Underplayed Gems

Dynasty Tactics 2 (2003)

Dynasty Tactics 2 cover
Developer
Koei
Platforms
PlayStation 2
Genres
Fighting, Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS)
Where to get it
Website

How it feels

Commanding armies across ancient China feels like a deliberate, turn-by-turn balancing act of strategy and narrative choice under a ticking clock.

strategicmethodicalturn-basedtacticalhistorical warfaremeasured pacingmoderate difficultystory-driven

About

The sequel to Dynasty Tactics gives the player more tactics to choose from, and introduces some new characters and features. Like in the first game, the player assumes the role of 3 important leaders in ancient China: Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Ce. A new choice is the warrior Lu Bu. The characters have their own, unique story paths, which are affected by choices and outcomes occurring during the chapters the game is divided into. The player organizes and moves his officers and armies over the map while engaging others, trying to fulfill certain objectives during a turn limit. For battles, the game switches from the map to a dedicated screen showing the battlefield. The battle system is a bit like chess: the player moves the units around the battlefield in a turn-based fashion, mostly trying to bring them in a position to pull off special tactics. Ideally, this results in effective combos, that may not only defeat enemy units, but also capture the leading officers, which may join the player (there are over 200 in the game). Morale and terrain need to be taken into consideration as well. Units have different abilities depending on their type and position in the army, Engineers may build useful installments like supply depots for example. Army strategists can use the link command retained from the previous game for pinning down enemy units and helping to rack up higher combos, in addition, they may order chains now. These allow individual officers to perform multiple tactics (provided the conditions are met for each of them), but cost morale. The game also contains a two player versus mode, which consists of random battles.

Screenshots

Dynasty Tactics 2 screenshot 1Dynasty Tactics 2 screenshot 2Dynasty Tactics 2 screenshot 3

More games like this

More by Koei

This page is from Underplayed Gems, a catalog of older and overlooked games. Not quite it? Tell the Catbot what you feel like playing and it picks from the whole catalog, or browse by platform and genre.