I spent some of my weekend playing Pokemon Conquest for the Nintendo DS, which is now out in stores. Here are my thoughts on the game so far.

This is not your traditional Pokemon game where you go on a journey to collect badges and become the greatest trainer of all time. The goal of Pokemon Conquest is to conquer various kingdoms throughout the land, with the goal of revealing a mysterious Pokemon once you've taken over all of them. The main story took me just under 10 hours to complete, but more content is unlocked afterward where you play through stories of other characters in the game.

Battles take place on a grid-like field where you strategically move Pokemon around and attack enemies. There's a lot more strategy involved than your traditional game. To keep things fresh each playing field has some sort of gimmick, like teleports and hidden tunnels. So it's not as simple as moving right up to an enemy and attacking.

The "collecting" part that makes the Pokemon franchise popular is still here, but with a twist. If you defeat enemy warriors in certain ways, you can recruit them. You're only allowed up to six per kingdom, but you can automatically have them train in kingdoms you control, making life much easier.

Check out my full review soon at www.theoaklandpress.com.

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