Genghis Khan II is a classic KOEI strategy game. It is roughly similar to Nabunaga’s Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Basically, if you like KOEI games in general, you will probably like this one. It is fairly simple, but it still has a lot of interesting features to make for an enjoyable classic strategy game experience.
The game has two main scenarios. In the first one, you start as a tribal leader in Mongolia, and your goal is to unite all of Mongolia.
In the second scenario, you start as a ruler of a kingdom (country) and your goal is to conquer the civilized world. The second scenario actually has three starting times. The first scenario (uniting Mongolia) is a little simpler (there are fewer territories to conquer), but the gameplay is the same.
Like many strategy games, you will manage the kingdom, raise an army, and conquer other territories. The number of commands you can give per turn are determined by three factors: your leader’s body points, his political ability, and the type of command given. However, you can usually give 2 to 4 major commands per turn. Some simple commands cost zero body points.
You can give commands to build
up your kingdom, such as appointing leaders to conquered territories, setting your overall economic policy for your territory, buy or sell items, give to your people, collect a special tax, etc. You can also try to recruit generals, form alliances, etc.
You can raise your army drafting units or by hiring mercenaries. There are 16 different types of units, such as light infantry, heavy infantry, knights, samurai, etc. Drafting units is usually cheaper, but hiring mercenaries gives you some advantages. First, the mercenary units are better armed and better trained. Second, you can only draft units that are native to your current territory, but mercenary units are available more or less at random. (They are actually hired from one of four different merchants, but the merchants appear in your territory at random times). So, sometimes the mercenary unit you can hire is a much better type of unit than what you can draft. You can also train and arm your soldiers.
You can only have up to 20 units in one territory, so you need to use good strategy when choosing your units, and when attacking. You can’t leave the territory you’ve attacked from with minimal defenses, but you need to have enough units to conquer the territory you’re attacking. One simple strategy is to wait until one of your neighbors attacks someone else, and then attack him. The territory he attacked from will usually be pretty weak.
Combat is fairly simple. You can bring up to 20 units into battle. You can combine up to four units into a legion. The battle map is actually 2 maps in 1. The first is a strategic map of the general area. Your legions move in this map until they contact the enemy. Then, the combat map appears. Here is where the individual units actually do the fighting. This map is pretty small, so there isn’t a whole lot of strategy involved, but it’s still interesting. Depending on the units you have, you can attack with ranged weapons, melee weapons, or charge. Charging works well against units that are disorganized. The best units in the game are Mongols and Samurai, but they are not invincible. A well-trained and well-armed knight can usually defeat a newly-drafted Mongol.
In conclusion, this game is well worth a try, especially if you like other KOEI games. Please be prepared for a slight learning curve, but once you figure out all of the different commands you can give, and their affects, the game goes pretty quickly.
