Total War: Shogun 2 Review

[roostuf]

got the game already, and its epic.

the graphics are ok on my 4 year old computer, and ive been a total war fan since the time i bought the original shogun.

dawn side, it glitches out like fuck all the time if i dont put the disc in.

thanks steam....

 

[cardinalwiggles]

I love this game because of it's complexity. There is nothing like seeing a plan coming together. Most times I find myself skipping the battles just so I can go ahead and move my pieces accordingly.

I gotta go.. I have 3 armies pressing around Kyoto while also have a fourth army in the west keeping the pressure on the heathen enemies. Not to mention keeping my main sea routes clear..

i completely do this.
i make all silly little stories up in my head about what im doing. it usually comes together like a plan.
napoleon as russia i had the nothern armies(3) and southern armies (2) with a fleet army(1) the fleet army racing around the globe taking down rouge island nations that are easily defencible
nothern armies taking on prussia and southern armies taking out istanbul.

OT: i imagine this game is alot like that in regards of taking stories for generals.
i really want this game. played the game since rome and loved everyone since. MICROMANAGEMENT FTW.

 

[Kragg]

Also, the character talent trees are boring. Every one of my generals basically end up the same, and the same goes for the rest of the characters. In the previous games the characters would develop in fairly random ways that made them feel like they had personalities. When a new son comes of age and he starts with the genius trait I knew I had to make that guy my future warlord, not to mention the sheer hilarity of seeing the ruler of the most powerful empire in the world possess a trait like
"Lacks Manhood: So short on self respect is this man that those who bed his wife laugh about it to his face... Just before passing water on his shoes. -4 Authority."
And the guy would have 10/10 authority in spite of it due to having cut a bloody path of genocide through the entire middle east. Now THAT is amusing, THAT makes me care about my characters. That they'd age and die rather swifthly also played a big role.

In shogun 2 I haven't had a general die to anything other than in battle. Even the clan leader would be alive and happy when 1600 rolls around, not that it'd matter anyway. They guy had 5 stars and maxed loyalty... but so does the heir... and the next 3 replacements in line. In rome/medieval I caerd about my faction leaders because it was bloody difficult to nuture a powerful leader. In shogun 2 all I need to do is throw some random dude into a half a dozen battles and he's already a legend. In medieval or Rome, a powerful general dying in battle, or even to old age, was a tradgedy, because it was fairly hard to get them to that level of expertise. In Shogun I don't really care when a general dies. Takes barely a handful of battles to get anyone to the same level as the guy who just died. Whatever.

Not that I have any choice in the matter. Apparently generals get better at managing TAXES by leading battles, for reasons beyond me.

i agree completely, biggest annoyances for me personnally are the small rosters, which yes, are accurate i guess. But people see this as a plus to the game while to me this is a huge minus, re-playability on medieval 2 was amazing, not to mention with a mod like stainless steel on it, you could play for months and months.

same stuff that annoyed me in empire and napoleon remains, the clunky way units pathfind or how horsecharges are terribly to do and so much easier to control in medieval 2. any charges really, if 1 guy gets caught behind an enemy the entire line falls apart and a charge loses all momentum. from a 120 man line of men, none of them can get a proper charge of cause the last guy on the flank accidentally engaged in melee. same for getting bowmen behind a line or manoeuvring troops from a flank, to behind your already engaged enemy to charge them in the back

i played some multiplay matches, avatar conquest mode, all of them were "general - 2 archer - 2 sword - 2 spear - 1 cav" or small variations on them and it was just a race for who could outmanoever the other faster and kill the general, all matches over in 5 mins max. like a starcraft match where all you could do is rush

 

[MrGalactus]

This game better have gotten 5 stars.
It was hyped to hell, even on here.

Which is precisely my problem with this review. I can't trust it after all the advertisement it's had on the Escapist.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

how horsecharges are terribly to do and so much easier to control in medieval 2.

Yeah but it took, what? 3 patches before mounted charges actually worked in Medieval 2. Control didn't mean anything when your mounted troops stayed in 'run' mode instead of going into 'charge' mode (and giving all that useful charge bonus)

 

[BreakdownBoy]

Take it from me. The review is spot on. Even the problems are correctly described. But still the game is awsome, I actually want to try out all the factions where as in Empire I usually only wanted to play either Britain, France, Spain or India.

The game rocks, your generals' abilities grow with you being allowed to choose the direction. Also the AI is crazy aggressive, well at least on the campaign map. So their is much more epic battles.

I bought this game on Friday and basicly did not leave my PC till Monday morning!

 

[UtopiaV1]

Great review, thankyou for giving an objective summarization of the game, but of course (as you said) if you're a fan of the Total War series, then nothing is going to sway you for getting this game.

I own every TW game thusfar, and even though my favourite is Medieval 2, I still have a problem with sequels, especially with TW games! There are so many other theatres of conflict in different time periods, we don't need to re-tread old ground. What about one of the hundreds of civil wars China had? Or conquest/colonisation of South America and Africa by European powers? Or even the very earliest wars in the world, like the Babylonian empire and the forging of the Arab empire in the middle-east, north Africa and Spain?

This is only a little grip, but it does irk me that this latest TW is an update of the first game. Still, this new game engine that CA are using has still yet to reach its potential, so I'm still ordering the game. Just wish the settings could be more diverse.

 

[Steve Butts]

I own every TW game thusfar, and even though my favourite is Medieval 2, I still have a problem with sequels, especially with TW games! There are so many other theatres of conflict in different time periods, we don't need to re-tread old ground. What about one of the hundreds of civil wars China had? Or conquest/colonisation of South America and Africa by European powers? Or even the very earliest wars in the world, like the Babylonian empire and the forging of the Arab empire in the middle-east, north Africa and Spain?

The two I have lobbied most for are Battles of the Bible and the American Civil War. Creative likes both ideas but remains unconvinced of their marketability. I get that with biblical period, but I just can't see why Sega doesn't think a Total War set during the American Civil War would actually sell.

According to Creative, there are three main criteria a Total War setting must meet. First, it has to involve conflict between numerous combatants who are all fairly evenly matched. Second, it must include some significant technological advances that change how the war is fought. Finally, the content has to be cool.

The American Civil War obviously doesn't meet the first requirement, and the biblical wars probably don't meet the third, although that's largely a matter of interpretation. Personally I think Hittites and Canaanites and Assyrians are cool.

 

[Emergent System]

It would be interesting to see games dealing with conflicts I don't know anything about (I know pretty much nothing about the military conflicts of mainland asia, for example), but how are you gonna sell a game with the title 'Total War: Conflcits Almost Nobody (in the west) Have Ever Heard Of'?

Rome, the middle ages, even the shogun games, they all have a nice huge reservoir of pop culture to draw people's interest from. Everyone learned about european history in school, and the presence of eastern culture is inescapable even in the west. Anyone who is even remotely in the target audience for a game like this knows what a ninja and a samurai is, and ancient japanese culture is very well stereotyped in most people's minds, through TV and movies.

What other historically volatile periods do people know enough about to care? Honestly, it would be pretty hard to get me to care about civil wars in ancient china, or fights between unknown tribes and kingdoms in the deserts of the middle east. The mongols seem pretty cool, but as far as I know they sorta just steamrolled every semblance of opposition they encountered.

 

[UtopiaV1]

The two I have lobbied most for are Battles of the Bible and the American Civil War. Creative likes both ideas but remains unconvinced of their marketability. I get that with biblical period, but I just can't see why Sega doesn't think a Total War set during the American Civil War would actually sell.

According to Creative, there are three main criteria a Total War setting must meet. First, it has to involve conflict between numerous combatants who are all fairly evenly matched. Second, it must include some significant technological advances that change how the war is fought. Finally, the content has to be cool.

The American Civil War obviously doesn't meet the first requirement, and the biblical wars probably don't meet the third, although that's largely a matter of interpretation. Personally I think Hittites and Canaanites and Assyrians are cool.

Awesome ideas, although there is already a couple of American Civil War mods for Empire, so that seems to have been done (I really love the modding communities surrounding TW games, they make such great content!). As for the biblical battles, sound pretty cool! Religious rhetoric always has such a punch when combined with military might

You're in contact with CA? Awesome, I hear they have the lowest turnover of staff in the biz. Like, only 70 guys in their Sussex branch, probably the same 70 who made the original Shogun! During my Games Programming course at uni, I always wanted to work for them afterwards. Shame I turned out to be a rubbish programmer, but I still love history.

It would be interesting to see games dealing with conflicts I don't know anything about (I know pretty much nothing about the military conflicts of mainland asia, for example), but how are you gonna sell a game with the title 'Total War: Conflcits Almost Nobody (in the west) Have Ever Heard Of'?

Rome, the middle ages, even the shogun games, they all have a nice huge reservoir of pop culture to draw people's interest from. Everyone learned about european history in school, and the presence of eastern culture is inescapable even in the west. Anyone who is even remotely in the target audience for a game like this knows what a ninja and a samurai is, and ancient japanese culture is very well stereotyped in most people's minds, through TV and movies.

What other historically volatile periods do people know enough about to care? Honestly, it would be pretty hard to get me to care about civil wars in ancient china, or fights between unknown tribes and kingdoms in the deserts of the middle east. The mongols seem pretty cool, but as far as I know they sorta just steamrolled every semblance of opposition they encountered.

They did a Mongol expansion for the original Shogun, but it didn't encompass all their many many many campaigns, just the failed invasions of Japan in the 11th century. Which is what you'd expect for a Shogun expansion, but still...

I tend to think that most TW players are real history buffs, so CA's core audience would know a fair bit about other conflicts. People not knowing about a war shouldn't stop them playing a game about it! Besides, I though CA prided themselves on the amount of history knowledge they put in their games. I've learnt so much from those pop-ups when building units and buildings on the campaign maps in their games

I wish people wouldn't hide behind the shield of "Don't know, don't want to know" about other theatres of war. Sure, it'll be difficult to market, but this industry used to push boundaries dammit! Oh well, there's nothing one man can do about it. That's what TW games taught me, a group of people working together with a single purpose is more terrifying than a nuclear bomb!

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The two I have lobbied most for are Battles of the Bible and the American Civil War. Creative likes both ideas but remains unconvinced of their marketability. I get that with biblical period, but I just can't see why Sega doesn't think a Total War set during the American Civil War would actually sell.

If I was the Creative Assembly I wouldn't touch the American Civil War, either. They'd have a choice between pandering to the popular mythos surrounding why the war was fought, laying the historical smackdown, or some half-hearted compromise that'd piss everyone off. That's a no win situation in the US market.

It's also questionable how much interest such a game would garner outside the US market. Call me Nelly Negative but I get the feeling that an American Civil War game for the Total War franchise would sell mostly on the franchise name rather than the subject matter outside of the US, at least as a full game.

As an expansion pack such as M2:TW - Kingdoms and the like and what Napoleon should have been for E:TW, it would probably work much better... it would have worked best as an expansion for either Empire or Napoleon, IMO.

 

[KuwaSanjuro]

Hope Yahtzee does a review of it, seeing he is a big PC fan don't know whether he'll like it or not but it'll be funny as always.

 

[Velimirius]

Got the game,its fantastic

 

[Bruce Edwards]

The two I have lobbied most for are Battles of the Bible and the American Civil War. Creative likes both ideas but remains unconvinced of their marketability. I get that with biblical period, but I just can't see why Sega doesn't think a Total War set during the American Civil War would actually sell.

According to Creative, there are three main criteria a Total War setting must meet. First, it has to involve conflict between numerous combatants who are all fairly evenly matched. Second, it must include some significant technological advances that change how the war is fought. Finally, the content has to be cool.

The American Civil War obviously doesn't meet the first requirement, and the biblical wars probably don't meet the third, although that's largely a matter of interpretation. Personally I think Hittites and Canaanites and Assyrians are cool.

Awesome ideas, although there is already a couple of American Civil War mods for Empire, so that seems to have been done (I really love the modding communities surrounding TW games, they make such great content!). As for the biblical battles, sound pretty cool! Religious rhetoric always has such a punch when combined with military might

You're in contact with CA? Awesome, I hear they have the lowest turnover of staff in the biz. Like, only 70 guys in their Sussex branch, probably the same 70 who made the original Shogun! During my Games Programming course at uni, I always wanted to work for them afterwards. Shame I turned out to be a rubbish programmer, but I still love history.

It would be interesting to see games dealing with conflicts I don't know anything about (I know pretty much nothing about the military conflicts of mainland asia, for example), but how are you gonna sell a game with the title 'Total War: Conflcits Almost Nobody (in the west) Have Ever Heard Of'?

Rome, the middle ages, even the shogun games, they all have a nice huge reservoir of pop culture to draw people's interest from. Everyone learned about european history in school, and the presence of eastern culture is inescapable even in the west. Anyone who is even remotely in the target audience for a game like this knows what a ninja and a samurai is, and ancient japanese culture is very well stereotyped in most people's minds, through TV and movies.

What other historically volatile periods do people know enough about to care? Honestly, it would be pretty hard to get me to care about civil wars in ancient china, or fights between unknown tribes and kingdoms in the deserts of the middle east. The mongols seem pretty cool, but as far as I know they sorta just steamrolled every semblance of opposition they encountered.

They did a Mongol expansion for the original Shogun, but it didn't encompass all their many many many campaigns, just the failed invasions of Japan in the 11th century. Which is what you'd expect for a Shogun expansion, but still...

I tend to think that most TW players are real history buffs, so CA's core audience would know a fair bit about other conflicts. People not knowing about a war shouldn't stop them playing a game about it! Besides, I though CA prided themselves on the amount of history knowledge they put in their games. I've learnt so much from those pop-ups when building units and buildings on the campaign maps in their games

I wish people wouldn't hide behind the shield of "Don't know, don't want to know" about other theatres of war. Sure, it'll be difficult to market, but this industry used to push boundaries dammit! Oh well, there's nothing one man can do about it. That's what TW games taught me, a group of people working together with a single purpose is more terrifying than a nuclear bomb!

Thinking through the CA requirements, the only periods that spring to my mind (and haven't been done yet) are either more modern (The Great War, and WWII) or more ancient (the wars between Greek city states).

The Greek wars could be represented with the existing engine - even the Athenian navy - however it could quickly become regarded as 'Rome Lite' and may not feature enough game-changing technological innovation.

The Great War features game-changing technological advances throughout, numerous combatants of roughly equal power. However some form of battlefield deformation may be required - something the current engine would probably struggle with - and the 'cool' factor may not be there.

 

[Undeadpool]

Uh oh! Sounds like some things got streamlined...which means the fanboys get to pull out their favorite buzzphrase: "Dumbed down."

 

[GothmogII]

Uh oh! Sounds like some things got streamlined...which means the fanboys get to pull out their favorite buzzphrase: "Dumbed down."

Dumbed down? Hah, hardly. The AI is still quite difficult even on normal, and while there's less units overall each of the clans feels distinct from one another. Not to mention, that the additions to the levelling systems for generals and specialist units means the the game offers an even wider variety of choices on the main map. Do you want your ninja to specialise in assassinations or sabotage or scouting? Prefer your monks up front and helping out the army or have them travel around the provinces sowing discord?

Not to mention, that once you've taken about 20 or so provinces in a long game you risk a realm divide, this basically means almost -every- single faction on the map (including the Shogunate if you haven't already taken them out) will rise up against you, making the game un-winnable unless you've built up the right combination of forces and infrastructure. This is a game where pure force does not work, as in order to win a campaign you need not only to capture a certain number of provinces + Kyoto and a selection of specific provinces depending on your clan but you must hold those too, and this can be difficult what with rebels if you don't appease the serfs and all the other clans knocking on your doorstep.

 

[Undeadpool]

Uh oh! Sounds like some things got streamlined...which means the fanboys get to pull out their favorite buzzphrase: "Dumbed down."

Dumbed down? Hah, hardly. The AI is still quite difficult even on normal, and while there's less units overall each of the clans feels distinct from one another. Not to mention, that the additions to the levelling systems for generals and specialist units means the the game offers an even wider variety of choices on the main map. Do you want your ninja to specialise in assassinations or sabotage or scouting? Prefer your monks up front and helping out the army or have them travel around the provinces sowing discord?

Not to mention, that once you've taken about 20 or so provinces in a long game you risk a realm divide, this basically means almost -every- single faction on the map (including the Shogunate if you haven't already taken them out) will rise up against you, making the game un-winnable unless you've built up the right combination of forces and infrastructure. This is a game where pure force does not work, as in order to win a campaign you need not only to capture a certain number of provinces + Kyoto and a selection of specific provinces depending on your clan but you must hold those too, and this can be difficult what with rebels if you don't appease the serfs and all the other clans knocking on your doorstep.

Yyyyyyyyeah, I wasn't personally saying it was dumbed down, I'm saying that lately every time something gets streamlined, the majority hold up their hands triumphantly and say "THANK YOU!" while a small, pissed off group wring theirs and screech about how they're "only trying to appeal to the mainstream by dumbing everything down!"
What they, of course, fail to realize is that the main reason the games they reference (on older systems) were so difficult wasn't the result of devs having more "respect" for our ability to play games, but rather only having space to make a game that's about two hours long from start to stop. To alleviate this, they made them RIDICULOUSLY hard.

 

[Icenflame]

Looking forward to getting this Title through Steam on pay-day. I've enjoyed the Total War series immensely and I'll take it buggy or not!

 

[fgdfgdgd]

I'd just like to point out one little thing in the video, it may be the graphics card or another issue, but WHY IS THE HORSE BLUE AT 0:25?