Pokemon Conquest is the most recent Pokemon game released. Loosely based on Japanese history during their Feudalistic era, this game tries to hybrid the concepts of warlords vying for power and people training pokemon as their partners. Using many of the systems common to the Pokemon core games alongside a tactical system whose roots go as far back as the old Ogre Tactics and Shining Force games, Pokemon Conquest has a little something for everyone who might want to try it.
There are, however, some caveats to its translation of the core Pokemon games. And there are some interesting elements that the game itself uses as well. Both of these need some explanation.
First of all, worry not about your pokemon types. Those have all been retained- accurate and useful for determining what you want to be hitting with the move you use, pokemon each have one or two types and their attacks all have types, and these types are the same as those pokemon and moves have in the core games.
As counterpoint to this, each pokemon only has one attack. This attack is not always the best attack choice for the pokemon, it’s not always of the same type as the pokemon (or the pokemon’s more significant pokemon type), and it’s always the same- Charmeleon all have Fire Fang, Joltik all have Electro Ball, and you will never see a Scrafty that isn’t using Faint Attack. This means that whenever you use or see a pokemon, you know what type of damage it does without fail, and have a good estimate of how powerful the attack is as well.
Pokemon abilities have also made it into the game, and each pokemon has a randomly-determined one of two different abilities. These abilities are passive as usual- they will automatically happen, whether or not you like it, every time they apply. They are not, however, all abilities that you will recognize from the core pokemon games. This means that you will need to pay close attention to what each pokemon has- even if you know its move, its ability can make a big difference. Mareep with Interference and mareep iwth Static act very differently from one another.
On the other hand, each warrior (trainer) has their own ability, one that you can choose to use or not each turn. These abilities can only be used once per battle, but their effect is usually very strong (if sometimes situational). While warriors are slightly copy/paste like the pokemon themselves, there’s no guarantee that a given face will go with a particular ability- there are, at best, tendencies.
