Eiroku: Path of the Wanderer

Eiroku: Path of the Wanderer is a Sengoku-era simulation game set in feudal Japan.

Travel freely across the map of Japan at the head of your warband. Hire soldiers in castle towns, meet merchants and bandits on the highways, hold council with castle lords, and at times strike down an enemy general with the ninja arts. Where you go and whom you serve is entirely up to you.

■ Two protagonists

• Kagezakura the kunoichi takes the field herself and strikes down enemy generals.

• Ryuzaemon the merchant never takes the field; his men fight for him. He opens shops and gathers guild seats in the towns, aiming to become the realm's Merchant Prince.

■ A living map of Japan

• A map of Japan rendered in the style of traditional ink-wash painting. Twenty-three daimyo clans and 195 locations—including castles, towns, farming villages, ninja hamlets, and shrines—come to life on this single map, complete with shifting seasons and times of day.

• Clans march, besiege, intercept, and negotiate on their own, and the map keeps changing.

■ Raise a warband, command the battle

• What you can recruit depends on where you are: ashigaru in villages, samurai in towns, mounted samurai and horse archers at castles, warrior monks at shrines, and shinobi at ninja villages.

• Troops who survive battle gain experience and are promoted along branching lines: ashigaru into archers, then into arquebusiers or horse archers; spear cavalry into the elite Red Guard or White Guard; genin into chunin and jonin.

• Every soldier costs daily wages and provisions. A large army is strong, but it eats your purse and your granary.

• Troop types counter each other: a cavalry charge scatters archers and gunners, a wall of spears stops cavalry, and arquebuses hit hard but reload slowly and falter in melee.

• Fight across four terrains: plains, hills, rivers, and mountains. Catch the enemy slowed in a river ford, or blunt a cavalry charge with fences. Reading the land decides the battle.

■ Talk with people, choose your life

• Encounter over 100 historical commanders; deepen your bonds with them and recruit them as your retainers.

• Will you enter the service of a feudal lord to gain a stipend and powerful backing? Or will you seize an ownerless castle, raise your own banner, and found a clan of your own?