Total War: Shogun 2

A difficult, but very rewarding strategy game and my current favorite in the series!In order to become Shogun, you'll need to master all of the different facets of ruling. If you are weak in any one of these, completing a campaign will be very difficult. Shogun 2 features Diplomacy, in forming alliances with other Provinces. Managing your Economy. Getting the most out of your Armies on the battlefield. Controlling the seas and trade routes with your Navy. Using special Agents to stealthily tip the scales in your favor. You'll have to do all of these things well in order to win.DiplomacyDiplomacy is controlled through a simple interface. Click on the clan you wish to negotiate with, and a list of options appears. At the top of the screen, it shows if the other clan seems agreeable with your proposal. Even if they reject, you can try to renegotiate on the same turn. You'll be able to set up trade routes to help each other's economies, offer a military alliance, give royal hostages as insurance, marry into clans, and bribe. Some clans are trustworthy and will honor agreements, while others will take your bribe and stab you in the back. Choose your alliances carefully. You don't want to give an opposing Daimyo a bunch of money and military access to your lands, and then get assassinated by a ninja!EconomyYour armies and navy require constant upkeep every season. Your primary source of income is through taxation of the provinces that you control. You can raise or lower the tax level and if a province is extremely unhappy, you can exempt them from paying until you get them under control. Provinces will accept tax increases if you have armies stationed there to repress them, a Metsuke to manage them, or if they are prosperous and happy. If provinces become unhappy if they are sabotaged by enemy agents, lack food, pay too much in taxes, or are exposed to too many different religions. If you can't control a province, they will rebel against you. A rebel army will appear, attack your soldiers, and even take over your provinces. So, it's best to keep the people happy!BattlefieldsThe battlefields are composed of different terrain and weather conditions. When a battle begins, you can see the terrain and randomly generated weather. If you don't like the weather, you can postpone the battle 2 times to try and get weather that is more agreeable. Obviously, if you rely on flaming arrows, you don't want to fight in the rain. The terrain features bottlenecks like bridges and river fords, forests that can hide units as cover, and hills that give you an advantage if you have the high ground. Hide archers and cavalry in the trees to ambush enemy troops. Take the high ground and charge down on enemies. Lure the enemy towards the river, and blow them up with firebomb troops and archers as they try and cross. Using the terrain to your advantage will definitely give you the upper hand!CombatDifferent units have a distinct advantage over enemies and it's pretty obvious who beats who.Archers will wipe out enemy units at a distance, but are weak at close range.Spearmen can set up defensive formations against charging cavalry. Running horses at full speed into a wall of spears is really bad for the horses... and the riders.Samurai are the best at close range.Cavalry is great at flanking enemies, plowing into hapless archers, or running down routing enemies fleeing from the battlefield.The AI has improved in the Total War series, and the enemy armies try to defend their flanks and attack yours.Battle and MoraleThis isn't a Warcraft / StarCraft type of game where you need to kill everyone. You just need to get enemy units (150 spearmen, 90 samurai, 45 cavalry, etc.) to run from the battlefield. Each unit understands its condition and is sensitive to what is happening on the battlefield. There are factors that boost their morale and factors that lower their morale. If the unit is winning, is fighting alongside tougher units, their side is winning the battle, or there is a general nearby, your units will keep fighting. If your unit is under arrow fire, lost many of their men, their flanks are exposed, there is no general nearby, is getting attacked from the back or sides, or nearby units are running for their lives, this hurts morale. So, timing is everything. Total War isn't about total annihilation, it's about destroying your enemy's morale. When you kill or break the enemy units, you win the battle!SiegesCastle Sieges are different than the Medieval Games in the series. You don't need catapults to break down walls or siege engines to ram doors. In Shogun 2, all infantry can climb the castle walls. Even your cavalry can dismount, and climb the walls. So, success depends on attacking the castles from multiple angles, and forcing the enemy troops to split up and try to defend the castle from all sides. Coordinated attacks will divide the enemy troops and give you a better chance to win!NavyNew to the series are Naval Units. You recruit ships to fight for you and each one has archers and infantry on them. Some also have different speeds and hull strength (Hit Points). On the campaign map, you can move your ships around the seas, but they must stay relatively close to the land masses. Your navy is used to sink other ships, guard and invade trade routes, or prevent enemy armies from beach invasions. When two Clans trade, a dotted line appears on seas. A friendly trade route is gold, while an enemy's is red. If you park a ship, and right click on a route, you take a portion of the goods being traded on that route. Enemies can do this to you as well, so you must drive them off to protect your trade routes. Ships can also blockade a port, which shuts down the trade completely. If an enemy ship has an army aboard it, you can click on it and see how powerful it is. If you can sink the ships holding an invading army, the army is lost at sea. Sinking an enemy fleet with 1700 soldiers on board is incredibly satisfying! On the flip side, having an enemy ship sneak past your guard and invade your province with 2000 men can ruin your plans for world domination!Naval BattlesThe ships steer somewhat realistically (bad for a game) and it takes some getting used to. Basically, when two opposing ships are near each other, they fire arrows back and forth. So small fast ships can whittle away at the larger ones. The larger ships can throw grappling hooks at the smaller ones and board them with swordsmen, slaying everyone on board. Some advanced ships have cannons which have a longer range and more powerful than the archers. At the end of the battle, you can even capture enemy ships, fix them up and use them as your own!AgentsShogun 2 features Monks, which can baffle enemy agents with their wisdom and convert their religions. Metsuke's which are great at running towns and arresting enemy agents. And Ninja are great at spying, sabotaging enemy armies (So 120 spearmen becomes 110) or assassinating other generals and agents. If you see an enemy army approaching with 3 Generals, your ninja can take them out before they even get to you.Level UpAll Agents and Generals have a Skill Tree. Performing key actions increases their XP. When they gain enough, they level up. Gaining a level allows you to place points on a skill tree to improve the character. You will unlock new attacks, new combat formations, new skills, or increase chance of a mission success or reducing the chance of that character getting assassinated or killed. This allows you to specialize their abilities. You many want a ninja who excels at sabotaging buildings. You may want a ninja who specializes in assassinations. You many want a ninja who can move fast and cover a large area on the map. Or you may want a ninja with balanced abilities, but is adept at escaping capture. How you upgrade your characters is completely up to you.Realm DivideWhen you get too powerful, you become a threat to the current Shogun and he will order ALL of Japan to attack you. On your first try in the campaign, you will probably give up when this happens. Even your most trusted allies will turn on you and stab you in the back. It's frustrating and many people have complained... or modded it out. Once you understand the tactics of the game, you can appreciate it. Before you trigger the Realm Divide, you're going to want to station your armies at choke points on the map, and use your navy to block invasions by sea. If another clan has been your ally from the beginning, they may still be willing to take bribes to join your cause for a short time. So, the Realm Divide really forces you to use everything you've learned in the game... kind of like a Final Exam. If you can complete the Campaign and survive the Realm Divide, Japan truly has a Shogun worthy of ruling!AtmosphereThe graphics are great, the music is exciting and thematic, and the game is structured so you really care about your soldiers, generals, towns, and agents. It's easy to get sucked into this game and play it for 4-6 hours without realizing it.Value: Great!There are three campaigns, a short, long, and domination campaign where you rule every province on the world map. There are classic battles and a multiplayer mode. There's 50-500 hours of fun here.Maturity: TeenThere isn't any sex, swearing, or graphic violence. There are some large scale sword, arrow, and spear battles that you watch from afar. That's about it.SteamWarning! Even though this game comes on 2 DVD's, it still requires an extensive Steam download that can take up to 3 days! I was pretty upset about this, but once I started playing, I forgave SEGA.OverallThis is a great game for all fans of Strategy. Remember, this isn't Risk or StarCraft. The point is not to create a massive army and rampage through the map. The point is to rule as Shogun. Form alliances, grow your economy, remain honorable, and fight only when you must! The tactics, AI, atmosphere, all come together to create a memorable experience. If you've read Sun Tzu's The Art of War, the tactics actually apply to this game.My best memory: I was defending my castle against an army twice my size. On the west side of my castle, I hid 2 units of heavy cavalry in a nearby forest. I had archers defending the walls, reinforced by samurai. The enemy attack was fierce and sudden. There were 500 enemy archers raining arrows on my men, and they were guarded by spearmen, who would have easily slain my cavalry if I charged. Before I sprung my ambush, I had to wait for the spearmen to expose the flanks of the archers. Waiting was excruciating because my samurai were under a constant rain of arrows. The enemy spearman charged the wall and began climbing. One third of the enemy spearmen had been killed by my archers as they climbed the walls. Just when they were about to reach the top, my cavalry charged from the trees and trampled the enemy archers. Within minutes, all 500 archers were either dead or running for their lives. The spearmen climbed down from my castle wall to try and defend the archers, under a hailstorm of my arrows and they lost another third of their men. My cavalry escaped to safety. With the enemy archers dead, most of the spearmen dead and at the bottom of the castle wall again, they had no choice but to run for their lives. In this game, tactics, formations, and timing all come into play!

First, a brief overview of the game: it takes place (obviously) in Feudal Japan. You take the helm as Daimyo as one of the great clans, with the goal of ultimately becoming Shougn of all Japan. Turn length is a hybrid between classic (Rome, Medieval 2, Empire) total war titles and that of Napoleon: turns are shorter than a half year but longer than 2 weeks -- they are exactly one season long.As a personal fan of total war games, having played and enjoyed Rome, Medieval 2, Empire, and Napoleon, I of course enjoyed this release as well. First, I was excited about a game that had melee-heavy combat of Rome and Medieval 2 with the superior graphics of Empire and Napoleon. In this regard, Shogun 2 did not disappoint. The graphics are slightly improved over Empire/Napoleon - the biggest difference (with the exception of the campaign map, as discussed later on) as far as I can tell is tessellation and other Direct X11 features, which do make a small difference, but not a huge difference, in my book - and the combat is, indeed, melee-focused. It also continued the realism feature from Empire and Napoleon of having de-centralized provinces (one "village" will be a smith, another a "stoneworker," and the "capital" a castle town) and not requiring diplomats to be recruited and sent to initiate diplomatic relations. It also continued the automatic troop replenishment and accompanying attrition features from Napoleon, both of which I very much appreciate.On the other hand, there are some obvious drawbacks to this game, though I have to say I was expecting them before I bought it. First, obviously, there is very little variety. This seems to be a continuation of what I consider to be a slightly unsettling trend in the Total War series: Rome had almost too much unit variety, Medieval 2 just about the right amount (though some kingdoms had too few), and Empire/Napoleon had few differences, mostly just different names and different skins. In Shogun 2, the various "Great Clans" you can play in the grand campaign do have unique features. For example, the Takeda clan excel at cavalry (as the French were *alleged* to have done in Medieval 2), and certainly the cavalry they can recruit have higher stats; similarly the Shimazu clan has slightly better heavy (katana) infantry when compared with the other clans. But these differences - and in a sense here, the lack of variety of units in this game is an inverted mirror image of the similar lack in Empire/Napoleon - amount to merely unit stat differences: the skins are virtually unaltered. In Medieval 2, by contrast, you could be pretty sure who you were fighting just from the look of the enemy units on the battlefield; even more so with Rome. In Shogun 2, however, there is almost no way to tell, other than the color of the flags held by soldiers. Of course, this effect is amplified due to the narrow-focus of the game (those who found Empire to be too broad will find Shogun 2 extremely refreshing) - after all, it only deals with feudal Japan, and this is what I expected in the first place. In the same vein, the map is rather small. Whereas Rome and Medieval 2 almost felt like a mini-RPG the first time through the campaign, with new lands and civilizations to discover, and Empire with its gigantic, nearly unruly map, Shogun 2 almost feels claustrophic. Again, what one should expect.The campaign map, however, makes up for this by having vastly superior graphics vs. even Napoleon and Empire. Although the graphics on the battle map are barely improved over Napoleon and Empire, the campaign map is truly 3D, and Spring Time in particular is absolutely stunning. The mountains really jump out of the screen at you, birds fly right in front of your eyes, and towns (finally) look "realistic" on the campaign map (versus, eg, the jumbled colorful boxes of Empire). The battle map, on the other hand, is not too much a departure from Empire and Napoleon, even if you run the game in DX11. Sea battles are back, and unlike in Empire and Napoleon, they involve more of a "melee" aspect -- no more cannons absolutely smashing the hull of a smaller ship. In Empire, one could take a second rate and just leave it on autofire against a couple fifth rates and, if you left the room and came back, you would have a chance of winning. Not the case in these sea battles. Some ships are bigger and better than others, but there are no true "monsters."An improvement upon older TW titles is the leveling of agents, generals, and other characters. For instance, I found it rather annoying in Medieval 2 that if my assassin missed his target but survived, he might LOSE some of his ability to carry out assassinations. In Shogun 2, as long as he isn't killed, your ninja will still gain some positive experience, albeit less than for a successful assassination/sabotage/etc. Once enough experience is gained, you have a bunch of traits to pick from, almost as though he were a character in an RPG game. The same goes for generals, geishas, monks, metsuke... even your Daimyo! Additionally, within family management, you can *finally* decide who will be your Daimyo's heir, who will get which "commission" (similar to ministers, except instead of random "candidates" of Empire and Napoleon, you have your generals and family members to select from).One thing that is worth mentioning, however, is that Shogun 2 appears to have issues with Nvidia SLI technology (I have two GTX 580s in SLI). There are some minor but annoying glitches that occur when SLI is enabled. No big deal, just disable SLI, but its a pity that SLI can't be used to pump even more graphical horsepower into the game. From what I've read in forums (though I don't have ATI cards), Shogun 2 works fine with Crossfire.All in all, a good, though in a certain sense a rather limited, game. If you are a fan of total war, and don't care about cultural differences/unit appearance differences between different groups, or a small map, then you will love this game; even if you do, in my opinion, this is still a good game worth playing.

My son who hated strategy games now loves playing them because of this series of games through the ages got a surprise when he got Dad to play head to head figured he had the advantage because dad had not played this series before and he had his butt kicked because he under estimated Dad

Great graphics, AI is more alive than any other Total War series game.On the down side allies are still pretty useless, very little or no interference in a common conflict.Great game as most Total War series games!

This game is the best in the series by far. Though it is consistent in delivering everything you expect from the Total War series and more, it is a difficult game to pick up and play. The graphics, sounds and artwork are absolutely stunning. Having said that, you will need a powerful computer to be able to run it at its max graphical settings. Overall this game exceeded my expectations and is a must own for all RTS fans.

boring. limited options see you hitting turn over an awful lot just to push ahead a build queue. plus there is a steam 12 gb directx download even if you install from disk which was a pain.

A well priced item that my son truly enjoys. If there are no complaints from your child, then it must be good. We got exactly what was ordered and he has enjoyed previous versions of total war.