Pokemon Conquest, or Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition in Japan, is probably something you wouldn't expect, but this collaborative effort combines Pokemon with Samurai Warriors 3, which itself is based on a franchise based on the most famous period of Japan, the Sengoku Period. So you have people from that time period as characters in those games appearing in this game with their Pokemon partners on a fun DS adventure with mechanics from the 5th generation of Pokemon, as it was released in mid 2012. Cool, right?

As a turn based tactical RPG, you control Warriors linked with Pokemon to do battle in various kingdoms across the region of Ransei. The one who can unite the region of Ransei will be able to encounter the region's creator. Sounds pretty spiffy. With great character design, excellent music and, uh, interesting overall gameplay, this is definitely a Pokemon game to play. So that's why I'm playing it, cause it's pretty great, even if there are some problems with it that we'll see later down the line.

What I also want to dive into is the period of Japan's history this game is based on, the Warring States period, or Sengoku jidai. It's a crazy adventure of many prominent warlords and fiefdoms fighting for domination to control the capital of Japan and maybe being able to conquer the whole island for the first time in 50,000 years. And that's where you guys come in! See, I'm a nerd, but I'm not too knowledgable in this specific part of Japan's history (crazy I know), so I'd love to find out what really happened during this interesting time of love, honour and glory by people who know more about that time period and culture than I ever will.

Regardless, since it seems a fair few people don't know about this game, I want there to be NO GAMEPLAY SPOILERS, this game does have a couple of twists and while they might be a bit obvious if you know any kind of history, let's let the game show them off, yeah? Despite that, HISTORICAL SPOILERS ARE PERFECTLY OKAY, since it's basically unavoidable to talk about certain events and battles if we want a cool discussion going. I will be delving into some history and backstory slightly during the LP, but I don't feel like poring through thousands of historical texts and websites to get my accurate info, I do want to have fun with this LP, so I'll be sticking with Wikipedia, much as that might make some of you wince.

Updates

Part 1: Welcome to a World of Warlords! Part 2: Type Advantage