Is there a significant difference between the Dragon and Serpent campaigns ie will I miss much if I only play one or the other? I'm about to beat the Dragon playthrough but the game feels like a long war of attrition and I'm not sure I want to do it again.

They are not that different to be honest, and rather feels like the same thing with replaced elements. There are some different cutscenes and so on, like the Dragon encounter or its Serpent analogue- Necromancer. While in the Dragon journey you side with Otomo, and then Kazan, the Serpent Journey offers Shinja till the end, and then Necromancer and their interesting (iirc) dialogues because Shinja denies all magic but has to deal with probably the most vivid example of a magical creature. I liked those two, but heavily disliked Evil Kenji because he's unnecessary evil in my opinion. I mean Shinja's evil too, but he's more tactical about it, while with Kenji it's like he always tries to prove he's now evil, which makes him some sort of tryhard if you catch my drift.

Put it this way:

Different clans (both you and your enemy)- different playstyles.

Different Kenji: Good kenji - Evil Kenji (due to that, different dialogues, different enemy clans). Good Kenji believes and becomes the Dragon, reviving the old forgotten clan with it. Evil Kenji does everything on his own (he doesn't care much about the Necromancer either), giving a second life to the Serpent clan.

Different ZenMasters: and the Serpent has supposedly more heroes to obtain.

I played both but don't remember everything. The Serpent Journey was a pain because during Otomo's betrayal mission I would constantly get Dragon Fire on my army, maybe 30 times during the mission (yes I took it slowly and it was 2011, if not 2010), it made me quit the game a couple of times and it seems to be a rare thing overall.

Dragon's journey is supposedly canon so you did the right choice.

Thanks for the info. I'll probably pass on the 2nd playthrough then.

Welcome. If you don't mind, what in particular makes this a long/slow playthrough for you? Perhaps I could change your view on a couple of things in the game? It's not as dull as it seems if you know a couple of things.

For example, I mean things like units' damage type and armor (cutting,blunt,piercing,explosive,magical,fire), units' innate abilities (blade acolyte will deal double damage on his two next attacks after being idle for a while, this is called 'sharpening', just an example. there are many more), the importance of higher ground (like horses, towers, any terrain hills etc. 25% bonus to armor and damage).

The game really shines in online battles, I remember thinking the Journeys were rather boring (I liked the Grayback's though it has its issues), but I liked the gameplay, how the units were made, the overall design and combat. This made me try to play online back in 2010 and theeen I got hooked to the game forever.

I am admittedly not great at RTS games. I find the strategy for this one to be quickly build up a defense as fast as possible to stop the initial attacks, build up a good sized army and slowly try to find the enemy base, retreat several times to defend your base, find the enemy base and realize you need a bigger army, get a bigger army and destroy the base, find and destroy the 1-2 other enemy bases on the map, repeat for next level. At a high level this could probably be applied to a lot of games but this one just seems more stubborn. I especially don't like how your troops will spread out as much as possible despite me trying to keep them grouped. And the geishas only healing up to a certain level without micromanagement is annoying.

I guess most people indeed play the campaign that way because the game makes them to. I agree it's not a very good aspect of that game.

I've never been good at RTS as well since I never liked them, but BR captivated me with its design. It's different from any other RTS in my opinion, more of a local action RTS.

Knowing damage types and weaknesses/resistances of units would greatly aid you in making counters. There are also siege units that are great vs buildings.

With Dragon in particular you can scout the map with Archer's 'Zen Arrow' Battle Gear given in Shrine (Later on). You can also do that with peasants, or fast units like Samurai. With Serpent it's Raiders, Crosbbowmen (with phosphorous bolts) or Vetkin. Bandit with invisibility is not reliable due to the fast stamina reduction.

Generally you don't have to retreat to your base, before going away you can fortify it with watchtowers, building peasant huts around and bind peasants to a key so they defend the village and extinguish buildings if anything. If the enemy forces are always big in numbers you can basically just split your army like 'one for defending and another one for moving forward'.

Yeah, there are no formations and, in my opinion, it's another unique feature of the game. It's heavy on manual micromanagement, which is great, gives it that action feeling. You can keep your troops somewhat grouped by holding 'shift' and moving them. It usually works when there are no threats around. 'Ctrl' key is for force-moving, to ignore any threats around, so your troops don't get distracted/engage in combat unless directly attacked in melee. Also the 'N' hotkey for ranged units (stay ground but shoot if the range allows) and the 'O' for melee ones (passiveness, stay ground and do nothing).

Some helpful info:

1. A very old (2009-ish) chart with damage types, weaknesses and resistances, it's mostly correct as far as I remember. I've got the updated planned (new, 100% correct charts) but can never get around to make it happen, only finished Dragon units and ZM as of now.

2. Siege Units. Not finished/polished, but gives more than enough info.

3. My YT channel that would show you a different side of the game.

That's in case you're interested of course, I'm not gonna debate about that. We all have our tastes and opinions, I can only respect that. :)

i actually loved the campaign/journey :o a very fun adventure imo, i definitely didn't think of it as boring