Title: Super Inindo: Datou Nobunaga (JP), Inindo: Way of the Ninja (NA)
Release Date: 03/19/1992
Developer: Koei
Publisher: Koei
Japanese developers seemed to have a fascination with the infamous warlord from the Sengoku Era, Oda Nobunaga. To be fair, he was the first warlord responsible for starting the unification process of Japan after a war-torn century of fighting, corruption, and civil strife; yet he is more remembered for the ruthlessness he exhibited in his conquests. Many video games portray him as evil incarnate; Samurai Warriors (another Koei joint) nicknames him the "Demon King," Onimusha is about him sacrificing his humanity and joining with demons, and he is one of the "big bads" in games like Pokemon Conquest and Nioh (in this case not the big bad, but a big baddie summoned by the big bad). There is also a penchant for displaying him as some sort of undead warlock; someone who survived assassination and returned from the grave to plague medieval Japan with his ceaseless ambition and conquests. Inindo is a game that certainly follows this pattern.
Now is this based in reality? Well there are definitely some exaggerations, but I think his bad reputation rests on two areas. One: he certainly was ambitious, and he would pursue his ambitions ruthlessly and doggedly. He managed to conquer 20 separate provinces in Japan and unify them under his banner, and those were his opponents were systematically hunted and eliminated. Anyone who could even be perceived as a future rival was completely extirpated. The most infamous example was his conquest of the Asakusa family's domain. The Asakusa family was allied with another family, the Azai family. The Azai family was allied with the Oda clan through marriage: the daimyo (regional lord) of the Azai was Nagamasa Azai, who was married to Nobunaga's sister. When Oda invaded Asakusa, Nagamasa Azai was honor bound to break his alliance to Nobunaga and fight against him. Oda, over the course of three years, destroyed both clans utterly and completely. Well that isn't so bad right? I mean his brother-in-law did betray him...welllllllllll there were a group of monks at a monastery known as Enrakyu-ji who supported the Azai-Asakusa alliance. They also happened to be relatively close to Oda's main base of operations, and were situated on Mt. Hiei. Nobunaga led his army there and slaughtered everyone, including those of the working class, women, and children. He even ordered his troops to hunt down any survivors. All told, around 20,000 people were killed in this attack. Not great PR for Nobunaga with this one.
The second reason for his infamy is for doing something that, at the time, was not really in the Japanese spirit: he opened up the country and began adopting Western influences. He started to outfit his troops with rifles and muskets, he adopted some Western style clothing as well, and he allowed free trade with foreigners and Christians to operate openly in his provinces. This was very much a departure from the Japanese norm, as the eventual unifier of Japan, Ieyasu Tokugawa, would outlaw missionaries and Christians from practicing due to the potential unrest it could cause. This did work out for Nobunaga, though, strategically, as he was able to effectively eliminate some of his rivals by training his troops in the most modern use of weaponry and strategy. For example, at the battle of Nagashino, Nobunaga's rifle corps was able to utterly decimate the famed Takeda cavalry.
Was he all bad? No, I would say that he was a very capable and effective leader/administrator. He was a large patron of the arts, being a pretty decent poet and artist himself, and his promotion of the creative led to an artistic renaissance during a time when the country was torn to pieces. His promotion of trade led to a complete overhaul of his province's economy, as Nobunaga would bust up trade groups and merchant guilds in favor of a "free market" economy. He built roads, bridges, and really worked to unify the areas under his control. This groundwork set up what would be the eventual true unification of Japan under Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Ieyasu Tokugawa. A famous quote (or at least a very rough approximation of that quote" exemplifying this is that "Nobunaga slaughtered the beast, Hideyoshi cooked it, and Tokugawa served it."
Now this was a long winded bit of background to finally get to the game itself...
Story
The story of Inindo is that. You play as an unnamed ninja from the Iga clan, a real ninja clan that was slaughtered by Oda Nobunaga. The game follows a similar story: the game starts with Nobunaga attacking your village, killing everyone and almost killing you. You escape and decide that you will have vengeance. You then travel around Japan over the course of a year, training yourself in the ninja arts and building a party, with the hopes that you will become strong enough to challenge Nobunaga.
What is weird is that the game begins, though, with a bit of alternate history. This game takes place after Nobunaga died in real life. Nobunaga was famously betrayed by one of his vassals, a man named Mitsuhide Akechi, who realized that Nobunaga had left himself defenseless and attacked his castle/mansion of Honno-ji and burnt it to the ground. This game imagines that Nobunaga survived this attack, with some hint at some supernatural influence, and continued his conquest of the realm. You get a very early cutscene of Nobunaga and his army marching through your town, and Nobunaga is covered in bandages and scars from the Honnoji attack.
Background
I couldn't find out too much about the history of this game, other than the fact that it is considered a spin-off of the previously covered and still running Nobunaga's Ambition series.
Gameplay
The game services this revenge premise pretty well, and the game doubles down on this by instituting a "clockwork" style to the gameplay: you only have one year to kill Nobunaga and put him back in the grave. If you don't complete the game in a year's time, then it is game over. In a lot of ways, the game is ahead of its time in being very open. The dungeons are darted around the entirety of Japan, and each holds a new ninja power for you to attain. As well, you can head to the main castle of any province, and parley with or overthrow the local daimyo; the idea behind this is that you want to start either allying with or eliminating daimyos so that you can start turning the tide against Nobunaga. Party members, as well, do not come to you naturally, but have to be sought out. You can go to a local inn, meet with potential allies, and try to convince them through fighting, bribing, or bargaining to join your crew. This is really where the game shines, as all the games systems feed to central goal of the game, and the stake are really palpable.
The RPG battle system, on the other hand, is where this game starts to crumble. As you move around the overworld, there are no random battles, which I appreciate, but as soon as you step into a dungeon area, the battles start to pop up with alarming regularity (about every five to six steps). The battles are turn based, and based on positioning: you can move around a grid, and try to maneuver around your enemies. You can use a weaker, ranged attack, to hit anyone on the board, or try to maneuver in close and strike with your sword. If you move and attack on the same turn, then you attack with your weaker sidearm. At best, these frequent battles cause you to level up quickly and are over soon, at worst, they are tedious slogs that can really wear on your patience and your character's stamina quickly. The first few dungeons, especially, you are operating with a single character, and each battle becomes you getting swarmed by enemies and you taking them out one at a time. When the enemies start to use ranged attacks, too, it becomes a battle where melee enemies block your movement, while ranged enemies blast you with powerful ranged attacks. If you are eliminated in a battle, there is a good change you won't die, but instead become injured, which hampers all your stats. To fix the injured status, you must flee the battle, find a clinic to cure the status ailment, and then rest at the inn. Thus the gameplay loop becomes: enter a dungeon, explore and gather treasure, eventually run out of stamina or get injured, have to run out of the dungeon, rest, and repeat until you finally map where you are going and reach the end of the dungeon. Now many bosses will not injure you, but instead kill you and send you to game over, so it becomes imperative to stock up on healing items and grind until you can properly challenge them.
The dungeons, too, are awful. They represent all the worst of the classic RPG tropes: multi-floor mazes with dead ends, confusing layouts, wrong ways, and little rewards for going off the beaten path. Coupled with the high encounter rates, these dungeons can be really frustrating to move through, especially when some of the common enemies in the dungeons can be really tough.
Now you can also engage in conquest battles for overall regions. By cozening your way into the good graces of the local daimyo, you can participate in some of the historical battles from this period. Are these as gripping and thrilling as the real battles? No. Basically they take place on the world map; your army approaches the castle of the daimyo you are attacking (or defending the castle in some place) and you take turns moving about the map. When you collide with an enemy unit, you enter into a typical battle. When you kill the enemy leader, you win!
Now another weird part of this game is that this game can take two distinct story paths, but they are different in that they are more of a theme than a distinct narrative break. The two main paths in this game are the "magician" path and the "ninja" path, and these are decided without the input of the character. It is a random assignment chosen by a coin flip at the end of the first dungeon. The "magician" path adds a whole bunch of mystical elements to the story, where you will be attacked by creatures from both Japanese and Western mythology, i.e. Cerebus, Phoenix, etc. The ninja path is much more historically focused and without the mysticism angle. My game path went down the "magician" path, but what is weird is that if I didn't find this out in my research, I would never have known about this development as the game never hints that it is splitting off in a path. Weird right?
The stakes of this game, again, are superb, and they marry the gameplay with these stakes to great effect. You never lose sight of your main goal of assassinating Nobunaga, and it drives each and every one of your decisions and interactions through the game. There are no distractions from this game, and it really helps it stand out from other meandering RPGS from this era. I am excited that this game was localized, because it is really, really Japanese. It feels like a game that would only have functioned in Japan, as it leans into Japanese history very heavily.
I will say that while the early game is rough, the mid to end game is very satisfying: you have this weird balancing act where you need to hit all the required dungeons, but you also must grind by conquering territories. In order to challenge Nobunaga in the end game, you must be a) strong enough to survive the final encounter, and b) have enough of the map in your control to trigger the final showdown. I was running up against the end of my time when I played (the calendar moves very quickly), so it definitely kicked the stakes of the encounter up a good bit more (nothing would be scarier than having to start the game over again!).
Music
The music in this game is no great shakes, but here it is nonetheless.
Ads, Art, Commercials
Only one magazine ad, sadly.
Final Verdict
I really, really, really, really wanted to like this game, as I thought it would be a hidden gem RPG. It has so much promise in its concept, but its execution is really only subpar. It is like a great gift wrapped in the worst possible packaging.
I think, honestly, that this game should be remade. Can you imagine a Sekiro or action RPG done in this style? It would be really fun to be able to run around Japan as a ninja, play the political game, and race against the clock to assassinate Nobunaga. It would be so much fun to be dropped into a gorgeous open world, have this larger than life objective, and you have to muddle out how to accomplish it. So Koei, if you are one of the ten people who read this blog, let's give Inindo another shot!
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