ABANDONED: Bokosuka Wars
Mar. 22nd, 2020 02:27 pmWOW! WE LOSE!
Bokosuka Wars is an old game that got ported around to various systems of the day, with the Famicom version the one most people would be familiar with in the days of emulation. It is... rather infamous early-Internet kusoge, with every early 2000s comedy site lining up to take a swing. Something Awful's ROM Pit covered it, for example, back when the non-forums sections of Something Awful were relevant to anyone or anything ever.
It's easy to see why: the game is kind of an impenetrable mess at first. The common take was and mostly still is "So you're this white blobby dude and you kind of die for no reason and get the WOW! YOU LOSE! screen and what even is this game?" I decided to take a deeper look, mostly because![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
xyzzysqrl brought the world's least necessary sequel to our attention and, you know, I wanted to see if the original deserved a fairer shake than what it got.
Answer: Sort of. The common "lol what is this" perception, where this is bullshit and you die randomly, is completely unfair. Once you find a guide and actually learn how to play, there is a carefully thought out strategy game here. It's just that the clear-headed strategy game is also bullshit and you die randomly.
Okay, so, let's start at the beginning.
You are King Suren (protip: if you ever want to tell the reviews that actually gave this game a fair chance versus the early SA zeitgeist-chasers, look for the ones that actually learned and recite his name.) You start 600m (one step/tile is 1m) away from the enemy king, and the game ends when either he dies or Suren does. There are three types of allied units, each with their own power levels and abilities, and army unit management becomes the name of the game after a while.
Combat is done by taking the allied and enemy units' respective power levels, adding random numbers to each, whoever has the higher total wins, and the loser instantly dies. There is no health stat or "softening up" or "wearing down" units through repeated battle or anything like that; just a binary "two units enter, one unit leaves" roll. If an allied unit is victorious, it gains some power. Suren gets a flat +10 power per fight up to a cap of 320. Knights and Solders mostly get +10 per battle but they also get massive promotions with a +90 or so boost and a gold color upgrade upon attaining their third victory. Then the promoted units go back to +10/fight up to caps of 310.
Given this plus the way the combat system works, the idea is to have a strategic risk/reward dilemma in regard to how much combat to pursue. Is it better to send your units into battle to get them stronger, even if you could lose them entirely on a bad roll? Is it better to avoid combat as much as you can, only to be left with weaker units when faced with the unavoidable fights?
On its surface, it's an interesting idea, and this game could be really neat and strategic. Its big problem is... well. On a randomness scale of 0-10, where 0 is "Absolutely no randomness whatsoever, a 50 power unit will defeat a 40 power unit 100% every time, no upset victories ever, this is 100% predictable and RNG-free and is literally just chess" and 10 is "every battle is a coin flip, I don't know why this game even has power levels if every fight is just 100% pure chance anyway," Bokosuka Wars is hovering around an 8 or 9. Promoted and level-built units do have a better chance of surviving than a freshly hatched 30-power Soldier, sort of, but not that much better, and if you think hitting that 320 cap means you can send Suren into an entire field of weak 10-power grunts like a Dynasty Warriors game and not die then you're going to be seeing that WOW! YOU LOSE! screen.
Let me put it this way: I tried to have Suren pick a fight with the first five enemies I saw before even worrying about recruiting units or anything else, because losing and restarting in the first 60 seconds of gameplay isn't a problem, while actually pulling it off means a hefty +50 boost for the entire rest of the game. These enemies all had 50 power, which means the literal first fight in the game is 220 vs. 50 in my favor, and I lost that matchup twice in about fifteen total attempts. The second would be 230 vs. 50, and I lost that matchup four times. I got through all five guards of my self-imposed "beat five guards" challenge once, at which point I proceeded to have an overall run that lasted until Suren (who'd worked his way up to an even 300 power by then) eventually fell to a guy with 10.
In short, this game has all the "what do you mean I had like twenty dice to roll against your one and I lost ALL of them" frustration of RISK. There are what appear to be strategic elements on paper built around managing a capricious RNG (the "should I avoid this enemy, try to take it out with one of my weaker common units for the XP, or send my heavy-hitting incredibly rare guy to hopefully take care of it" dilemma) but in practice the RNG is so capricious that managing it just... isn't very fun? This game does not feel like a fair test of skill. I could keep trying until the stars align enough to win every roll I need, but would I really prove anything to anyone by doing that? The CRPG Addict (in a rare "okay but this isn't as kusoge as its reputation suggests, let me explain" defense piece, even) cited that winning could take around 1-2 hours depending on how careful you are, and that's 1-2 hours of trying your best while knowing that one bad roll could surprise Suren and oops there goes your entire game. It's... not a great feeling.
I tried, there's more to it than it's given credit for, but... nah.
Bokosuka Wars is an old game that got ported around to various systems of the day, with the Famicom version the one most people would be familiar with in the days of emulation. It is... rather infamous early-Internet kusoge, with every early 2000s comedy site lining up to take a swing. Something Awful's ROM Pit covered it, for example, back when the non-forums sections of Something Awful were relevant to anyone or anything ever.
It's easy to see why: the game is kind of an impenetrable mess at first. The common take was and mostly still is "So you're this white blobby dude and you kind of die for no reason and get the WOW! YOU LOSE! screen and what even is this game?" I decided to take a deeper look, mostly because
xyzzysqrl brought the world's least necessary sequel to our attention and, you know, I wanted to see if the original deserved a fairer shake than what it got.Answer: Sort of. The common "lol what is this" perception, where this is bullshit and you die randomly, is completely unfair. Once you find a guide and actually learn how to play, there is a carefully thought out strategy game here. It's just that the clear-headed strategy game is also bullshit and you die randomly.
Okay, so, let's start at the beginning.
You are King Suren (protip: if you ever want to tell the reviews that actually gave this game a fair chance versus the early SA zeitgeist-chasers, look for the ones that actually learned and recite his name.) You start 600m (one step/tile is 1m) away from the enemy king, and the game ends when either he dies or Suren does. There are three types of allied units, each with their own power levels and abilities, and army unit management becomes the name of the game after a while.
Combat is done by taking the allied and enemy units' respective power levels, adding random numbers to each, whoever has the higher total wins, and the loser instantly dies. There is no health stat or "softening up" or "wearing down" units through repeated battle or anything like that; just a binary "two units enter, one unit leaves" roll. If an allied unit is victorious, it gains some power. Suren gets a flat +10 power per fight up to a cap of 320. Knights and Solders mostly get +10 per battle but they also get massive promotions with a +90 or so boost and a gold color upgrade upon attaining their third victory. Then the promoted units go back to +10/fight up to caps of 310.
Given this plus the way the combat system works, the idea is to have a strategic risk/reward dilemma in regard to how much combat to pursue. Is it better to send your units into battle to get them stronger, even if you could lose them entirely on a bad roll? Is it better to avoid combat as much as you can, only to be left with weaker units when faced with the unavoidable fights?
On its surface, it's an interesting idea, and this game could be really neat and strategic. Its big problem is... well. On a randomness scale of 0-10, where 0 is "Absolutely no randomness whatsoever, a 50 power unit will defeat a 40 power unit 100% every time, no upset victories ever, this is 100% predictable and RNG-free and is literally just chess" and 10 is "every battle is a coin flip, I don't know why this game even has power levels if every fight is just 100% pure chance anyway," Bokosuka Wars is hovering around an 8 or 9. Promoted and level-built units do have a better chance of surviving than a freshly hatched 30-power Soldier, sort of, but not that much better, and if you think hitting that 320 cap means you can send Suren into an entire field of weak 10-power grunts like a Dynasty Warriors game and not die then you're going to be seeing that WOW! YOU LOSE! screen.
Let me put it this way: I tried to have Suren pick a fight with the first five enemies I saw before even worrying about recruiting units or anything else, because losing and restarting in the first 60 seconds of gameplay isn't a problem, while actually pulling it off means a hefty +50 boost for the entire rest of the game. These enemies all had 50 power, which means the literal first fight in the game is 220 vs. 50 in my favor, and I lost that matchup twice in about fifteen total attempts. The second would be 230 vs. 50, and I lost that matchup four times. I got through all five guards of my self-imposed "beat five guards" challenge once, at which point I proceeded to have an overall run that lasted until Suren (who'd worked his way up to an even 300 power by then) eventually fell to a guy with 10.
In short, this game has all the "what do you mean I had like twenty dice to roll against your one and I lost ALL of them" frustration of RISK. There are what appear to be strategic elements on paper built around managing a capricious RNG (the "should I avoid this enemy, try to take it out with one of my weaker common units for the XP, or send my heavy-hitting incredibly rare guy to hopefully take care of it" dilemma) but in practice the RNG is so capricious that managing it just... isn't very fun? This game does not feel like a fair test of skill. I could keep trying until the stars align enough to win every roll I need, but would I really prove anything to anyone by doing that? The CRPG Addict (in a rare "okay but this isn't as kusoge as its reputation suggests, let me explain" defense piece, even) cited that winning could take around 1-2 hours depending on how careful you are, and that's 1-2 hours of trying your best while knowing that one bad roll could surprise Suren and oops there goes your entire game. It's... not a great feeling.
I tried, there's more to it than it's given credit for, but... nah.