Pokemon Conquest is different from the normal Pokemon games by quite a bit. In this one you're a warlord of a small, centralized, kingdom. The point is to take over neighboring kingdoms, while collecting new troops, and figuring out who to keep with you and who to leave in certain cities to "protect" them from other kingdoms once you've conquered them yourself.
You only get one Pokemon, which you have no choice over, and leveling them up is completely different from how it works in all the other games. Rather than EXP, and levels, you get "Link Percentages", energy, and strength. None of which I'm really even sure about. I just know that I have so much HP, and I need to not die.
Each troop in your party also only has one single pokemon. And did I mention that your pokemon only know one move, and have one special that needs to be triggered to be useable. And by triggered, I mean you have no idea when it'll kick in and if it'll even be useable. Example: I'm stuck with an Eevee. She knows Quick Attack and a special called, according to Serebii.net, Buddha Strength, which allows her to play another move if she defeats the enemy in one shot. Sometimes. You can link with some wild pokemon, and I have with a few of my team members, but I still don't know what the point is. Once that team member's main pokemon faints, you don't see the other one pop out and finish the battle. Maybe I'm missing something still, but so far it seems pretty useless....
Every time I end up in a battle I think of chess. Each pokemon can only move a certain number of spaces, and in certain directions. Also, certain pokemon have to be a set number of spaces away from the enemy to attack them. Where Eevee needs to be right next to the enemy to attack, a team mate's Carnivine needs to be 2 spaces away and to the left or right of the enemy to attack it. Each pokemon is obviously different, so you need to figure out where to move them so that it wont interfere with your other team mates, and will inflict the most amount of damage. Battles only get so many moves. Some cases they assume you should be able to win a battle in less than 10 turns, some more, some less. Also, in order to recruit new troops you have to beat them in less than 4 turns.
Luckily they keep the basic "water is strong against fire" and other type advantages and disadvantages. I don't know if the game has that kind of AI in it, but I went as far as putting warriors in each of my cities with the thinking "If this city's main focus is water types, and grass is strong against water, I should put fire types to protect it in case the invading forces bring in grass types". Probably way over thinking things....
I'm still torn on whether or not this game is fun or monotonous. You don't have a continual time clock. Each "month" you can only do things once per team member. So if you have 6 members and 3 members go to battle, that leaves you with 3 members who can go to the store. Once everyone has done one thing, you move along to the next month. There's no grind training, so you just have to hope that your pokemon gets something out of the one battle a month its allowed.
So yeah. That's Pokemon Conquest. If you're big into putting thought into your games you'll probably like it. I'm more of a "bust out my lvl100 Typhlosion and burn everything to the ground" type person. Brawn over brains I guess...
