Eiyuu Senki: The World Conquest is a hybrid Strategy RPG initially released on PC in 2013. It then received a PS3 and a PS Vita port, the former of which was localized for the United States in late 2015. It takes place in an alternate earth wherein every single one of the historical heroes represented throughout the story that was a man is now a woman. Himiko, the Queen of the Yamatai province in Zipang, has had a vision heralding The End of the World as We Know It and realized that the only way to face the oncoming darkness is to Take Over the World and unite the world's heroes behind her cause.
There's only one small problem: Himiko is a terrible military leader and has suffered multiple defeats in her attempts at unifying Zipang. After suffering another loss at the hands of Nobunaga Oda, Himiko is ambushed by bandits on her way home to Yamatai. Just as it looks like she's going to be killed before her campaign can truly begin, a mysterious light shines down from above, an unknown man with golden eyes appears and saves Himiko. This man, declared to be a Servant of Heaven but whose name is actually Chihaya, actually has no memory of who he is, but he and Himiko pledge their loyalty to each other and, upon uniting Zipang, he becomes the Supreme Commander of Himiko's army to aid her in her world conquest. Opposing them are The Illuminati, led by Mu, who wants to conquer the world herself.
A sequel, titled Eiyuu Senki GOLD was first released in 2014, with its English version eventually coming out on Steam and JAST's official website in June 2021. It features a rebalanced cast as well as new characters, and introduces an item fusion system. The plot acts as a "What If?" for the original; instead of Chihaya appearing before Queen Himiko, he's found on Zipang's shore by Masamune Date, whose ambition is to end Zipang's isolationism by conquering it and then go on to rule the entire world.
A spin-off mobile game, titled Eiyuu Senki: War Wonder, and an adults only version titled WWX, was released in 2018. It greatly expands the cast and even introduces new factions, but sadly ended its service as of March 2022. An offline remake for War Wonder was announced shortly after its shutdown, however as of March 2023 there's been little news on its development progress.
Please place character-related tropes on the Character sheet.
No relation to Freeware Game Eiyuu.
This game provides examples of:
- Accidental Hero: The Zipang army indirectly saves Qin Shi Huang's life by spreading rumors that she is on her death bed, prompting Sun Tzu to rush back to the palace. She ends up breaking Qin Shi Huang's medicine bottle by mistake when she was about to take a larger dose than normal. Given said "medicine" was actually liquid mercury, that extra dose could have easily killed her.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: All of the units that appear in battle. They're using their proper hands when they're part of the opposing army rather than the player's.
- And I Must Scream: People brainwashed by the Illuminati's pendants are fully aware of what they're saying and doing, but can do nothing about it.
- Artifact of Doom: The Staff of Narayana. Although it is shape like a globe than a staff.
- Artificial Stupidity: The boss (of which there are 6) in Layer 6-5 of Shambhala, will utilize a skill to instantly kill itself to grant brave orbs to its party. Using units that can steal brave will cause them to self-sacrifice before they can easily cause any kind of damage. The game is practically counting on the player to use this tactic because every unit in that battle has 10 million HP!
- Artistic License – History: Aside from many historical figures becoming women, numerous people and countries all exist together within the game world when, in reality, they were actually hundreds of years apart. Justified In-Universe, as Nyarlathotep intentionally created the world this way just for fun.
- Art Shift: A few of Lancelot and Palamedes' events suddenly treat the player to a more cartoony styled, hand-drawn cutscenes, instead of the usual computer-rendered artwork.
- Ascended Extra: War Wonder makes characters who were just NPC units into playable characters with unique designs, like Mihirakula, Gauss, Jesse James and Cuauhtémoc.
- Back from the Brink: Not only was Himiko about to be killed when Chihaya first appeared, but Yamatai itself was nearing complete bankruptcy before Chihaya's presence turned the tide in Zipang.
- Bland-Name Product: Amasson, and is itself based in South America.
- Bonus Dungeon: Shambhala on the True End route: A 9-layer dungeon with 5 battles in each of the first 8 layers and 10 battles in the final. Per layer, a unit cannot join more than 1 battle, so clearing the final one requires training a maximum of 60 units.
- Book Ends: The game ends on the same hill where Chihaya first appeared.
- Boss Rush:
- The final campaign on the True End route has a boss to defeat in every city.
- Each layer of Shambhala is a series of 5-10 battles in a row against boss-quality enemies that are mostly powered-up clones of the playable units.
- Cast of Snowflakes: Despite having such a massive roster that only grows progressively larger with each installment note , character design for the heroines remain distinctive, with each one having their own unique and quirky personality to help them stand out from the crowd.
- The Cavalry: The heroes recruited during the unification of Zipang all join Chihaya to fight evil Takeru.
- Changing Gameplay Priorities: Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors are played straight early on as using units to kill whatever they're strong against is a viable tactic. This changes later on during the mid-endgame where your characters start unlocking their skills which require Brave Orbs and Brave Orbs are acquired by your characters needing to get hit to what they're weak against. Which means healers, usually placed at the back, need to get in the frontlines and get hit.
- Chekhov's Gun: When Takeru shows Chihaya her pendant in the game's start. Later on you'll realize that it came from the Illuminati.
- Censor Steam: In the CG for the Furo Scene mentioned below, none of the heroines are wearing towels, but are fully covered by this.
- Combat Exclusive Healing: Various healing skills are available, but can only be used in battle. Outside of battle, wounded characters must rest and let their Troop Strength/HP recover naturally in between turns. The only two ways to speed up the process are to either equip items that accelerate healing, or spend money to heal instantly. (Neither option work on characters who have just participated in a battle, meaning you still have to wait an entire turn, and the latter is expensive, not to mention unavailable for the HP-based Ancient Heroes). This is particularly egregious as Himiko is constantly shown to be healing people with her power in the story, yet you can't use a healing skill in gameplay once the battle has ended.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Bombardiers (Magellan, Napoleon, Galileo) can only hit the furthest back two columns of the enemy formation with their regular attacks. If they don't learn skills that allow them to attack closer, they're useless against front-line fighters.
- Gunners (and Kay) have a similar problem in that they can only hit targets within the same row, but are at least able to re-position themselves if need be.
- Most Magic users are excellent at building up the Brave metre, but rarely pack enough fire-power to be competent at taking down enemies.
- The Ancient Heroes, apart from Takeru who is an absolute Lightning Bruiser with no weakness, all excels at one particular aspect while falling short in the others. The most egregious example being Hercules, who scores 12 in attack, but only 2 in defence and 3 in speed, leaving her with the second-worst overall stats in the whole game.
- Oddly enough, the final boss Nyarlathotep herself also falls into this category. She only has two skills: "Charge", which gives her 2 Brave Orbs, but has a charge-up time and can be easily interrupted, and "Creeping Chaos", which is a terrifying One-Hit Kill attack costing 10 Brave Orbs. This setup makes her pretty much an "all or nothing" unit, meaning that she will either annihilates your party with ease, or gets perpetually stuck with a unfilled Brave Meter and unable to fight back because your character with the Mana Drain skill is constantly sucking her dry.
- Critical Existence Failure: The Ancient Heroes, who remains perfectly combat capable and will fight at their full strength even if they only have 1 remaining HP. Averted by the regular characters, whose strength scales with their current HP.
- Death World: The Dark Realm is filled with abandoned villages, the entire landscape is littered with burial crosses, the enemies there are shadow zombies that are implied to have once been the humans who lived there, and most of the cities give very little income.
- Defeat Means Friendship: The Game. Every opposing hero will join Zipang's army at some point when defeated. Either right away or after their capital city is taken.
- Developer's Foresight: Apart from collecting bonus items for conquering one region ahead of another, most character interactions and conversations will adjust themselves accordingly as well.
- Dynamic Difficulty: The game rewards the player for aiming to conquer harder areas before the easier ones with unique items, but also ups the difficulty as a result.
- Ensemble Cast: While some characters have more focus and events than others, every heroine has at least one, usually showing some Character Development or Hidden Depths.
- Epic Fail: Every time the army tries to participate in sports, at least one person treats it like another battle and something inevitably blows up.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Establishing a settlement in New Zealand requires defeating some of the local animal life, and it is one of the hardest battles up to that point in the game.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
- When Napoleon speaks with Zipang via a holographic projector, she warns them that it contains a self-destruct sequence but the explosion won't do more than give them silly Afros. A few moments later, when the device does self destruct, everyone's hair is left that way from the explosion.
- Every battle in Shambhala begins with a warning that the player cannot save the game until all of the battles in the layer are complete followed by, "Battle will begin after the following message." And the following message is, "Battle will begin after this message."
- Fighting Your Friend: Takeru pulls a Face–Heel Turn after the unification of Zipang and must be fought.
- First-Name Basis: Some characters, like Napoleon and Hannibal, are not referred to by their full names.
- Furo Scene: A hot springs version after Benkei and Himiko discover some outside of Yamatai.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: Recruiting all of the playable characters. There are over 70 of them in total.
- Guide Dang It!: The condition for acquiring certain items and characters can be fairly obscure, and it's very likely that you will miss out on most of them unless you know what you are doing. For example, a lot of the items are only rewarded to you if you conquer one city before the other, and since the game doesn't tell you this beforehand, you could have easily conquered the entire area without even knowing that such a reward existed. To make matters even worse, some items are tied with acquiring certain characters, so missing out on one means you've missed out on the other as well.
- Ham and Deadpan Duo: The dynamic between Magellan and Cook, and Billy the Kid and Columbus.
- Hegemonic Empire: Zipang due to their policy of Defeat Means Friendship. After conquering a country, Zipang lets them continue ruling their respective nations however they see fit, as long as they give their allegiance to the Zipang Army.
- Historical Domain Character: Most of the characters present are gender-flipped historical figures. Of those who aren't:
- Public Domain Character: The Ancient Heroes consist of characters from various mythologies - Yamato Takeru from the Japanese mythology, Hercules from the Greek mythology, etc. The only exception being Tai Gong Wang, who was a real person (but is also a Chinese mythology figure). They have of course, also been gender-flipped.
- Nyarlathotep is obviously taken from the Lovecraftian Mythology, which becomes even more apparent once she transforms into her One-Winged Angel form.
- Arthur's historical existence is debatable, but it's evident that this game draws its portrayal of her and her knights from the classic Arthurian legends.
- Historical Domain Crossover: The game in a nutshell, since historical and even legendary figures are all shown coexisting at the same time.
- Historical Gender Flip: Not counting the main character, everyone on the game's 70+ character roster is a gender flipped historical/mythological figure, with Himiko and Joan being the only two exceptions.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Evil Takeru cannot be defeated in her first fight, but she will retreat after taking enough damage in the second round.
- The Illuminati: It appears as a literal faction within the world and is revealed early on as one of the game's primary antagonists.
- Improbably Female Cast: Apart from the main character, there are only a handful of male characters who ever appear during the course of the story, all of which being NPCs, and most are only mentioned in passing, while every other character, ranging from the playable heroines down to the common soldiers, are all female. It gets to ridiculous degrees when even the random monsters you fight all speak with distinctively feminine voices (well, those who speaks coherently, anyway), yet no male enemies can be found throughout the entire game. The True End route reveals an in-story explanation as to why.
- Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Musashi Miyamoto. She's mentioned in conjunction with Sasaki Kojiro and Chihaya even hopes she'll join the Zipang army, but she doesn't actually appear in the game at all. However, she does appear (and is a recruitable unit) in GOLD.
- Last-Name Basis: Several characters, like Columbus, Cook and Magellan, are only ever referred to by their last names with no hint of their first names (except when the very happy-go-lucky Alwilda is involved, who makes a habit out of referring to everyone by their first names).
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The first time bandits attack as the result of the player continually ending turns without doing anything, one of them will comment that the Zipang army isn't using their action points, and must be hoarding the funds they are earning between turns. Lampshaded by her confused comrade's reaction:Bandit B:" 'Action Points'? Sometimes you say things that don't make any sense..."
- Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Heroes learn new skills as their trust in Chihaya grows by completing their character events. He in turn learns new skills from doing enough cumulative events with everyone.
- Meido: Besides Kay who wears a maid outfit as her default look, War Wonder gives several heroes a maid alternate costume, like Ivan the Terrible, Columbus, Catherine the Great, and Hammurabi.
- Mirror Match: Shambhala is full of battles against clones of the playable characters. Placing one hero against herself in there will create this.
- Mood Whiplash: The goofy world conquest tour quickly turns dark once players encounter evil Takeru and begin to uncover the truth behind the chaos, but most side missions remain light-hearted as ever.
- Multiple Endings: A Normal End and a True End. The path splits based on if Himiko's army conquers the entire rest of the world before Britannia or not.
- Multi National Team: The game roster becomes a massive one, with heroes from all over the world fighting side by side.
- The EU is made up of heroes from different countries; Napoleon is French, Hannibal is Carthaginian, Caesar and Nero are Roman, Beethoven and Faust are German, Da Vinci is Italian and Charlemagne is Frank.
- War Wonder introduces new factions that also feature heroes from different parts of the world, like the East Marauders, the Landsknecht and the Libertalia Pirates.
- Nation Of Hats: Everyone in Russia except for Ivan the Terrible is an enormous masochist, while the latter, naturally, takes the role of the sadist.
- Nonstandard Character Design: A few of the characters designed by guest artists have conspicuously different art styles from the rest of the cast. The most obvious examples are Sasaki Kojiro and Michelangelo from the Vita version.
- Not What It Looks Like: Chihaya and Qin Shi Huang get involved in a classic example of the trope shortly after she wakes up in his room- as it was the only one available- and ends up on top of him after falling just in time for Sun Tzu and Lu Bu to walk in.
- One-Man Army: The ancient heroes are each regarded as one since they have actual HP meters instead of troop counts.
- One-Steve Limit: There are two Williams, William Kidd and Billy the Kid, whose real name was William Bonney. Luckily Billy is always referred to by her nickname so there's no confusion.
- Palette Swap: An unusual variant. The "Genghis Khan" fought alongside Kublai and Marco Polo in layer 2 of Shambhala is a clone of Yoshitsune.
- Playboy Bunny: Besides Percival who wears this as her default outfit, for War Wonder several characters receive a bunny girl alternate costume, like Billy the Kid, Galahad, Kamehameha and Ryouma Sakamoto.
- Public Domain Artifact: Many legendary items and locations are obtained/visited throughout the game.
- Product Placement: Downplayed. When the army enters a new region, Lancelot makes sure to give a thorough description of that region's specialty cuisines.
- Pronoun Trouble: While the general quality of the localization is pretty good across the board, sometimes the translation will forget that most characters in the game are female and refers to them as "him" in the dialogue. This is more forgivable for NPCs who are not voiced therefore ambiguous in gender, but much less so for the heroines who speaks and have their character portraits displayed during events.
- On the other end of the spectrum, Laudine, Yvain's pantheran companion, is constantly referred to as "her" by other characters in dialogue, even though the player can clearly see that "she" is a maned note lion from Yvain's portrait. The sequel even makes special mentions of this by revealing that Laundine is a lion king who has several wives of his own.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The people of Egypt -every single individual- declares war on Zipang in response to one of Tutankhamun's servants finding her passed out with Zipang's declaration in her hand. They put up a massive resistance when Zipang invades.
- Rocket-Tag Gameplay: The late game tends to turn into this as both sides up the ante with their attacks, resulting in characters getting downed by just a couple of hits.
- Scare Chord: One usually accompanies a character whenever she gets shocked.
- Schizo Tech: Various technology that shouldn't exist in a medieval era appears throughout the game. It was all done by design.
- Self-Censored Release: The PS3 and PSV ports removed all of the sex scenes from the original in order to be an all age game, however, the game is still rated M in the US.
- Shout-Out: Numerous references to Fate/stay night, which is not surprising since the gender-flipped historical/mythological figures featured in both games overlap quite a bit.
- For starters, the way Queen Arthur fights is more akin to the Caster class in Fate, but she wields what looks like a lightsabre that fires a Sword Beam. This move is named "Excalibur", much like the other Arthur's signature move.
- Joan, conversely, does not resemble her Fate counterpart much, instead looks suspiciously similar to Saber, down to her hairstyle and dress. Possibly a nod to the instance in Fate/Zero where Gilles de Rais mistakes the latter for Joan.
- On the other hand, Gilgamesh's character design is blatantly similar to the female Gilgamesh from Fate/stay night, albeit slightly more Stripperiffic.
- Enkidu fights with her Prehensile Hair, which are capable of transforming into various weapons, much like the Golden Darkness. Perhaps they are long-lost sisters...
- Sir Bedivere's Hero Skill involves firing her rocket glove over a long distance to punch the enemy. She even shouts out "ROKETTO PANCHI!" as it fires.
- Himiko's outfit is essentially Reimu Hakurei's miko robe with even more ridiculously oversized sleeves. The rest, including the gigantic hair ribbon, are basically identical.
- Billy's yellow catsuit is obviously styled after The Bride's iconic outfit. She's also got her name printed on one of the legs in a font similar to the film logo.
- Ashoka's character design is quite similar to the Dancer class in Ragnarok Online, just...more showy.
- The Protagonist himself looks distinctively like Rance. Given that AliceSoft helped Tenco with the game design during development, this was probably not a coincidence.
- Hercules is basically just a gender-swapped Berserker with her sanity intact. At least before she went Brainwashed and Crazy.
- Stripperiffic: Over half of the character outfits. Unsurprising since this was originally an eroge. Rule of Sexy runs abound as characters don armor pieces with low-cut fronts and missing lower parts.
- Supporting Harem: More or less how it ends up if you complete everyone's character quests. By the end of the game, Chihaya would have managed to win the hearts of more than half of the heroines, and developed firm friendships with the rest. But even then it's still Himiko who takes the role in the Official Couple.
- Take Over the World: A benevolent example as the purpose is to unite the nations rather than subjugate them.
- Take That!: Even as perhaps the biggest Extreme Omnivore on the planet, Sir Lancelot cannot stand Britannian food.
- Take Your Time: The game has a turn counter, but there's no limit to just using turns to build up resources and finances. However, any potential enemy will grow stronger between turns too and taking too many turns without acting will cause bandits to attack.
- The End... Or Is It?: The trophy that appears upon reaching the Normal Ending is worded this way.
- This Is Unforgivable!: One of Tutankhamun's servants declares this after finding Khamun passed out in her chambers after the declaration of war arrives from Zipang, believing their call to war made her faint.note
- Troll: The game itself. The final city to be captured on both ending routes is shown as providing 10,000 gold income per turn. When the city is captured, the game ends and the player will never see a single gold piece from it.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: It's possible to attempt to declare war on and conquer multiple regions at once. The reverse also holds true as multiple enemies could potentially attack per turn.
- We Have Reserves: Troops are replenished by 10% with each turn and can be fully replenished with money. A battle participant will gain a minimum of 10 troops added to their maximum total for each victory as well. This is important as a unit's attack power is proportional to the number of troops they have remaining.
- Averted for ancient heroes. They have to recover naturally between turns due to having actual health meters rather than troop counts. At the same time, their attack power is always the same regardless of how much health they have remaining.
- Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: The player can earn a hidden trophy by including Chihaya in a battle but having him do nothing but Wait while everyone else defeats the enemies.
- World of Technicolor Hair: While many characters have normal hair colors, like Himiko's black hair and Arthur's blonde, many others have quite the color palette, like Nobunaga's red hair, Kublai Khan's blue, Kamehameha's green, Alexander's magenta and blue, Copernicus' blue hair that turns purple and so on.
- Zipang Takes Over The World: The Game. The first arc involves the unification of Zipang and the world conquest escalates from there.
