There are few moments as exciting in gaming as the release week for a new Pokémon game. Anytime a new game lands, it feels like everyone you know is playing it at once and everyone has an opinion on it. Pokémon Legends: Z-A is no different. It’s a make-or-break game for developer Game Freak, which has a chance to atone for the sins of its rocky Nintendo Switch era and right the ship once again. I can’t wait to dive in myself and see what the return to Lumiose City has in store for me, for better or worse.
But that’s not the Pokémon game I’m actually playing right now. In the lead up to Z-A’s launch, I’ve found myself obsessed with a completely different spinoff that’s much weirder. All of my time now belongs to Pokémon Conquest, a long-forgotten piece of the series’ history that deserves a revival.
Released in 2012 for the Nintendo DS, an era when Pokémon spinoffs were at their peak, Pokémon Conquest is perhaps the most unlikely video game crossover of all time. It’s a mash-up of Pokémon and — wait for it — Nobunaga’s Ambition. That’s right: Koei Tecmo’s strategy series set in Japan during the Sengoku period. How exactly does Bulbasaur fit alongside very real historical figures warring over power in Japan? Very well, it turns out, even if the premise is no less ridiculous 13 years after its release.
Set in Ransei (a made-up region where, once again, very real people reside), Pokémon Conquest turns violent warfare into bite-sized, grid-based tactics battles. The structure of it isn’t actually too far off from mainline Pokémon games, even if everything else about it is totally different. As a trainer, your goal is to unite all 17 kingdoms across the region in order to meet Ransei’s legendary monster. Each kingdom acts as its own gym where the warlords within have a type-themed team. In order to win each fight, you need to gather allies by defeating them in loose battles en route to the kingdoms. Each warrior has their own Pokémon companion, so you’re basically catching ‘em all by rounding up historical figures.
It’s all a little bizarre, especially as you get on a collision course with Oda Nobunaga and his trusty Zekrom (we all know about this from history class, of course), but the tactical components are sound. Battles are simple enough, with players moving their team of up to six Pokémon around, attacking foes, picking up treasures, and finding the right time to use their special Warrior skill. This all happens on small, diorama-like maps that aren’t too dissimilar to the ones you find in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. It’s nothing too special aside from the fact that type advantages come into play, but battles are streamlined and quick enough that it’ll make you wish there was a mobile version of it out there.
What’s more unique is the kingdom management of it all. The game is split up into months, which are essentially long action phases. During that time, you need to manage how each of your Pokémon is used, and they can only do one task each month. You may want to send some into a dungeon to recruit new warriors and send another to work in a gold mine. Which kingdom you place them in matters too. You can station up to six Pokémon in an area and will need to send them marching between connected regions on the map if you want to send them somewhere else. Bordering kingdoms you haven’t united yet can attack your territory between months, so you always need to make sure you have a capable crew holding down your claimed locations.
As bizarre as the fusion sounds on paper, it all works surprisingly well. The kingdom management allows Conquest to retain the strategic appeal of Nobunaga’s Ambition while still keeping things relatively kid-friendly and manageable for more casual players. Critics at the time dug it too, making it one of Pokémon’s best-reviewed spinoffs. So why did we never get a sequel? Maybe it was just that the crossover was a little too niche at the time. Perhaps it was still a little too complicated for kids even with its simplified tactics. Or maybe someone at The Pokémon Company just had an existential crisis about the idea of giving Akechi Mitsuhide a Lapras.
Whatever the reason might have been, this feels like the perfect time for a revival. Koei Tecmo is having a mainstream moment internationally thanks to the continued rise of its Dynasty Warriors series and its related spinoffs. Part of that momentum has come from its continued partnership with Nintendo, which has given us multiple Fire Emblem Warriors and Hyrule Warriors games (including the upcoming Age of Imprisonment) over the past decade. Pokémon spinoffs are all the rage right now too, between Legends: Z-A and Pokopia, so why not unite these two development empires once again?
And even if we don’t get another Nobunaga’s Ambition crossover specifically, the tactics format could just as well fit into Dynasty Warriors’ Three Kingdoms saga. Give my boy Cao Cao a Lucicolo or something.
