Review - Sengoku Dynasty

L. Sahara McGirt
5 hours ago
4 min read

Developer: Superkami

Publisher: Toplitz Productions

Available on: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Steam)

Review system: Xbox Series X

I'll admit that I've played Medieval Dynasty and spent hours building away at my little village and managing my villagers to relax. So, of course, when I saw Sengoku Dynasty from the same publisher, I was already down for the experience. Developer Superkami takes the historical building/crafting 'dynasty' experience to feudal Japan, particularly, the Sengoku period, an era of Japan's history plagued by civil war and social upheaval.

A feudal experience

Setting Sengoku Dynasty during this period of Japanese history was a great idea. The upheaval of the era allows for plenty of room for players to carve their own destiny—dynasty—as they take over the ruins of a village and build something new in the ashes. Players don't have to start their village in the exact place I started in, but as this was my first time, it only made sense to go with the initial area I came across with what is very much a tutorial quest.

The gameplay is simple and much the same as Medieval Dynasty: gather materials and food, build, recruit villagers, and survive the seasons. The dangers in Sengoku Dynasty range from hunger, cold, and wild animal attacks to raids from nearby bandits.

Now, when I started my game, I decided to start with the chilled difficulty setting because I was just starting out and wanted to get a handle on the build elements of the game. Sengoku Dynasty includes 4 initial difficulty settings: Creative, Chilled, Normal, and Hardcore, which all can be further tweaked for a custom experience. This is something I very much appreciate from these types of games because players can mess around with it and create their own challenges.

Later on, I changed my settings to Normal to give myself more of a struggle. Especially once I advanced into being able to smith higher-level weapons and tools. The combat in Sengoku Dynasty is a bit of a struggle at first, with just a spear or bow in hand, but once you start getting into making and fighting with Samurai swords, it gets more interesting. Especially as you battle bandits and destroy their camps.

Lead your way, Daimyo

Now, whether you're playing for a laidback, chill village management experience or wanting to challenge yourself to an intense struggle as the leader of your dynasty, Sengoku Dynasty has plenty to offer in terms of village management. The population of the village is expanded through the recruitment of refugees who are seeking a home after various reasons that usually have to do with their homes being destroyed.

Recruit the villagers, pick out a place for them to sleep, and give them a job to do and the village pretty much takes care of itself so long as you keep a consistent eye on anything that may come up. Especially when the seasons change. I really had to make sure I remembered to change up seasonal crops and foraging when I started out, otherwise, a season's production of food and materials would be wasted.

My favorite part about the Dynasty games, in the end, however, is just building my village. I get to decide the placement of homes, production buildings, storage, roads, farms, and even plants. Sengoku Dynasty includes the ability to build shrines to Japanese deities. The game's available options are pretty limited overall, but lovely to look at nonetheless, and I appreciated the Japanese aesthetic as I played through the game, building and exploring as I went.

Players can also gather up their friends and do co-op mode, managing villages together. With this latest update and port to consoles, Sengoku Dynasty allows for crossplay, which is great for those who want to play online together.

Just a little more

Now, let's get down to business: While I enjoyed the gameplay of Sengoku Dynasty for hours over several days and found it to be relaxing, there was plenty that needed more work. Interactions with refugees showed me that some of the translations were off just a bit grammatically. These kinds of errors are small but still noticeable and make reading dialogue clunky.

I also think the menus could be better. I had some struggles with them in getting options to activate, so the user interface in the menus needs a bit of work to make it run smoother for console players. While using the joystick seems like it should be no different than using the mouse, it's very different, especially in terms of being able to move around menus and hit the right buttons. I play on both PC and console and often find that ports struggle with this.

A lot of the customization and management isn't as deep as with Medieval Dynasty, making me miss that game while playing Sengoku Dynasty, so I do think they'll definitely need to make updates to keep the game interesting as it goes on.

There was also the matter of the crashes. Sengoku Dynasty would always, without fail, crash on me within a few hours of playing. I'd say about 2-4 hours. I went around to see if there were any potential triggers to the crashes, but the main issue just seemed to be time. I'm not sure what would be the cause of that. While the game autosaves pretty frequently and I just had to restart and get back to playing, it's still quite annoying to have to go through all that loading to get back into the flow of the gameplay. Especially when on a roll.

All of that said, I think Sengoku Dynasty has a lot of potential to be a great game. For now, however, I am saying: