For the past half year, Koei has been releasing their classic strategy games on steam in batches, to very little fanfare. Just seeing these names again gets me pumped up, and I would have shouted from rooftops for everyone to try them, if not for the unfortunate fact that these titles are still not translated for the potential audience outside of Japan. No news articles, no localization, and not even discounted in the steam summer sale, these titles seem to exist only to taunt loyal fans of how far Koei has slipped from the throne.

Unbeknownst to most western gamers, the Warriors game conveyor belt known as Koei was once associated with diverse genres and innovations. Growing up in the late 90s to early 2000s in China, Koei games made up about half of all my gaming time. While I understand that localization work is costly, and that the Eastern history focus of these games may have limited appeal, I am still dismayed to find that some of my best gaming experiences are so obscure in the west that a few are even missing from the Koei wikipedia page.

(I should note that these are simply descriptions of some of my favorite games. I don't pretend to know the financial situation at Koei or the sales numbers of these games. Perhaps they are indeed so niche that Koei had to turn elsewhere to survive. Koei was also officially banned in mainland China for at least a decade, so Koei saw zero cents from their extreme popularity there.)

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The Romance of the Three Kingdoms/Nobunaga's Ambition series, simulation games based off of historical periods in China and Japan, are still chugging along. However the latest iterations have been downgraded in complexity and are clearly tailored to tablets. 9, 10, and 11 in the RTK series were masterpieces in wildly different ways. 9 threw out the traditional turn-based overview, instead opting for a real time system (like Hearts of Iron). Remarkably, once a general and his army is ordered to depart, his behavior during battles is left solely to simulation. This flushes out individual characters, and forces the player to think hard on the grand scale. 10 was focused on role-playing a single character instead of controlling an entire empire. Players had the freedom to work up the hierarchical ladder, or focus on leveling the character's own skills and talents, or just roam unaffiliated with any faction. 11 then restored the turn-based management and combat, and is considered the peak of those mechanics.

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Eiketsuden (roughly translated as Legend of Heroes) is an srpg series, each revolving around a historical figure in the RTK or NA era. While each is enjoyable, Sangokushi SouSou Den (Legend of Cao Cao) stands out as one of the best srpgs ever. Cao Cao the antihero serves as the central character. The final third of the game branches into 2 distinct paths and endings, depending on Cao Cao's morality meter. Important characters, friend and foe, have unique sprites and animations to convey emotion. Each character has 3 equipment slots for upgradable weapons and armor, some with very special effects (Guan Yu's blade, for example, is so heavy that enemies cannot return attack). China for some reason also has a huge modding community for the game, producing quite a few high quality total conversion mods for other historical periods. In total, I played through the game 6 times. Suffice to say, since 1998 I have waited for any hint of a sequel, and all I got was the crappy Dynasty Warriors Godseekers (it had the Eiketsuden name/logo. HOW DARE THEY).

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Taikō Risshiden (the Grand Regent's Success Story) started off as almost a visual novel/jrpg, documenting the character's rise from peasant to ruler of Japan. 4 added very fun card-based systems for individual and large army combat. 5 further expands on the idea, making almost everything cards--reaching full friendship or completing quests unlocks new character cards, allowing players to then play as those characters and trigger specific storylines; each achievement, each skill, each collectible is a card with beautiful illustrations. The individual combat was changed to a simultaneous turn-based system, like froze synapse, and worked very well. Players had an insane amount of freedom, to be a warrior, ninja, merchant, blademaster, pirate, etc, with dozens of minigames representing various skills.

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Suikoden Tendo 108 Sei (Bandits in the Marsh, 108 heavenly stars), based on a beloved Chinese historical novel involving 108 rebel heroes, features a unique sim city-esque base-building layer, over 300 recruitable characters with different skills and professions, and an action points turn-base combat system. Unfortunately no sequels or anything similar have come out of Koei since.

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Daikoukai Jidai (Uncharted Waters) is a pirate/merchant simulation series set in the Age of Discovery. While the game has a main plot, players can freely wander around the world, building up fortune and fleets. The best in the series, 2, or Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, actually has an English version. 3 and 4 also have their supporters. 5, however, is a free-to-play web browser game (not joking). Steam also has another free-to-play MMO under the name.

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I still remember my first encounter with the Warriors series (2005 for PC). Seeing Guan Yu in full 3D was nice, but his move set was pretty limited, and things got boring in a hurry. I didn't understand the hype around this game, or any other since. It's unclear whether the development talent for the above games is still there, or if the bosses have any intention of taking chances ever again.

2 more complaints to end the blog:

I may be in the minority, but I still perk up when Koei's logo shows up on press presentations. Admittedly I am a fool for still getting my hopes up after these years. Koei teased a fire emblem warriors game at the Switch reveal :(

At some point I got my hands on a Switch, and after finishing Zelda I started to look into Switch versions of RTK or NA. Even if they were dumbed down for tablets, I could talk myself into thinking Switch basically is one anyway. Well, the Switch version of RTK/NA only contains Japanese language, even though the steam version clearly already had English and Chinese localization done, for about half a year :(

What happened to you, Koei?

So Koei is the Sid Meiers of Japan ?

@soulcake: Koei also has gotten into the habit of releasing a game slightly thin on features, and then a year later putting out a "power up kit" (basically an expansion). A lot of fans don't switch to the lastest RTK/NA until the "PK" update. Exactly like Civ...

@francium34: Great Write up BTW. I am guessing China was big on piracy those days ? ( since videogames where banned ) remember having a friend who had relatives in China he went to Hong Kong and came back with a shit ton off pirated versions of Red Alert 2 ( still own that copy :D )

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting. I remember there being a RTK game on the NES if I'm not mistaken. I never played it though. As I got older, the series seemed really dense and impenetrable. All these other Koei games though, I've never heard of.

@hippie_genocide: Koei was porting games to various consoles for sure.

I just realized Brad reviewed the console version of RTK 9 back in the day, 7.3/10 (it looks watered down compared to PC).

It's a shame the other games, especially the srpg and rpg series, were never localized. Those were pretty easy to get into, and not overly hard.

Kessen 3 is the best console RTS to date, Nioh is a great game with historical background all over the place that's better the more you understand it (Kou Shibusawa's name is prominently featured). RoTK and Nobunaga's Ambition are still going. Koei can still put out a really good game, just gotta have faith/wait 10 years for each.

Koei games have never had a strategic/tactical edge on their western counterparts other than Kessen 3 and maybe ROTK IX, they are mainly interesting because they cover different parts of the world.

That said everyone should read Three Kingdoms, best book ever written.

@soulcake: where I lived, there still are small shops on the street selling DVDs or games for 5 bucks a disk. Ironically, they have lost a lot of business to internet downloads.

@fredchuckdave: Definitely interested in Nioh, but don't have a PS4...

In some ways the RTK/NA games almost become pokemon-ish for people familiar with the history/legends--I just want to recruit them all!

I really enjoyed Kessen as a rental launch-window title on PS2, I rented it several times, but I don't recall being all that good at it and I never tried any of their other games other than a couple Dynasty Warriors games when I was desperate for a game to rent and didn't see anything else in the aisles that interested me.

What happened to you, Koei?

They kept releasing Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors over and over and over.

Good write up. I was looking at some of their old strategy games recently, mainly Genghis Khan II. It was super cool that they were putting out those games for the console market and pretty odd in retrospect (although they were much bigger games in Japan to my knowledge). The genre has expanded so much, especially to be able to be a console game, that it'd be cool to see games like their old strategy stuff coming out today.

@artisanbreads: Never got into the Genghis Khan series myself, but damn it had the coolest name -- the Japanese(/Chinese translation) name was just Gray Wolf and White Doe, 蒼き狼と白き牝鹿. The PC version of 2 is actually on steam, but no localization even though the SNES version did????

Koei also released the PTO series, focused on naval combat in WW2 (rumor is this was the game that got Koei banned in China). 4 was localized for PS2.

While I certainly hope for more strategy games on consoles, I'm not sure how much of a market there really is for them. I believe even Xcom 1 didn't sell well on consoles. And Civ Rev 2 was only released for phones and vita.

@francium34: I've only dabbled in it. I discovered the Koei strategy games far too late to go back to them, at least personally. I was born in 89 so I was too young to handle strategy games so much until the late 90's.

I love the history of Genghis Khan in particular so I have seen more of that one. I do love the little touches of presentation and things trying to be honestly historical when that was extremely rare. I do like the touches of myth and things because that was a big factor to people and some historical games ignore that stuff too much. And with that PTO game they are basically making historical games in all these different settings. As a history fan that's really cool. I guess it's like what Paradox is doing now.

I fear you are right on the console strategy game thing but at the same time you are even seeing a Mario game play like XCOM. Maybe that will become viable eventually lol.

The Koei games were operating in a time when the console market and computer market were so separated. You could have strategy games do well enough on consoles because those people didn't have PCs, couldn't, wouldn't, etc. Who knows why but they were playing a strategy game on a console. Sim City on SNES is another example. As someone who was more into PC going back to it later is comparable to playing console FPS like Medal of Honor or more favorably Goldeneye when you have been playing Quake and stuff. I would still have some fun but it felt pretty bad by comparison, although it can still be fun for what it is (I do like the Rare N64 FPS games). When I found out about these games that's how it felt going back to them.

Glad you wrote this OP.Always wanted to give one of these games a try, but given how dense they are and how shoddy Koei PC ports tend to be I just haven't been in a hurry to do so.

It's a shame they won't just to polish up at least one of these, I think these games would have a chance if only they'd try.

@slag: NOBUNAGA'S AMBITION: Sphere of Influence is probably the English version on steam I would recommend.

The limited options are RTK13, NA:SOI, and NA:SOI-Ascension. RTK13 is a pretty shallow RPG experience (you play as one character). NA:SOI is the better choice for strategy (you overlook and control the whole clan), and Ascension is a standalone expansion, which adds on RPG elements making it even more complex.

Definitely do the tutorial, and then go to the "Battle of Okehazama" scenario (the battle where Oda made his name), choose the Oda clan, and follow the historical quest line.

But yes the PC version (I played traditional Chinese, which is sold as a different package than the English version...) is pretty poor. In full screen I couldn't find my mouse. In borderless window mode at 4k the mouse icon is atrociously jagged. The program also does not remember my settings each time (steam forum told me to launch the exe file directly, not through steam)

@francium34: hey thanks a lot for the advice! I'll look into Sphere of Influence then!

I couldn't tell you how many times I rented Nobunaga's Ambition for the NES when I was a kid. I would start off well, but rice management always ended up getting me. I haven't gotten into any of the games since, but I still smile whenever anyone brings up Nobunaga.

@slag: As with all other PK versions, SOI also has a built-in in-game editor (upper right menu). Good for goofing around or learning the ropes

I never see anyone talk about it, but I was a big fan of Gemfire on the SNES (though it had like 3 different ports).

I was way into Pokemon Conquest, now I kinda want to check out some of their games. Have they inspired anything games of note?

Thanks for the great post! I only just now saw it bc Marino tweeted out the community promos. I kept trying to get into ROTK and NA over the years, but I just never stick with it.

I appreciate that they've been releasing their older titles on Steam, but gosh I wish I could play them in English... I finally got into the Warriors series recently, thanks to Hyrule Warriors and Dragon Quest Heroes. I own about half of the Dynasty/Samurai games now, across PS2, PS3, PS4, and PC, and I always check out the spin-off IP games. I'm excited for DW9 since it seems like it'll be kind of a different thing, while still having the pretty mindless hack n slash at its core.

Pokemon Conquest was also super interesting to me, but I could never get into because the beginning is so slowly paced. Like, I've played strategy games and SRPGs before, stop tutorializing! I wish they'd do more games like that though. Mario + Rabbids seems like it will be a good time, but that's obv not Koei. Imagine a Romance of the Mushroom Kingdom, tho...

@machinerebel: have you tried the DW:empire games? I never had a chance, since none cam to PC (well, 8:empire did, but was a terrible port apparently). Those seem like a middle point, with simplified empire management and more hands-on combat