RadioSEGA Review: Total War: Shogun 2 (PC)

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Titans Creed
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RadioSEGA Review: Total War: Shogun 2 (PC)

Post by Titans Creed »

The Total War series began back in the year of 2000 with Shogun: Total War, and now 11 years later, after many different time era releases, Creative Assembly have returned to produce Total War: Shogun 2.

For those unfamiliar to the Total War series, it comprises of a mixture of both Real-Time strategy and Turn-Based strategy gameplay.

Boasting a new battle engine to support upto 56 THOUSAND troops in a single battle, which is by far and away a vast improvement on the last instalment in the TW series. Shogun 2, also departs itself from it's European bound counterparts and places itself firmly into 16th Century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War.

Also, distancing itself from the previous games, has allowed the developers to make significant changes in the core gameplay mechanics. An example of this, would show that the AI is designed on the principles of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Also, instead of Empire: Total War, which allowed you to span almost the entire globe, Shogun 2 focuses on the islands of Japan and on a reduced number of unit types.

From the minute of finishing downloading and installing the game, I jumped straight in, and was promptly greeted by a very gorgeous main menu screen. After scanning my options, and making sure I was playing at optimum settings for playing (which was set to Ultra ^_^ ), I had a look at what the menu screen had to offer, and the main options given to you are Single Player and Multiplayer. By hovering over these, you find much more diverse choices. I went into the Single Player options and found the tutorial choice, to realign myself with the user interface and combat types.

From here, you can can play a choice of 6 tutorials. Which range from Beginner, Intermediate and Advance Combat tutorials, a Campaign tutorial and Beginner and Intermediate Sea Combat tutorials.

A word to the wise here, if you want to play a Single Player or Co-Op campaign, you can skip the actual combat, and allow the AI to determine the winner, which more often then not is decided by army combinations, strengths and general bonuses. But, it does allow new players to skip the Real-Time combat and focus on the Turn-Based mechanics of the main campaign. Although, if you want to attempt the Avatar Campaign, then knowing the combat system and unit's is required as you will need to know how to control your units and play the game, and as this is a player-vs-player format, it is definitely for the more advanced player.

The tutorials are briefed over as you play them, and good instruction is given as to how to control your units, which to a new player, I thought was very helpful and clear. You are also given a transcribed portion on the screen so you can read and skip, for you players who like to fast-forward through these things.

My only issue I had throughout the entire tutorials, was on the Advanced Combat tutorial. This tutorial contains instructions toward content based toward the more player-vs-player content, which is also new to the Total War series, of attacking the encased citadels of players in their towns. Now to do this, you need your non-cavalry units to scale their walls and open the gates to allow your other units in. Now the tutorial informs you to use your ninjas here to scale their wall, but to your dismay they have Archers positioned around the entire wall. So I decided to use an ability the ninjas had called “stealth”, which you would of thought would be self explanatory, but unfortunately, my ninjas were shot to pieces by the defending archers, thinking I maybe missed a tutorial on how to use this specific ability, I replayed the tutorial to discover that there is indeed no explanation on the specific ability. So, I plowed ahead and sent the rest of the army forward to scale the opposing wall, and with minor success as after I opened the first gate, the remaining of my troops were steamrolled by the defending army.

Anyway, with my first defeat to the tutorial in hand, I was joined by a friend and we took a look at the Co-Operative Campaign. I had heard by a few people that some of the game connection issues were about, making finding playing games a tad hard. I found none of this and was able to sit and play a game for a good 2 hours, getting a good glimpse at the campaign and missions. You both get a choice for which faction you would like to play as, all have starting territories darted around the great continent and all have specific bonuses towards certain units. For a bit of difficulty sake we chose to play at different ends of the continent, so that we couldn't just ally together and steamroll anything next to us. We each found certain tricks that we found suited out playstyle best, I enjoyed boosting my general sub abilities with archery based bonuses, and I really enjoyed having an army of archers, can give a suitable army advantage early game I found, but when you come close to mid-game to late-game, where the Ai's have been turtled up and building tech and army strength, you will have a loss to cavalry units. So mixing unit composition down the line and not using one unit type is an option to go, plus you will find if you take a more handheld approach with the real-time combat option, that mixed unit composition really gives an advantage on the battlefield.

Swiftly moving on to the more story-based Single Player, after my friend and I parted ways, you are gifted with the choice of multiple campaign arcs. Each from the perspective view of a different clan. Each with their own unit bonuses, but you have a more strict campaign objective. The main goal however, is to take the seat of the shogunate, which is Kyoto, as well as hold so many other regions in Japan. The main difference is that you have a strict year date. So you will only be able to do so much before having to push really aggressively to win your campaign. Now I thought I had a concrete plan in place, and had a good ten game years to move and take the last 3 regions + Kyoto. Except when I took a set number of regions, the Shogunate decided to do a smear campaign type effect and every other faction decided to ally together and paste my face. Not good. So, decided to end the campaign there, and will replay it, with better tactics in mind.

I unfortunately did not get a chance to take a look at the Avatar Campaign at time of writing, as it is very heavily team based, and will require a lot of fore-thought and teamwork to do properly, as well as knowing unit abilities and army strengths as you will need to do the Real-Time combat which you can skip in single-player and co-op campaigns.

To end with, there are a lot of good things to be had in this game. There is a wealth of information to be had in this game as well. For example, it has an inbuilt database on practically every created unit and building in game, as well as videos for when you create a different unit for the first time in your cities. There are also videos for mini-events and campaign events, which really add to your immersion feel. But in reverse, I feel there are a few things that can be improved upon, being some specific abilities, maybe a bigger introduction to the database on units, as well as how their abilities can and do work on the real-time combat side.

Pros:
Easy to pick up and understand for newer players to the franchise.
Amazing graphics and music.
Impressive AI capabilities.
Vast database at the fingertips of the player.

Cons:
Not enough cover over specific abilities of some units.
Not enough detail on how to access the unit database.

Overall, the campaign and multiple other game modes have gripped me, and I will continue to play over the coming days and weeks, and if anyone else decides to pick up the game down the line, I will gladly play a Co-Op campaign with you.

Review score: 4/5
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Post by Gavvie »

I got an email from Craig Laycock, community manager for Total War over at The Creative Assembly. He said this:

"[T]hat was a good read - glad you enjoyed it!"

So there you go :) It is a very detailed review as well, I liked it a lot.
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Post by richarddavies »

Nice! Was a good and detailed read there Mr Phoenix. This does look really good but i've only got a pretty old laptop at the mo and it can just about manage Portal at about 15 frames a second. Im worried it would explode playing this.
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Post by dab_dob »

Thanks for this
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