Faren Touga is a map-based strategy/simulation game with TRPG combat for each node. This game is genuinely amazing, its janky mechanics, menuing, art, music, and all. You play from one of multiple scenarios, and within each scenario the faction you choose changes where on the map you start, what characters and generic units you have access to, and what story events you can trigger. All of this results in a relative difficulty for the scenario that the game marks for you with a star rating out of 5, with 5 being hardest.
Ok but what's the actual gameplay?
Each node on the world map has a unique tile-based TRPG map, and each map provides some kind of unique layout or challenge. Maybe it's an open field with trees on each side providing cover for attackers, or maybe it's a desert with a slice of a snowy field in a corner. The game is actually mostly built for you to try to use autobattle as much as possible, as they're combat is generally guaranteed from the outset if your units are stronger and not as a strict disadvantage, though manual control allows you to perform more in-depth tactics like spreading your units to avoid aoe magic and protect your backline, or using a high move high attack unit to assassinate the enemy leader. Utilizing the terrain and your units strengths to your own advantage is crucial in your pursuit of world domination. But it's not nearly as important as fostering your economical growth.
Each node/"area" is a city under your rule. You station your troops there and they can do one a few actions, or do nothing and passively contribute to the city's stated development goal. Those goals being developing the city (i.e. building houses), repairing the walls, building roads, training, or searching for allies. Developing the city increases the amount of money (aka "ley") that city provides each turn, training gives all stationed units a bit of exp, and searching for allies has a chance to let you hire a new named character for a certain price + upkeep cost, though they can refuse to serve. I skipped the walls and roads though right? So those actually directly affect the TRPG map the node represents. Each point of wall strength corresponds to 1 wall tile on the map, with those wall tiles stopping enemy units from crossing while providing your units with a ton of avoid for standing on them. The roads work the same way, but standing on road tiles lowers your avoid. Having all the roads built also doubles the income you receive from that city, which is a nice bonus if you don't have anything else to do in that city. Also of note is that developing the city adds house tiles to the map, which sometimes give avoid bonuses as well.
Those active actions your troops have are to hire new troops or monsters, move to another area, or attack a neighboring area. Each city can house 20 units and you can only move one unit one node at a time, which can be a little annoying toward the end where you need to fight along multiple fronts.
The gameplay loop is addicting. Like most strategy games of its kind, you need to stay on your toes and predict enemy movements and guess where and when they will strike, having your own forces nearby and ready to prevent their attack. And because of how city development works, you also have "armies" of weak units that you mainly use to bolster your economy as fast as possible. Having two aspects of strategy you're focusing on at once with both of them using the same clunky menuing and garrisons is surprisingly fun, especially when you find nodes that let you hire particularly strong monsters like dragons and have to ferry all of them through your empire over to the battlefield.
For its time this game is incredibly innovative. More than that though, it has this unmistakable charm like nothing else. It came at the wrong time to really make a splash, but it's still inspired multiple fan versions of it, Varen Touga the most notable. Its spiritual successor Lost Technology is also on Steam in English for $5 if you'd prefer a much more modernized version that doesn't have the territory development focus.
I wrote this review as a half-guide to how the game works because there are no resources for this game in English and I genuinely loved playing this game. It's an incredibly soulful and charming experience that I wish more people knew about. Oh, and did I mention it runs perfectly on Windows 10 and 11?

Check out this dragon deathball I used to kill the lizardmen faction leader this one time: https://i.imgur.com/uN0z19z.png