User blog comment:TsuchiNoKao/Games like Sengoku Rance/@comment-33997589-20200727174945/@comment-46261745-20200727212339

Haha, you are indeed correct. For some reason, I seem to have an illusion of owning and managing territories in SR... hmm, perhaps this is partly the different field types and multiple fields per territory, the affection and various random events that become possible in relation to territories, the dungeons are a big part, giving Rance 2 forms of combat gameplay which adds depth. It's very multifaceted and the map and territories take up a lot of screen time, but on closer look, the territory management isn't actually all that important.

Daibanchou and Daiakuji are very similar in terms of their territory management. Daiakuji only has 1 significant difference, and it's optional, the brothel system (accepting the brothel manager character actually makes it impossible to clear one of the main route heroines). Much more involved with the income, collection and public peace, as you say, so I'm definitely interested in EU IV if it is complex in that sense.

Daitetikoku, despite being part of the Dai series, is a completely different game compared to either the first 2 Dai games or SR. The system is very different, the territory management is all simplified, there are no dungeons. I don't really understand why it was branded as a Dai game, tbh. Many of the reasons people dislike Daiteikoku are related to the simplified territory management... Still, go try it out, it's a fun game!

I think it's just me, since there always seems to be hype around Daibanchou and it even got a translation... but in my personal opinion Daibanchou was the worst of the 3 Dai games... Daiakuji's characters and plot were much more internally consistent than Daibanchou which kept on throwing random fantasy monster factions at you, the heroines were better, Nozomi was in it, there were more territory management aspects, there are 5 main heroines each with their own route and ending... Daibanchou was just more... wacky?

As for Daiteikoku, despite all the failings of its MC, the combat system was original and fun, the graphics were clean, the ship mechanics, I thought, were really fun and I liked that it was about calculating your battles ahead of time, rather than throwing carries like Natori, Uesugi, Uruza or Aburako at all your problems... (not that I dislike bombing the world with Omachi or making a witty comeback as much as the next guy). Daiteikoku is all a bout the ships, and the commanders themselves are much less important, except for micro, because they'd have different types of fixed ships or slot boosts. There's some amount of 'builds' in SR, with the skill options and who to spend affeciton items on, but Daiteikoku is all about builds and shifting around stats, in a way that isn't in any other AliceSoft game I've seen.

The CherisSoft and DQ SLG ones are definitely the closest series to SR I have found. Unfortunately, I don't believe any of those games I'm recommending are translated to English... I can read JP fluently, so I'm not particularly hindered in that regard. I was kind of wroting the blog post hoping to bring these games to light, since I've never seen them mentioned in English and they're definitely worth it as a 2nd rate SR game.

In fact, the menu system in DQ SLG is graphically identical to Kichikuou Rance, so I assume they actually used a revamped model of the Kichikuou system 3.9? - they have very different battle graphics though, it's more graphically pleasing than Kichikuou, if a much smaller world and linear progression.

CherisSoft made their own system, but there are still many similar elements both in the world map and battle systems. Still, it's quite different, and Elf protector and Lost Phantom also have some different elements, such as how items work or use of the 'food' resource. Like Dai or SR games, it has an income and territory conquest system, commander battles with stat boosting items, troop counts (which are essentially just HP) and tricks like 'weaken enemy countries'. Although in the same world, the 2 games are alternate realities, rather than one being chronologically ahead of the other, so you actually see different but reminiscent characters (some even named the same way, but often with different character designs) between the 2 games. It's rather interesting. Lost Phantom is much more developed - I think it has 5 endings or something? I have only played 1 ending, though I intend to try out some of the others.

We are the Bandits!! is very much worth trying if you like Fire Emblem btw. It's the only fire emblem mimic that actually made me think I was playing a legitimate fire emblem game. Even the character designs and story progression have a Fire Emblem feeling to them, with the main exception, the premise really, that you're playing the bandits that usually show up in chapter 1 of a Fire Emblem game as your tutorial enemies. It's really good as a copy. Even has things like hidden x.5 levels and I thought it was very well balanced overall as a game... no hard mode though.

Also kind of like Sengoku Rance, the H-scenes are kind of sub-par in all of these games... but meh, we don't play these games for the HCGs... (There are much better games in Japanese for H value, none of the good ones have been translated to my knowledge, ... but that's probably for a different post.)