Shachibato! President, It’s Time for Battle! Maju Wars Preview – All My Favorite Genres

I feel like I’m always the last to know about interesting games because when Shachibato! President, It’s Time for Battle! Maju Wars was announced for the west; everyone seemed to know what it was except for me. So, I decided to change that and play the recent demo on Steam, if only to hold onto my niche nerd card for just a little longer. Here’s an interesting game from developer Preapp Partners that blends turn-based tactical gameplay with dungeon crawling and party management systems. The more surprising part about it is how fast gameplay is, even with this combination of genres.

Shachibato! President, It’s Time for Battle! Maju Wars is not meant to be a series adventure, but there are a few high stakes on the line. Players assume the role of a guild leader, whose numbers have just been reduced after an earthquake superated the members. The cause of the earthquake is a secret dungeon that mysteriously appeared, but legend says that its doors will open every ten days, revealing a powerful boss.

So, every ten days, you’ll need to plan out a strategy to enter the dungeon and defeat the boss the resides in it. To train for this, you can accept additional quests and level up your party members. However, everything you do takes time, and with only ten days, you’ll need to plan out how you’re going to handle everything. Adventuring takes three days, so my strategy was to do that three times and then spend a day strengthening my party.

Dungeon crawling is actually really fun here as the game is set up in the form of a typical dungeon-crawler. However, the mechanics utilize turn-based systems where characters will take turns moving around the battlefield and taking out enemies. There are also items to collect in dungeons and minerals to mine, which turn into coins. These coins are needed to pay for the members of your guild and also purchase training for them.

I hope in the full game there are other meaningful ways to spend your days. I only say this because I would like to feel pressured about whether I should adventure or do something else that may or may not help my party in the boss fight. Also, I would like more visibility on the growth of my party. I noticed that new members appeared, but I don’t exactly know where they came from.

The visuals during story sections are pretty impressive from an animation standpoint. The characters don’t move too much, but their mouths are expressive even without audio dialogue. The in-game designs are adorable chibi versions of the characters, and each unit in my party had a unique design to them, which allowed them to stand out when building up my party.

Shachibato! President, It’s Time for Battle! Maju Wars offers a lot to be excited about for dungeon-crawling RPG fans. It has multiple layers to it as you organize and train a worthy party to take on challenging dungeons. The pay off is beating the boss at the end, but even if you lose, giving up just isn’t an option for a determined adventurer. I’m excited to see how the time mechanics play into late game systems and where the comedic narrative takes me.

Shachibato! President, It’s Time for Battle! Maju Wars is coming to PC-via Steam in 2021.