Destiny of an Emperor

Destiny of an Emperor is a strategic jrpg by Capcom for the nes that was released in 1989 in Japan, and 1990 in the U.S. Sadly it didn't get a European release which was commonly the case with jrpg of the time.

The size of the game is huge with over 20 cities, not to even mention fortresses.
The game contains 180 historical generals of which about 150 can become controllable by the player!
To compare it with Final Fantasy, another jrpg that was released in the U.S. the same year, you where only able to control 4 characters and there where about 10 cities.

Despite the intro of the game proclaiming:
   This is the true story
   of the wars fought by
   ambitious men over the
   vast Chinese Continent
   about 18 centuries ago.
It is in fact based on a Manga named 天地を喰らう Tenchi wo Kurau (lit. The Devouring of Heaven and Earth) by Hiroshi Motomiya, which is loosely based on the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, which in turn is loosely based on the historical events of the fall of the Han Dynasty (169-280 AD).
The original Japanese title of the game is also 天地を喰らう Tenchi wo Kurau.

Since there are so many unique characters, there are really only 4 types of generic enemies:
Bandit Force, Brigand Force, Rebel Force, and Pirate Force. These get gradually stronger as you progress through the game, although they look the same. In doing so Capcom manages to avoid the common jrpg trope that enemies that look the same, but with a new color palette becomes newer and stronger enemies.
Of course a lot of the named generals roam the over-world as well, and by fulfilling certain conditions and defeating they may give you the option to recruit them for your own army, often by bribing them with a steed or money.
In fact the steeds available at merchants are only used as bribes.
You can also sometimes find officers willing to join you in cities, or joining you as a part of the story.

You can have 7 officers in your traveling party, of which 5 participate in battles.
One of these officers can be assigned as Tactician, which allow the other officers to use tactics (special abilities) by spending Tactical Points (T.P.). Each officer also have a number of soldiers, when an officers soldiers reaches 0 he dies. It is possible to resurrect dead officers with an item aptly named Resurrect.
As you can see soldiers work much like "Health Points", and Tactics like "Magic" in other jrpg.
By sleeping at an inn the officers T.P. and soldiers replenish.
Tactics are named in Chinese, so you really need the manual to understand what they do.

Although you can only have 7 officers in your party, you can have a total of 70 officers in your reserves at your headquarters, where you can exchange your party members. Since more than 100 officers are recruitable, you also have the option to fire officers from your army, to make room for new recruits. Doing so makes the fired officer again a random encounter on the over-world.

You must also keep enough provisions (also called Food) to keep your soldiers fed. When traveling the over-world Food is automatically depleted. When you run out of Food soldiers die for each step you take on the over-world.

During battles, other than the usual options of attack, defend, retreat, tactics and item, you also have the option of an All-Out battle which means the battle will be fought automatically, only using the attack option and distributing attacks rather evenly over the enemy. This of course makes the battles a lot faster and is a great way to get through grinding generic enemies.

The story begins with Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei becoming sworn brothers and setting out to conquer all of China to restore peace to the land.
After the first scenario Liu Bei becomes king and is no longer available as a playable character, instead being replaced by his son Liu Feng. From this moment on you can ask the local historian in any city with a castle to send for him, making it the new capital of your forces. The historian is also the place to save your game.

Being the story of how Liu Bei conquer China events is of course ordered in his favour, despite the fact that, historically, neither Liu Bei or Liu Feng was able to conquer the land.

I feel it is a true shame that this amazing and for the time, Huge game, has been so overlooked, and I can really not understand why.

The game cost about €30-60 for a used copy. If you want a sealed unused copy you are looking more in the vicinity of €650