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0 Sengoku Dynasty is an open-world RPG with Life Simulator and Survival elements. Developed by Superkami and published by Toplitz Productions, it was released into early access on August 10th of this year for £24.99 on Steam.
Build Your Dynasty
For those who like survival games, managing or building small towns, this one might be for you. Play solo or co-op, fight enemies, manage the resources and needs of villagers, craft, and choose what path you wish your character to take. Toplitz Productions has other games with the same concept but in different periods, such as Wild West Dynasty or Medieval Dynasty.
Gameplay
In Sengoku Dynasty, your character washes up on a beach after their previous kingdom got destroyed. Exploring further, you happen upon a charred village, and a man named Toshichi asks for your assistance in rebuilding it.
Crafting
To begin rebuilding the village and convince people to move in, you must gather materials and craft tools. Gathering materials such as stone and wood allows you to craft axes and pickaxes, which will help you gather more materials to build things, such as shelter, structures, and storage.
To begin rebuilding the village and convince people to move in, you must gather materials and craft tools. Gathering materials such as stone and wood allows you to craft axes and pickaxes, which will help you gather more materials to build things, such as shelter, structures, and storage. The hammer is for constructing buildings and structures.
There are special crafting projects across the map. The earliest one you find is a bridge. You have to build a Special Project workbench beside it, and it will tell you what materials it requires. Once you have brought the materials to the workbench, you can assign someone from your village to work on it. It will take time to build and may require you to skip to the next season. Once the season passes, the project will be complete.
The Village & Its People
Ensuring that you have a decent amount of food, water, and shelter, villagers you convince to move in will live in the village.
In turn, this allows you to assign them to perform jobs, such as building structures and gathering food, easing the burden off of yourself. However, you need to check in on the villagers and keep them happy; so they perform their tasks efficiently.
Your Character
Your character has their own needs, indicated by three bars; A green bar with a chicken leg symbol for Hunger, a red bar with a heart symbol for Health, and a yellow bar with a lightning bolt for Energy. Eat, take medicine, and sleep to replenish your needs to survive.
There are four Perks to choose from. Warrior, Craftsman, Monk, and Leader. Earn each Perk by performing specific tasks. The craftsman unlocks by crafting tools and building houses. The Warrior you get from fighting enemies. Perks provide permanent buffs, such as tools lasting longer, but the Monk perks are temporary as they require you to travel to an Inari shrine to make an offering. As far as I know, there are only two in the game you can get so far.
There is combat in Sengoku Dynasty, but it’s not very in-depth. It’s as simple as swinging and hitting. I have yet to fight anyone besides one bandit, so I assume combat doesn’t play as big of a part of the gameplay. You can loot bodies once they are defeated.
Graphics & Audio
The graphics in the Sengoku Dynasty are good. The water looks great, and the colours of the environment are bright and good-looking. I particularly like the cherry blossoms, which bloom and change depending on the current in-game season. Additionally, the buildings and structures are well-designed.
The audio is good overall and sounds good quality, but nothing stands out to me at present. There is music, but it’s very subtle and fades into the background amongst the game’s other sound effects, so I barely notice it.
Some of the text in the menus are hard to read, as the in-game text is white on a light blue background. It would be better if they changed it to dark brown or black.
Final Thoughts
Sengoku Dynasty was fun when I was building the village, but going out into the world was a struggle. Running to and from different towns to learn new crafts, such as Ironsmithy, was tedious. They were too far away, so I always felt unprepared as there was no option to craft armour or weapons besides a wooden spear.
Doing all that and then running back to your village again to build the smithy after learning it for a quest got tiresome quickly. I also wish that assigning jobs to villagers was better explained, and it never explained how to get more villagers to move into your village. At present, I only have two villagers.
Crafting buildings feels demanding because they require a lot of materials. At the moment, I am struggling to find trees close to my village that I need for crafting buildings and tools. So maybe allowing trees that regrow over time or as seasons change would be a helpful feature to add. I never figured out how to get water for my village, leaving my villagers unhappy constantly.
Though I understand this is open-world survival, I feel playing solo is quite demanding compared to playing with others to lighten the burden, which isn’t usually an issue for me in games like these.
I highly recommend playing this with friends instead of alone unless you’re willing to pour a lot of hours into this.
Though I feel this misses the mark and lacks some key gameplay features, this is just the beginning of Superkami’s journey, as they have a road map for the future. It includes farming, new quests, being able to start as a class, quality-of-life fixes, and future updates.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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