Tenshu General Review

After finally getting sick of Civ V, I emerged from my cave and saw daylight this past week. Happy, I could finally forget everything about the campaign and return to a normal life again. Then Tenshu General, a feudal Japanese strategy game was passed to me, so I sighed and locked myself up for another two weeks.

Coming to us from developers SmartArt is Tenshu General – which, get this, isn't Japanese for anything cool. Jack from Metal Gear Solid 2 was Raiden, meaning thunder and lightning. Tekken means “iron fist”. Tenshu? Shopkeeper. Suddenly this game is a lot less appealing, like calling your French-themed beat-'em-up Merde Warrior. But, I digress: silly name aside, what's the game like?

In all seriousness, another translation for Tenshu is “castle tower”, which is more apt; you play a feudal general looking to conquer the land surrounding your tower, eventually leading to the taking of your rivals' towers, or the destruction of your own. The concept doesn't exactly reinvent the zagyoshiki wheel, but this doesn't make it basic, merely simple and elegant. The game ends up turning into a real dogfight between you and the CPUs; games develop by getting armies out quickly to take over territory; as the quicker you can get to an enemy stronghold, the better. However, you also have to protect your own while maintaining territories. This is done by spending money on towns, which leads to you being paid more turn by turn, meaning more yen in your pocket to spend on troops and walls for your stronghold. At its core, this game and the campaigns inside are tricky balancing acts, and it’s easy for the plates to come crashing down, but when you finally crush your enemies in the palm of your hand, it's all immensely satisfying.

If that kind of gameplay sounds appealing to you, then you're in luck, as Tenshu General is bursting with campaigns and missions to take on. Offering four massive campaigns in the base game, with a skirmish mode to keep you occupied after you've finished the main story, Tenshu General offers fantastic value for money at a price of £4.79.

What will strike players first about Tenshu General are the graphics, which, to those who spent enough time on the internet in the mid 2000s, look exactly like hand-drawn graphics done for Flash animations and games. Whether this is necessarily bad or not will depend on you – personally, I find the art style attractive, but like the concept of the game, the aesthetics are simplistic, relying on basic pastel colours and drawings lacking detail. Again, this is not necessarily bad or a detriment to the wider game, but considering the other sim titles it's up against, players might expect a little more. Nonetheless, by taking a different option to most titles available on Steam, Tenshu General certainly stands out.

The overall design all feels a bit cobbled together and cheap. Making use of that old designer's pet hate, system fonts, while also implementing terrible stock music that offends doubly on the basis of sounding flimsy and overly stereotypical – like the developers tried too hard to make it sound Asian. And yes, this game is set in Japan, but it feels like the aural equivalent of pulling your eyelids at the side and replacing your r's with l's; it left a bad taste in my mouth and it may do yours. Racial concerns aside, we're playing the badass role of a general managing funds and leading troops into battle, but hearing that theme just doesn't inspire any feelings of badassery or excitement in me; musically, Tenshu General is just wooden.

Aesthetically, the game's a bit scrappy, but the playability is all there, and if you are not the type to get snobby over appearances, you'll find a lot of depth and playability to Tenshu General, as the game promises literal hours of fun fighting it out against enemy factions. Basic it may be in many ways, but that leaves the game uncluttered, free of garbage, and just fun overall. In simplest terms, Tenshu General is unpretentious but all the better for it.