be seen in SanTai 2, whose upgraded tweaks and rules are what it's based on.
I thought the grognards here at QT3 would be interested in reading about a game like this, so there you are.
-Kitsune