Real Time Conflict Shogun Empire - DS Game (Retro Fam)

I really had high hopes for this game. Samurai. A Shogun gameboard. Strategy and real time action. I am very sorry to say that this game is pretty atrocious.First, the plot. There are 2 sons of an ailing shogun. One is the diplomat, the other is the warrior. Whoever takes over Japan gets the magic sword and the rule.In essence this is one of my favorite board games, Shogun, done on the Nintendo DS. A map of Japan, divided up into provinces, is randomly scattered with four types of forces. There are your units, your brother's units, a third lord's units and random bandit zones. There are also grey areas that can be taken over without a fight.To take over a location, you can either fight, or try to negotiate. The idea is that you go, then your brother goes, back and forth until someone takes over the whole area. Now here's the ironic part. I did my first play-through as the negotiator. I hardly EVER won a negotiation. I had to fight my way through the provinces one by one. It took about 2 hours to win the game. So then I played through as the warrior. He won pretty much EVERY negotiation.Also, while the brother did go once, after that I plowed straight through and he never went again. Why? Because I pretty much won every single battle, in both playthroughs, meaning I could keep going. It was that easy.When you battle, you randomly get one of several mini-games. Maybe you're firing arrows at archers. Maybe you're firing arrows at archers ... on a ship. Maybe you're moving little.