1. Introduction
This game is absolutely one of the greatest gems for Nintendo DS. It is just a shame that there is no decent guide or FAQ in English for this game. Granted, you will need to read quite a lot of Japanese and read it fast in order to play well, read others' strategy and react accordingly during online play. But still I think it is well worth the effort to show your appreciation to such an innovative and well-executed game.
It is basically a card-collecting strategy game. The player will need to use the cards he has to build a deck. The are a couple of rules and constraints to consider when building a deck. A card battle can be done against another player online or against the AI. Before a battle, the player will put the cards from the deck anywhere on his side of the battle field. After the battle starts, he can move the cards individually to anywhere he wants on the battle field. Each card starts off with the same level of hit point and when cards from opposing players meet up on the field, hit points will be taken away from them. When the hit point drops to zero, the card is slashed and it needs to be taken back to the castle area(at the end of the battle field on your side) to get revived in a certain amount of time. Cards can have different types, different attack points, different intelligence points, different weapons, different abilities, different strategies, different speeds. Some cards are weak battle card with strong strategic values because of special ability/skill. Some cards are strong and can take beating as well as give out beating. Like a tank! The objective is to drop the opposing player's castle. Each card can dish out different level of damages to the castle when they are right at the foot of it. Each player's castle has the same level of hit points. If time limit is passed and no castle's hit points has yet dropped to zero, the player with castle having a higher hit point will win.
2. The First Time You Turn This Game on
When you open up the package, you will find a real sangokushi taisen 2 card that you can actually use to play the arcade version of the game. Sweet freebie!! But I really never come across a Sangokushi Taisen arcade machine in North America yet. so sad. Please please let me know if you find one.
Anyway, this game is played sideway. Kind of like "Brain Age". So naturally, the first time you power up the game, it will ask you whether you are a righty. The red button is "Yes" while the blue button is "No". The same convention goes with many other aspects of the game when it asks you to make any decision. Red button means "Yes" or "Confirmed" while blue button means "No" or "Cancel".
After that, you need to enter your name. The name will be used when you go online as well. You can use Japanese hiragana, katagana, chinese characters or english alphabets for your name. In the screen for entering your name, the bottom left red rectangle button is for backspace while bottom right red rectangle button is for finishing the name entering task.
And after that, you need to pick a faction. You can choose either Wei, Shu, Wu or Others. It makes no difference to the game at all. It only determines what starter cards you are going to get. No matter which faction you choose, you will get four cards from that faction to be your starter cards. These aren't anything that is super useful but they just allow you to build a deck right away and get playing.
3. Main Menu
And here we are at the main menu, there are five options altogether. The last one is tutorial. Unless you are absolutely fluent in Japanese, you probably will get more useful information here in this guide. The other four options are "Story Mode", "Practice Mode", "Communication Mode", "Deck Building and Other Configurations"
In story mode, practice mode and online play of the communication mode, you will be able to gain a new card after each battle, whether you win or lose. And you can get duplicate cards as well. You may occasionally get other nice stuffs, like orbs to power up the strategies or weapons to power up the cards.
3.1 Story Mode
In the story mode, there are four scenarios you can choose: "Wei", "Shu", "Wu", and "Others". Once you choose a scenario, you can then choose an episode. Initially only the first episode is unlocked. You need to finish the episode to unlock the subsequent episode. There are some story elements to it. And it will try to tell you the epic story of the Three Kingdom Period from different perspectives. But then, unless you are absolutely fluent in Japanese, it is quite difficult to make some sense out of the story elements.
Each episode can have very specific goal. Some will require you to do an old-fashioned butt kicking of the opponents. Some will require you to knock out a certain unit on the field. Some have time limits instead.
The story mode has a lot of replay values. It is a way for you to unlock "Weapons" for your cards . Weapons are kind of like "power-ups" for your cards. Some increase the attack of the card. Some increase the speed. Some increase the max hit point. Each card has its own unique "Weapon" to unlock. The story mode allows player to unlock weapons. The more you play, the more weapon you will get.
3.2 Practice Mode
There are "Easy", "Normal", "Hard", "Super Hard" for you to choose. Initially, you only get "Easy" and "Normal". You need to beat "Normal" to get "Hard" and beat "Hard" to get "Super Hard". There are 2 battles in easy, 3 in normal, 5 in hard and 10 in super hard. The final battle of super hard can be a real pain. The AI is allowed to ignore any rules in deck building and simply get 8 of the strongest battle cards to go against you.
3.3 Communication Mode
There are four options here. You can battle using the local wireless. You can battle using the Nintendo wifi connection. You can play a mini-game with friends using local wireless. And you can trade cards with your friends.
3.3.1 Battle Using Local Wireless
The first option is for you to battle other people using local wireless. You need to choose a pre-built deck and then you will be showed any open games. You can see what is the time limit and the terrain the open game will be played on. You can also start your own game with your own choice of terrain and time limit. The important thing to note is that you can only choose a time limit of 99 time units or infinite time.
3.3.2 Battle Using Nintendo Wifi Connection
After you select this, you will be presented with 3 choices here. The first option is to login to Nintendo wifi, choose a pre-built deck and then let the network randomly assign you a player to play against. The second option is to manage your friend code. You can see the list of friend codes you have, enter new friend code and see your own friend code as well. Your own friend code will not be generated unless you go online through Nintendo wifi at least once. The third option is for you to setup and configure your wifi connection.
3.3.3 Play Mini-game Using Local Wireless.
This is actually a mini-game for you to play against your friends using local wireless. It is a five rounds of rock-paper-scissors game. The rule is that the cavalry icon will beat out the archer icon. The archer icon will beat out the spearman icon and the spearman icon will beat out the cavalry icon. You make your choices and then see if you can beat your friend in that five rounds.
3.3.4 Card Trading.
The final option is for you to trade card. You can either accept a trade request or initiate a trade request with friends using local wireless(not through Nintendo Wifi Connection)
3.4 Deck Building and Other Configurations
This place is for you to manage your decks and other configurations of the game.
The first option here is for you to view the cards you have collected. At the bottom left corner, there are 2 arrows to let you scroll between the pages of cards you have. Blue arrow is to go to previous page while the red arrow is to go to the next page. At the top, there are 6 octagons, which represent the 6 different factions that these cards can belong to. Clicking on them will filter out the screen with only cards of that faction. The orange rectangle below these octagons is for you to unselect the filter.
Here are the factions
Wei, Shu, Wu, Liang, Yuan, Other
The second option is for you to view the weapons you have collected. Again, since each card has its unique weapon to go with, you will find the same 6 tabs at the top for you to filter out the weapons for cards of a particular faction. At the bottom, there are handy arrows for you to jump to list of weapons for previous or next faction.
The third option is for you to build decks. You can pre-build up to 5 decks in advance. So there are 5 slots there. After you choose a slot, a number of buttons will come up. The blue button is for editing a deck, The purple button is to clear a slot. The orange button is used to change the name of a deck. At the very bottom left corner, there is another button for you to change your color. Your units on the battle field will appear in the color you choose here.
At the top, the big red button is to undo all kinds of sorting or filtering. To its right, there are options for you to choose the sorting order. You can sort by card number, name, attack or intelligence point. The next row you will see five buttons for you to choose the filtering. The first one is there to allow you to filter the cards by their factions. The second one allows you to filter by the type of units. The third is the special abilities. The fourth is the cost and the fifth is the type of skills for the cards. Below thess buttons, you will find the cards listing 4 in a page with previous and next buttons right below the listing. And then after that, you will see your deck. You can have a maximum of 8 cards. You can drag and drop the cards you see in the listing to your deck. You can also drag and drop cards away from the deck to remove them.
The fourth option is for you to change different settings of the game. You can change your name. You can change whether to use the d pad or the pen to change orientation of a card on battle field (more to that later on) You can change the game to be lefty-oriented. You can reset the game and wipe out any saves or card/weapon collected.
4. Anatmomy of a Card
Let's focus on the left hand side. On the top left corner, you will find the faction of the card and below it, the cost of the card. At the very bottom row of the card, you will find a lot more information. The left most icon shows the type of unit (cavalry, spearman, archer, elephant, siege or infantry). To its right is a list of special abilities the card has. Right to it is the attack and intelligence points. Next to it is the card's skill, its morale cost and its area of effect.
The right side is basically the biography of the character in this card. This important thing on this side is at the top left corner. The piece shows the faction and the ID of the card. It is a way for us players to refer to these cards effectively and efficiently.
Cards with white edge are common cards. Black edge means uncommon. Silver edge means rare. Super rare cards have golden edge instead. There are also legend cards with special design, too.
5. Building a Deck
So how do you build a deck? Here are a few rules you need to consider
The combined cost of the cards in the deck must be under 8. The maximum cost a card can have is 3 and the minimum cost a card can have is 1. So simple calculation shows you can have maximum 8 cards in a deck. Having 3 really strong cards in a deck might seem powerful and intimidating but your enemy can send 3 really weak cards to occupy your cards while sending another one to break your castle. Having 8 cards is also not really great because you need to maneuver 8 cards on the battle field while your enemy might be only managing 4 or 5 at max and thus he might have an advantage over you in terms of efficiency.
If your deck consists of cards from only one faction. Your max morale is 12 units. Deck made up of cards from only 2 factions will lower the max morale to 9 units. Three factions or more means only 6 max morale units. The morale is needed when you need to use the cards' skill.
The final rule is actually pretty good for role playing purpose, in my opinion. Basically you cannot have cards with the same name even if they belong to different factions. So this rule thus actually prohibits the same character to appear twice on the battle field in any battle from your deck.
6. Before a Battle
You will be shown the battle field. You can check out the terrain and see where some towers are. These towers can sometimes help in defending your castle. You can also see if there are places that will damage your unit if they walk on it. Some terrains can also slow down your units as well. The lowest rectangular part of the battle field is your castle area. You can put your card in the castle area to start off with and your enemy will not see them on the battle field at all. Or you can put your card out on the battle field and your enemy will see them right away. Please remember though, there is a time gap for any alive units to get in and get out of the castle area.
Some units have the special abilities to stay hidden in the beginning or put up a barrier at the beginning. There will be special indicators for them when these cards are put in the battle field. If they stay in the castle area to start off the game, they will lose their special abilities.
Also after placing your cards , you will need to select a strategy. These strategies affect all your units at the same time for a short period of time. And it can only be used once in the battle. Some strategy give you a slight boost in attack. Some make your unit faster. It all depends on how you want to use them.
7. During a Battle
7.1 Battle Scene
On the top you will see your name at the left and your enemy name on the right, separate by the timer at the middle. Underneath these names will be the hit points of the castle of the corresponding player. In the middle is the battle field. You can actually only see a portion of battle field from a 3rd person perspective of the selected unit. You can adjust the view of the battle with the A-B-X-Y buttons if you declare yourself a righty at the beginning, or the d pad if you declare yourself a lefty. But you can also check out locations and hit points of all units on a overlayed mini-map on the top right.
On the battle field, each unit has a banner on top of it showing the card name, type of unit, attack point and the hit points left.
At the bottom, the red long rectangle indicates the skill of the selected card. The blue long rectangle indicates the name of the strategy you selected before the battle. The card skill can only be triggered if you have enough morale (which is the long bar between the red and blue buttons) The higher the morale the longer the red bar will be. Each card skill require different level of morale and that is indicated with the yellow dots on the morale bar. The strategy can only be used once in the whole battle.
You can basically move your card all over the field here. A unit undisturbed while sitting in the attack area can attack the enemy castle. The middle part of the area is the gate and attacking the castle here at the gate will take off more hit points from the castle than attacking it anywhere else.
The red button is used for triggering card skill while the blue button is used for triggering the strategy.
7.2 Moving Your Card
You can move your card by dragging it to the place you want. But your unit will not move instantly to the place you want it be. It takes time for the unit to travel. And it really depends on the speed of the unit as well.
You can also change the orientation of your card. You can actually do that as well when placing your card before a battle. This is useful in many ways. You can place barriers (if your card gets that special ability) in many different ways, not necessarily horizontal to the screen. Some cards have skill (which costs morale) that can cast a damage effect on enemy or healing/boosting effect on other cards of yours, over an area towards what that card is facing. So changing the orientation can move the area effect instantly without moving the card.
To move multiple cards at the same time. Draw a horizontal line across the cards you want to move together. They will all get highlighted in yellow and then you can move them together. But remember, the actual units don't move instantly or at the same time together. Each unit has its own speed and they will reach their destination at different times.
7.3 Fighting
When two opposing units meet on the battle field, they will fight each other. There are special attacks each unit can pull off, depending on how they engage their enemy. It depends on the type of the card as well. Please check out section 9 for details. Naturally, the card with a higher attack value will generally go better in combat.
Sometimes when two units meet, it will trigger the duel mode. 5 bars of various width will travel from the right to left and you need to hit the screen when the bars hit the marker on the left end. It is basically a rhythm type of mini-game that you need to time correctly. If your timing is right or better than your enemy, you will win the duel and the opposing unit will be slashed instantly. One important thing to note is that card with the "Bravery" ability can have advantage in the duel mode as they will at least have one bar with the largest width.
When your unit is in the enemy's attack area, you can start taking hit points off the enemy's castle. There is a time needed before your unit can attack the castle. And during that time, your unit must not be engaged in battle with another unit.
When your unit's hit points reach zero, it is slashed. You need to drag the card of this slashed unit back into your own castle area and it will be revived in a certain period of time. When it is revived, it will have only half of its hit point.
When your unit is inside your own castle, the hit points it has lost will recover over some period of time.
7.4 Using the Card Skill
Each card has its own skill. Each skill will consume a certain level of morale. And each skill has an area of effect as well. There are many many different skills. Some will give boost to the card itself. Some will give boost to the cards in the area of effect. Some cause damages to enemy cards. Some heals your cards.
This is where you will need a whole lot of explanations for each card. And I will try to cover the strategy of each card in my card guides in future posts.
7.5 Using the Strategy
There are a fixed number of strategies. Most of them will give a slight boost to your units for a short period of time. You can gain orb after each battle occasionally to power up these strategies. When a strategy is fully powered up, you can add 2 side strategy to further enhance the effect.
Here are the strategies
a. Shorten the time units to revive
b. Increase attack point for units
c. Recover hit points for units
d. Slow down enemy units
e. Increase speed and attack point of your own cavalry units
f. Increase speed of your own units
g. Increase attack point at the expense of speed for your units
h. Increase attack point of your spearman units and enable them to pull a special spear attack that attacks in all direction.
i. Increase the attack range of archer units
j. Increase attack point of "Wei" units
k. Increase attack point of "Shu" units
l. Increase attack point of "Wu" units
m. Increase attack point of "Liang" units
n. Increase attack point of "Yuan" units
o. Increase attach point of "Other" units
p. Rebuild broken or damaged barriers
7.6 The Abilities on Each Card
From top to bottom,
a. The unit can stay hidden at the beginning of a battle when they are put on the battle field. When they meet up with an enemy unit, they will remove their cover and do a "surprise" attack on the enemy unit. The damage is based on the intelligence of the cards. The higher advantage you have on your enemy in terms of intelligence, the more damage you will lay on him.
b. The unit can revive faster
c. The unit can put up a barrier in front of it at the beginning of the battle.
d. The unit can add half a point of morale at the beginning of a battle.
e. The unit can have an advantage in duel mode with at least one max-width bar
f. The unit can recover hit points when standing still
g. Units with this ability can help change the area of effect of some card skills. Basically the area effect of these strategies is the path between the skill bearing card and cards with this ability.
7.7 Terrains on Battle Field
Basically there are 3 types of terrains. The normal terrain is just any piece of uninteresting land. The harsh terrain is a special piece of land that can slow down any units. And the damaging terrains are the land that will damage units when they walk on it.
There are towers you can find on the battle field as well. They can really help in defending your castle. Also some cards have the special ability of putting up a barrier in front of them. These barriers will stay at their initial position when the battle starts off, even when their corresponding cards move after the battle starts.
8.0 After the Battle
You will always get a card after each battle. Sometimes you will get weapons. And sometimes you will get orbs to power-up strategy. The maxed up strategy can have 2 side strategies attached to them and you can earn these side strategy after doing a battle as well.
Also you will earn points and based on how many points you have, you will have a different title given to you.
9.0 Card Types
The cavalry cards are the fastest. When they are at full speed and hit on another enemy unit, they can perform a "charge" attack and bring tremendous damage. However, they can only do small damage to the castle. They are really good against the archers but weak against the spearman.
The spearman cards are slow. But they can do very good damage on castle. When the units are moving in one direction and is not engaging another enemy card yet, they can pull off a "spear" attack. Whenever a cavalry unit is trying to use its "charge" attack on a spearman unit and the spearman unit, if possible, can use a "spear" attack to face that off, the spearman can bring great damage to the cavalry. This is called an "anti-charge" attack. Spearman is strong against cavalry but weak against archer.
The archer has a good speed and a decent castle attack. It can perform long range attack while stationery. It is strong against spearman and weak against the cavalry.
The elephant has a good speed and good castle attack. When it is at full speed, it can do a "push" attack and push other units aside to clear a path.
The siege cards have the strongest castle attack but it is also as slow as spearman.
The infantry cards are pretty average in all areas. Good castle attack, decent speed and no special attack.
10. Final Words
This is, of course, by no means, a complete FAQ yet. So here are the things that I think I need to add.
- I need to add a complete card guide (A huge and monumental task!!)
- I need to talk about deck building and how to win online
- I need to add a guide to each episode of the story mode.
I am really not sure if there is enough interest in the above stuff. So I will wait and see if there is enough reply before trying to write posts for the stuffs above. And if you think I miss something or am unclear in this guide, please post a comment and let me know. I will try to add to this particular post with your input as well.
Thanks and enjoy!!
Ouendan 2
