Not to dunk on a twelve year old game that I overall like, but a year or so ago I set out to 100% Pokémon Conquest for the first time, picking it up and dropping it sporadically. Now that I've obtained every Perfect Link (except a few legendaries, Flareon for MC, and that fucker Ujinao), I'm powering through the remaining main stories. For the most part, I think that I've probably made myself too powerful, as things have been quite easy. The AI isn't proactive enough about invading castles, Guardian Charms are ridiculously overpowered, and you're mostly battling NFEs with fully-evolved mons. I wish that Gabite man showed up more often to be honest, because things can get quite fun when he does, but for the most part I'm beating every story in 3-5 game months.

The most fun I've had has generally been with the Defeat Nobunaga stories, since you're faced with a potent, proactive enemy, with a time limit, and you can't recruit any of his warlords when you take his castles. Motochika's story in particular was a blast; I really had to plan carefully to gather up enough strong warlords at the start of the story before he could steal them, and his Hydreigon is actually a legitimate threat. Right towards the end, Gabite man appeared and everybody got such a huge power boost that all but my strongest units were doing pitiful damage. I managed to make a beeline for Mitsuhide, who was now incredibly OP from the powerup, and recruit him before the very end. Then I smashed Nobunaga with his Articuno. Really dynamic and fun campaign overall.

The absolute worst type of story, meanwhile, has been the Ransei's Greatest Beauty stories. For one, while the narratives of the side-stories in this game are pretty thin at the best of times, the female warlords REALLY get the shaft here for the most part. They're literally just bickering over who is the prettiest between them. No unique narrative, no interesting relationships between the warlords explored, just seven near-identical narratives reducing them down to one kinda sexist trait. The only slightly notable or funny thing about them is the inclusion of Ranmaru.

And the gameplay in these chapters just stinks. I also find the Junior Warlord stories narratively dull, but at least they include the entire map, and since you get spawned in a unique position each time there's potential for interesting stuff to happen. Meanwhile, these stories have only six enemy castles, and they are all filled with 3-4 ridiculously pitiful warriors max. Slap a Guardian Charm on pretty much anything fully evolved, and it'll face almost zero resistance from the pitiful NFEs you're faced with. The only saving grace of these stories is that they're mercifully short, but the Not Worth Fighting Over stories are even shorter, while at least having a kinda interesting obstacle in Mitsunari's Scizor.

All of this would be bad enough, but they had the temerity to condemn Oichi of all characters to one of these stories?? Really?? Not saying I enjoyed lugging her Jigglypuff through the main campaign, but bloody hell, she deserved better than that. She was the main companion of the main character through the story, has probably the most dialogue of anybody in the game, and she's the sister of Nobunaga. That's an instant narrative hook right there! If they absolutely had to fill seven slots, couldn't they have included Okuni in the contest instead of wasting Oichi on this??

Here's the obvious, braindead thing that they should have done: give Oichi a Defeat Nobunaga story. Set it in an alternate timeline where the Hero never showed up, and she's forced to take up the mantle of protagonist all on her own. Make it super tough, as hard as Motochika's, to reflect the fact that you're a support character rising up against your more prestigious brother. Would be a million times more relevant to her character, and a great penultimate challenge before Two Heroes of Ransei. It would also lend some help to a woefully underepresented story type.

Again, don't want to sound like I hate this game. I obviously like it enough to 100% it. But this specifically really bothers me.