Dynasty Tactics has a semi-linear campaign. You pick your faction in the beginning, Wei (Cao Cao), Wu (Sun Quan), or Shu (Liu Bei), and you have the strategic map of China with all the interconnecting provinces and bases. You can move your armies and envoys wherever you want, but you are given an overarching objective to be completed in so-and-so turns, in order to progress in the story and campaign.
For example, as Liu Bei, early in the campaign Lu Bu offers you an alliance so he can have help attacking/conquering Yuan Shu’s faction. The strategic map will tell you that you have a 5 turn limit for this objective - you either send an envoy to Lu Bu to accept this, or attack Lu Bu with your own army to reject it, within 5 turns. When you fulfill that, it will directly move the storyline along, depending on which path you chose. BUT, you have free reign to do whatever you want until you fulfill that objective. So, you can spend 3-4 turns attacking a neighboring faction, or scouting and recruiting other generals, or just doing nothing, before attacking or allying with Lu Bu.
Oh, and the tactical combat is very, very addictive. Terrain, unit type, and maneuver all have roles, but it will take some time to grasp the deeper mechanics of the “tactical actions” that the Generals can perform. Basically, every General can perform one or more special maneuvers in battle, and a key strategy is to know when and where to use these to maximize their effect. It’s made more complicated in that you can combo, and are greatly encouraged to combo, various special moves by Generals so that they form a continous chain of attacks, provided you time the attacks right with the shown movement order of your armies.
Hmm, that probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you’ve seen and played the game or the game’s tutorial. Let me just give an example of the Tactics combo system used. The key to the combos is that if a General uses a special move that moves an enemy unit into fulfilling the requirements of a fellow General’s special move, then that fellow General gets to immediately attack with his special attack.
For example: Liu Bei uses his Decoy ability to attack an enemy one square ahead - Liu Bei’s army does damage, then retreats back one square, drawing the enemy down one square to follow him. Guan Yu’s army was next to and facing Liu Bei’s original position from the east, so now he’s facing the flank of the decoyed enemy army. His “Charge” tactical special move was ready for use, so he immediately launches a Charge attack at the flank of the enemy army, driving it one square west as his own army moves one square west, doing massive damage to the enemy in the process. Now, Zhang Fei’s army was positioned south of the spot where the enemy was just driven. His “Pierce” special tactic was ready, and as the enemy army is now moved into his range, he immediately launches his Pierce special move, charging through the enemy, doing massive damage, and stopping his army two squares behind the enemy army. Damage caused by specials increases by how many combo moves are chained, so the enemy army is now destroyed. BUT, because this chain of events was caused by Liu Bei’s initial Decoy move, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are still allowed to move and perform their armies’ actions for this round of combat.
That probably still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the combat system seems pretty deep, and the game is addictive enough to keep me playing for 4 hours, till 4:30 AM, when I planned to try it out “for just a half an hour”. Of course, now I’m tired as hell writing this post and will probably be asleep at work later on.
