Oda Nobunaga-den (織田信長伝), released 9/23/1998, developed and published by Koei

This is the fourth game in Koei’s “Eiketsuden” series. I previously covered the others: Sangokushi Eiketsuden, Sangokushi Koumeiden, and Mouri Motonari. Like the other games this first came out for computers and was then ported — this time there was no Saturn port, perhaps reflecting that the Saturn was nearing the end of its lifecycle. On the whole, I think this game is the weakest of the four in pretty much every aspect — it makes me wonder if the game was rushed in development, or whether they just were trying for a simpler approach that just didn’t work out.

The main character this time is Oda Nobunaga, probably the most iconic figure from the Sengoku period. He is known as a ruthless and ambitious general, and he defeated the Ashikaga shogunate and nearly unified Japan under his rule. But he was betrayed by one of his followers, Akechi Mitsuhide, and he committed seppuku in the Honnoji Incident. This dramatic scene has provided a lot of fodder for fictional treatment, especially since nobody knows for sure why Mitsuhide turned against Nobunaga. After his death, one of his retainers Toyotomi Hideyoshi completed Nobunaga’s goal of unifying Japan, and another one of his followers, Tokugawa Ieyasu, was the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate that led during the Edo period.

I don’t believe the story of this game works as well as the others. Nobunaga got much closer to his goal than the heroes of the other three games, so the story basically follows history up until the Honnoji Incident. But after that, I felt like the story dribbled away into an anticlimax — the final boss was Hojo Ujiyasu, who was a significant figure in the Sengoku period but not someone of “final boss” stature. I think the writers were boxed into a corner with this, though: by the time Nobunaga died, he was close enough to unifying Japan that there weren’t any figures opposing him of appropriate stature to make a real final boss. With Mouri Motonari, they could pit him against Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu, the titanic figures of the period. But I guess the writers were not willing to rewrite history to the point where Ieyasu would turn against Nobunaga, or anything of that nature.

Mouri Motonari was a completely linear game. This game does have some alternate battles but mostly it’s just different ways to get to the same point. The only major difference is that you can completely avoid the Honnoji Event by being nice to Mitsuhide.

The battles in general are much smaller than Mouri Motonari. Your team is also smaller on the whole. The types of characters are also reduced from the previous game; some of the classes like the mountain men and the sea pirates are gone. The characters also sometimes have abilities dependent on the specific person rather than their class. You can still upgrade at level 20 though.

The system is generally that of Mouri Motonari but it’s been streamlined and simplified in a number of ways. First off, the entire section between battles has been eliminated — you no longer can go around to the towns, and there is no arena to level up your characters. All you do is summon a merchant or a forger. The merchant only sells the most basic weapons and armor for the entire game. The forger can improve your weapons, but the system is not as robust as in the previous game.

The forger has a certain number of points they can use before each battle (50 in that screenshot). The forger also has a level in each type of weapon and armor, that will raise if they forge more, to a max of 3. To level up the guy enough to make the best stuff you will have to buy things for the purpose of just forging them, but each equipment only has 4 levels (although there is a branching tree where you can prioritize speed vs defense or hit vs damage). This means that you don’t get that many upgrades throughout the game.

The levels of the opponents in battle are based on the average level of your team. Because there is no arena or training area, you really need to make sure that you level up your characters fairly evenly throughout the game. My experience was that you can get through the majority of the game without doing this, especially because Nobunaga himself is such a powerful character. But the final battle is much more difficult than any of the ones before it.

I did not get a picture of it apparently, but the final battle has unlimited reinforcements, and you do need to protect your HQ from them. The boss is behind a chokepoint that has only one square of entry, and with the unlimited reinforcements you can’t survive with just Nobunaga. I tried twice and was not able to beat it, so this joins Langrisser IV and Shinseiden Megaseed in the list of games that I gave up on the final battle. This game is similar to L4 in the way that you have a good chance of getting stuck at the end if you don’t know the right way to develop your parties (in opposite ways — L4 you want to focus on getting the best people as high as possible whereas in Nobunaga you need a party that is as balanced as possible.)

So I didn’t particularly enjoy this game, even leaving aside the final battle — if I had been able to finish the battle I don’t think it would have changed my opinion much. All of the Eiketsuden games have flaws but this one had more than any of the others. Too many of the battles involved just a whole bunch of units coming at you at once, which makes it harder to do any kind of strategic planning (or level your lower level guys, who quickly get surrounded and killed).

If I had to pick a favorite of the four games, it would be either Koumeiden or Mouri Motonari. Koumeiden has a bad first chapter, but once you get past that it’s a good game. Mouri Motonari is too long, but the battles do feel satisfying to play in a way that they don’t in Nobunaga.

There was one more of these games, Cao Cao-den, but it was not ported to any consoles. So that’s the end of the Eiketsuden series for me.