If you've ever wanted to play feudal Japan like a giant chessboard where the pieces occasionally betray you, Nobunaga No Yabou – Bushou Fuuunroku is your game. It’s one of those old-school Sega Genesis strategy titles where you spend half your time managing rice stockpiles and the other half nervously eyeing your so-called allies.

You start by picking a warlord—Oda Nobunaga if you want the classic power fantasy, someone obscure if you enjoy pain—and then it’s all about shuffling troops between castles, bribing rival clans, and praying your best general doesn’t randomly defect. The politics feel surprisingly deep for a 16-bit game; one wrong move and your carefully planned invasion turns into a three-way bloodbath.

What really sticks with me is how slow and deliberate everything is. This isn’t a flashy RTS—it’s more like a board game where every decision lingers. Mess up your harvest? Good luck funding an army. Trust the wrong daimyo? Enjoy getting stabbed in the back mid-battle. It’s brutal, but in that satisfying way where you immediately want to try again.

Just don’t expect modern conveniences. The menus are dense, the manual is basically required reading, and the AI will absolutely exploit your mistakes. But if you’ve got patience, it’s a weirdly absorbing slice of history.