The survival game Sengoku Dynasty has left early access on Steam. MeinMMO author Cedric Holmeier played the first few hours of the full version and overcame every hurdle.
Sengoku Dynasty is the successor to Medieval Dynasty. As a mix of survival game, city building simulation and building game, it combines several genres that are rarely combined.
Before you have to deal with more administration later, at the start of the game it’s almost entirely about survival. A discipline that is more difficult than expected.
Who is writing here? Cedric Holmeier is a freelance author at MeinMMO and focuses primarily on MMORPGs from Asia. In his free time, he also likes to dive into survival games like Palworld or build a gigantic factory in the building game Satisfactory. He played the full version of Sengoku Dynasty for MeinMMO and reports on his experiences here.
You can see the trailer for the release version of Sengoku Dynasty here:
Sengoku Dynasty leaves early access and presents the new trailer
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“It can’t be that hard”
Sengoku Dynasty starts with a simple character editor that quickly conjures up a character, but doesn’t allow much design freedom. Be that as it may, the content of the game is more important.
Right at the beginning, the game washes up the newly created character on the beach in Japan and explains the basics. On the way to finding our companion, we roughly learn the controls.
“It can’t be that hard,” our author thought after Sengoku Dynasty basically started explaining with Romulus and Remus. In the future, all pop-ups were skillfully ignored and clicked away.
When it came to the task of making the first tools, this worked reasonably well. Pressed every key on the keyboard and mouse once and lo and behold, the menu for crafting with your bare hands opened.
The first quests were quickly completed and it was time to build the first village.
There are real bears in Japan
When choosing a place to settle, you should make sure that the most important conditions are met. Water, resources and best of all some wild animals for food. MeinMMO author Cedric Holmeier noticed such wild animals immediately after placing his village.
Next to his settlement there is an area full of bears and you can hardly fight them, especially at the beginning of the game. Because moving doesn’t seem to be that easy, the only option is to confront the bears. But the winnings – and multiple times.
“The fight is lost – the battle is not yet” was probably one of the thoughts in the author’s head and so the bears were walked around as far as possible every day. Things became problematic when the bears went on a trip to the village.
The quests in Sengoku Dynasty always tell you what to do next and before you know it, you’ve conjured up a little village. However, this only works if you find the right materials.
While stone, wood and sticks wait for the player at their assumed location, the situation is different with the grass for the beds. The ground is full of grass, but you can’t just pick it up.
Small bushes give sticks and so as a player you can easily walk over the ground full of grass texture for minutes before you come to bushes that are only immensely smaller than the bushes, but finally provide the valuable resource.
“That has definitely been explained,” thought the author of these lines and went back to the village, past the bears.
Unhappy residents are hardly noticeable
After the most important buildings in the village have been constructed and the first three residents have moved in, the second aspect of the game begins – managing the village.
Each villager needs a place to sleep and can be assigned a job where they carry out their tasks. So far so simple – until one of the residents suddenly leaves the village.
After some searching for clues, it became clear that not only you, but also the villagers need something to eat.
Five days with a hole in the stomach were probably enough for the displeasure to leave the village again. Luckily, the problem was quickly solved by moving the collected food from the inventory into the community chest.
At least the residents don’t have to drink anything, otherwise the village would probably be completely empty on the fifth day.
According to achievements on Steam, only 0.2% of players, including our author, managed to take care of the residents so badly that they left the village – chapeau!
Conclusion: Is Sengoku Dynasty fun?
In short: Yes, Sengoku Dynasty is fun, even in the first few hours. Since the 1.0 update at the latest, the title has offered a lot of content that will keep you busy for hours. The new, interesting endgame content entices players along the way through the game, which is filled with funny, beautiful and nice moments – even if you build your village next to 10 bears.
It would certainly have been better to read the countless text boxes with explanations and thus avoid some of the beginner’s mistakes. Nevertheless, the game is so intuitive in most aspects that you’ll figure it out yourself if you try hard enough.
Even after the first few hours of play, Sengoku Dynasty offers a lot of content that can keep players busy for hours. For example, you can found your own dynasty with your friends: New survival game on Steam, plays in feudal Japan, offers co-op for 4 players, lets you found your own dynasty