Sengoku means "the country at war", a nation of warring states. It was a time when the entire medieval Japan was in a conflict. There was no single ruler, no Shogun, only clans, pirates, and bandits. Those who wanted peace struggled to find it.
In Sengoku Dynasty, your adventures happen far away from the daimyo territories, allowing you to enjoy bloodless gameplay, without the need for combat, conquering the map with peaceful methods only. You will even have the option to opt out of fighting entirely by choosing the chill game mode.
However, as the game's name suggests, the time has come to reveal more about what we intend for the release of the 1.0 version of Sengoku Dynasty. Playing "aggressive" game modes you find yourself in a land under the rule of various enemies and hostile factions. You will have the possibility to conquer the map region by region and bring peace to communities that live there.
And to do so, you will need to fight.
The combat system in Sengoku Dynasty will be focused on testing your skills and utilizing your gear. If you are skilled enough, you shall be able to defeat most enemies from the start. If you are extremely skilled, you will destroy them even with a wooden stick. However, if you prefer a more economical playstyle, you can invest your time to craft the greatest weapons and armors worthy of the best Japanese smiths and defeat opponents without panicking about your survival.
Combat mechanics were inspired, among others, by the Souls’ games system – so you can refer to it as a Souls-like – or as we call it, Souls-lite. They involve attacks requiring full-body movement that you can chain into cool-looking combos that can break your opponents' poise and knock them back or down. There will be quick and heavy attacks that could be interrupted based on your own poise level. Using heavier attacks, armor or weapons will make it harder to stop you, but you will also burn through your stamina faster.
Fighting powerful foes will require dashing, blocking, or parrying to avoid their damage. Performing perfectly timed parries is the fastest way to stop their combos, break their posture, and deliver the finishing blow. A variety of new weapons will have their own parry and block effectiveness, as well as different damage values, and will affect the encumbrance differently.
We are also working on enemy AI. Opponents will try to avoid getting stabbed and die stupidly, by spreading all around the player and attacking one by one. Fighting multiple adversaries at the same time will be much more challenging than a duel, nevertheless, there will be some mechanics to help you overcome the difficulty. More advanced enemies will require much more skill or significantly better gear, so be prepared.
This is not just a teaser. We are very excited to announce that a very limited, beta-version of this new combat system will find its way to the next Ikigai update, among other features. You will be able to fight some basic bandits (and maybe even find their large camp somewhere on the map...), wielding a yari or katana, and hone your parrying skills before we add more enemy camps and bosses to the game. Your feedback is crucial to us, therefore we want you to test an early version of this system so that we know what elements of it will require the most polishing before the 1.0 release.
