Wow, it's almost as if the game being made by Americans accidentally highlighted the imperialist and oppressive elements of samurai culture without a complete lack of criticism towards it. Even Kurosawa would be disappointed (typically featured the peasants and poor samurai as the primary heroes/survivors in his jidaigeki), Kobayashi is just laughing from the grave)
Really though, I guess we haven't learned from Spec Ops: The Line
Really fantastic article. The point about the Mongols being only Mongols in the game is especially well put. Live under Mongol rule was, as a general rule, better than life before it—they opened up massive trading routes and cross-cultural mixing that was unheard of at the time, and let locals live peacefully so long as they a) did not initially resist and b) occasionally provided corvée labour/paid their taxes. The biggest historical inaccuracy for me—aside from the lie of Bushido, of course—is that most peasants would care that their rulers were Japanese or Mongol or whoever. The average farmer on Tsushima probably gave a rat's ass about who their daimyo was. Taxes would be the same, oppressive rule would be the same, etc etc. That so many peasants in the game were clinging to an anachronistic Japanese nationalism was confusing, as nationalist fervour was definitely a much later creation.
This exactly what the game seems to fail to recognize, oppression is the same to them (a basic notion even highlighted in Seven Samurai)