Goddamn this game. This was the 2nd RPG I ever played on the NES after the original Dragon Warrior(but before Final Fantasy). THIS GAME WAS SO GODDAMNED HARD. The whole basis of the combat system is that your characters didn't really have "hit points" they had "soldiers" so that stat bar that looks like 1000 health is actually 1000 soldiers in that generals army. You lose them all, character dies. Seems simple enough, sounds like it works just like HP. NOPE. The less soldiers you have, the less damage you do when you attack. So basically, if you get attacked and lose soldiers(HP) not only are you closer to death, but you're double-fucked and you do less offensive damage now on your combat turn. That game was just ALL about initiative and who lucked into going first in a battle.
And not only that, but you have to constantly buy food for your "soldiers" that quickly depletes for every step that you take on the map(marching soldiers need to eat)...so somewhere near the end of the game I got stuck, and just had to wander the map over and over and over trying to figure out where to go, but my army was SO big that the random encounters I was triggering was not earning me enough money to cover the food I was expending by moving, and I eventally completely ran out of money, food, all my soldiers died, and the game became stuck/unplayable. PRobably a good 30-40 hours into the game, and that was it. I just couldn't play it anymore.
loved that game but it was so goddamned frustrating as a 12 year old, trying to figure it out. It wasn't an overly popular game, so there were no hintbooks, no strategy guides, Nintendo power never did a big article on it, nothing.
(For those of you wondering, it's the same background/setting as all of the awesome KOEI Romance of the 3 Kingdom games)