Cheap Total War: Shogun 2

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Shogun 2 is my favorite in the series, along with Rome. I skipped Empire, really didn't hear much good about it, but have played all the others.

A bit about myself so that you can see where I am coming from. Have been playing RPGs and wargames for 25+ years. Loved the early Civ games, not so much the later ones. Big multiplayer Quake and Doom fan, but dislike any type of real-time wargame that involves simultaneous combat & resource gathering (Rise of Nations, StarCraft...). Mostly looking for solo replay value, but will try online gaming. Read several history books about Japan as well as some James Clavell. Big into military history. Computer: 2011 MacBookPro under bootcamp Win7, 4 GB, mostly run at 1920x1200.

So what is there to like, after 3 tries, last one successful, and 77 hours of normal-level play?

Tactically: Gorgeous graphical update to the Total War series that keeps the same tried game mechanics and control. Reasonable AI that can quickly overwhelm you with aggressive infantry troops if you let it. It's pretty clever about archers now, protecting its own, attacking yours.

As usual, it's rock/paper/scissors, i.e. infantry/archers/horse. The AI is just better at it than before, so flanking is more difficult to carry off.

One annoyance is that you often have to babysit your units to keep them from engaging in melee: skirmishing archers do not always retreat, horsemen turn around and attack spearmen. That's probably fairly realistic for medieval/ancient battlefields though.

The generals have better-defined abilities, such as their command radius and the option to temporarily inspire/boost one given unit. My failure is using them too much as shock cavalry, especially before you get reasonable cavalry units => high mortality rate, historical accuracy.

Naval Combat !!! :-) Can be frustrating and not that well done, but a welcome addition nevertheless.

Auto-resolve is also much more reasonable than before. The AI fights relatively well on your behalf, so you can skip trivial battles.

Strategic: Early on, the AI definitely keeps you on your toes, a bit like Rome, but unlike Medieval II where it was much too passive. Later on, it seems like it gets a little less competitive as you get a better economic base and as your troops gain experience. In the endgame, I had to defeat a number of big armies, but none were very much of a challenge by that time and I had the initiative. This is not unlike Rome. That may not be a bad thing, the system doesn't "cheat" by levying opposing huge veteran armies from nowhere and they avoided gratuitous revolts like in Medieval I. So it doesn't stretch out the end game needlessly once you are dominant (a major reason why I disliked Civ after a while).

I love that strategic play is turn-based. Leaves you all the time to figure out how to tweak your economy and cities and you will need that planning.

Trade, diplomacy and special characters. I am still not too sure how diplomacy works, nobody seemed to like me after I gained a few provinces. Maybe, and that brings me to my next point, I used too many ninjas to be honorable? Ninjas are great fun if sufficiently experienced, they can easily kill enemy generals at no great cost or risk and taking out their 30 horse bodyguards is always a good way to shift the odds before joining a battle. They did become too easy to use after a while, the AI is not aggressive enough in going after your ninjas with its own ninjas or metsukes.

Power ups for named units like generals, monks and ninjas are great. You have all sorts of options to choose from, ranging from speeding up strategic movement to making units tougher in melee for a general. You could make a ninja into an escape artist or improve his assassination rank. So you can really customize your characters.

Trade is very very important, but tough to get right. Your allies may eventually come to dislike you as you gain power and cut off trade. Trade with remote powers (Ceylon, China, Korea, etc...) doesn't require diplomacy and is very lucrative, but it does require control of the trade points and the AI is pretty aggressive about that. I guess that if you levy large enough navies, including numerous trade ships (you can park up to 10 trade ships per trade point & you get $ for each one), you can fight off those attacks, but I don't know if that is an historically accurate approach for Japan.

Technology tree. You can aim for weapons techs or artistic/economic tech, with a wide variety of effects. So, for example, you could opt to boost your archers, boost your ninjas or collect more revenue with the same level of taxes. Again, lots of re-playability and exploration is possible because you'd struggle to get all techs in one game so you have to pick your emphasis.

All in all, I really recommend this game, 4.5/5. My main complaints, besides lack of sleep, are:

Steam. I don't like it. It doesn't bring me anything that I am aware of in solo-mode (patches are easy enough to download by web). If it cuts down on piracy, fine, but why isn't the game cheaper then? What if I wanted to gift the game to someone, but that person doesn't get into Shogun. I could take a CD back and pass it on to someone else, but I can't do that with Steam, can I? No, my complaints are not original.

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Nov 2011 update: Steam now refuses to load the game, apparently because it can't connect to its servers. Their site's "helpful" instructions has some gobblygook about DirectX, DLLs & other arcana that would be total crypto to a casual gamer or non-techy. It is unacceptable to see Steam troubleshooting instructions, which are core to customers getting the value out of their purchases, posted in such a casual, blog-like and unstructured fashion. You'd think it was for a freeware product with no revenue.

Sure, I could reconfigure the install, but I needed the sleep so let it go.

Shame on you, Steam.

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Load times are really, really, slow. That's both for the initial startup as well as for the setup before each battle.

Can't switch to other programs. Come on guys, I want to check my email. If I am on the turn-based strategic map, why stop me? This is so 1990-DOS. Plus, I would have liked the option to listen to NIN or Modest Mouse rather than Japanese chamber music!

I had a few recurring freezes on the same naval battle. Never got that to work, had to skip that battle. Mostly stable otherwise.

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About a decade ago Shogun: Total War was the masterpiece that launched one of the best Strategy simulation franchises in gaming history. It was a perfectly balanced game that combined turn-based strategic decisions with real time battles in a beautiful interface made in the style of medieval Japanese artworks.

The game was based on the teachings of Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategist, who believed in the indirect approach: search for comparative advantages, use your forces with economy, surprise and deceive, and only fight limited wars. The medieval Japanese setting (relatively small armies made up from a limited number of distinct units fighting on different terrains), served as the perfect substrate to implement these strategies.

I have played every single Total War game since and they were all a joy to experience yet nothing surpassed to the first Shogun. Until now.

KNOW THY SELF, KNOW THY ENEMY. A THOUSAND BATTLES, A THOUSAND VICTORIES (Sun Tzu)

The gameplay has matured, deepened and acquired a number of new features, including some RPG additions. We now have Mastery of Arts, a tech tree branching into Bushido (warfare) and Chi (governance & finances). There are now hero units, inspiring the troops, going after the enemy general or turning the battle at that crucial point.

Generals are upgradable and modifiable, increasing their effectiveness and making them indispensable. The honorable death of a seasoned general will affect many aspects of your overall strategy and may prove the decisive point of the entire campaign. Which is why subterfuge is so important.

There may be no honor in using Ninjas but now they can assassinate the enemy general or soften up the enemy defenses by sabotaging their production or the integrity of their defensive structures. And because the Ninja knife cuts both ways, make sure to have enough Metsuke units to sniff out the ninjas send by the enemy.

Children serve as hostages to ensure cooperation whereas marriages are arranged to strengthen alliances. And since no army fights on an empty belly, one should make sure to set up complex trade agreements. Ones that will hold through the treacheries of war. Because sooner than later, your task will graduate from impossible to you-gotta-be-kidding-me.

INVINCIBILITY LIES IN THE DEFENSE; THE POSSIBILITY OF VICTORY IN THE ATTACK (Sun Tzu)

The AI will make your life miserable. Enemy units will try to flank you from every possible direction and they will try to make use of your troops movement in order to achieve this. And then, just when you think you are winning, every single clan and province turns against you...

It is possible to let the AI auto-resolve all battles and play the game as a highly sophisticated turn-based Civilization game but why miss all the fun?

Unlike the first game, SHOGUN 2 also has sea vessels and battles. While in a sea battle, you either board and take over or burn the enemy vessels. However, the real strategic consideration is this: when attacking a neighboring province, did you leave adequate defenses to prevent, say, the sacking of your own castle? Because the AI does not forgive such oversights.

OPPORTUNITIES MULTIPLY AS THEY ARE SEIZED (Sun Tzu)

The graphics and sounds of Shogun 2 are something one has to experience to believe. Even on DirectX 9 (WinXP which is the OS I am experiencing this on), the strategic map feels like flying over the real Sengoku period Japan whereas the game design goes into unbelievable details. Every ribbon on a set of armor, every blade of grass, every ray of light reflected on raised katanas or refracted through the clouds are just gorgeous.

The game absorbs you into its world and never let's go. In one word: Kan-Zen (Perfection).

HE WHO KNOWS WHEN HE CAN FIGHT AND WHEN HE CANNOT, WILL BE VICTORIOUS (Sun Tzu)

I usually deduct a full star from the final rating of any game that comes with any form of DRM that requires online activation or ties your game with digital shackles. Because even the retail version of SHOGUN 2 comes with mandatory STEAM, I did exactly that. However, because I rated the game well...above 5-stars, this could not become apparent and the game still rates a perfect score.

Yes, STEAM is the pheasant festering on the porch someone has to do something about. However, SHOGUN 2 is one of those extremely rare games that are worth their DRM hassle. If STEAM is still a deal-breaker for you, well, now you can make an informed decision either way.

SHOGUN 2 truly embodies The Art of War and it will stay with you for a very long time.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

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Kokoro yori okuyami moushiagemasu.

On a more sober note, I want to send my deepest sympathies to anyone in Japan hit by the latest earthquake and ensuing tsunami. Courage and endurance have always been characteristics of the Japanese psyche.

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My low rating is based entirely on steam and the update/patches -I don't know how the game plays, since I have not played it yet. I bought the limited Edition and opened my package and installed the two DVDs.

The game requires Steam registration, no problem. Then it installed = after installing around 14 Gig worth of data, it started to download the required updates. Normally this is a good thing. It is not a good thing when the size of the update is an additional 7 Gig.

I let the game update overnight, in the morning it was still updating, and finally it finished. Good news, now I could see a great game in action!! The game would not start. I left it alone initializing or doing whatever mystery process it was up to for a couple of hours. Then I stopped the process with it's cancel button and stopped steam. Started Steam up again and Lo and Behold, it started downloading a second update that is sized at 3.5 Gig. I got to about 1 and 1/2 Gib downloaded when I got the expected email from my service provided that I had exceeded my Fair Access Policy and that I needed to stop downloading data. (I'm not lucky enough for proper DSL or other typical broadband and must use Satellite (too bad for me).

Anyway, I put the download on pause and will continue it in another month or so. My negative review hopefully will keep some other poor fellow from making the same mistake that I did. WARNING, just because you can install from disk DOES NOT mean that the patches are of a reasonable size. Be warned, even if you have DSL or such, the update process will take hours. And if you are like me, the entire exercise will not be one that you seek to repeat!!!

Honest reviews on Total War: Shogun 2

Having just completed a weekend of marathon shogun Total War II playing, I have to say that it does not improve much on the original game. Sure the graphics are much better, but its been how many years, and how many Total War Releases since Shogun I came out?

The campaign game mechanics are basically the same as Empire and Napoleon Total war and are a great improvement over the original.

The new version employs the economic and technical development ladders we have come to know and love from Empires and Napoleon. The maps are superb. Where it falls flat is on the battlefield.

I find the new battles about as engaging as the original, and find myself stuck in the Gods eye view since the battles are so frenetic and fast paced, you can barely stay on top of the action, and a moments lapse will find you with units routing and a would be victory statched into the jaws of defeat. The tactical battlefield engine as it stands now is much better for the slugfests of 17 and 1800's when lines would stand and slug it out for a while before anything tactical decisive occurs.

Not so with Shogun II. With showers of arrows that come in torrents the likes of which Noah never witnessed an erstwhile steadfast and dependable unit can melt away in an instant and do its best impression of an Iraqi army unit leaving Kuwait...

Oh, yeah, the Japanese troops in Shogun II must all be marathon runners, as they can cover miles and miles at a run without having to so much as pause for a breather...

The graphic sprites are cool, but Like I said, you have very little chance to zoom in and enjoy them, if you do, you risk losing the battle pretty quickly.

Fortress seiges are pretty lame, as defensive units standing under roofed ramparts still get pin cushiond pretty quickly. I think for this, the game developers took too much inspiration from Kurizawa's cinemagrapic masterpiece RAN, . Even the music sounds lifted from the soundtrack.

Don't get me wrong, if this 55 year old wargamer/software professional can sit for 12 hours at a stretch playing the game and not even get up to eat, the game is engaging. I was just expecting something new.

Its just Empires and Napoleon speaking Japanese and wearing pretty armor. It does offer nice new naval battles that the original didn't. The AI is better tuned and isn't so much a Risk game type experience as the first was. Tactically, I didn't find it that much improved.

After a touch and go first 10 turns or so, I had Kyushu to myself and now am one of the Big Kids on the block. I have all the trade routes under my control and am well buffered by smaller provinces between me and the other big Daimyos, allowing me to build up for Armagedon.

I won't say the AI on tactical cheats, but the effectiveness of some arms seem out of sync with reality, but we can leave the Modders to fix that.

I think they should have taken the Engine into the American Civil War, but that probably does not sell as well in Europe as it does here in the US.

All in all, its fun, but don't look for much in the way of "NEW" stuff, just the same in a different costume.

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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.