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| Total War: Shogun 2; The reign of the old Shogunate is over! | |
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| Topic Started: Apr 8 2011, 03:28 PM (266 Views) | |
| Joshytclegg | Apr 8 2011, 03:28 PM Post #1 |
The grail...shall be ours...
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Game Title: Total War: Shogun 2 Number of Players: 1 Online Multiplayer 2+ Price: £25-£35 (not including Collectors edition) Release: Out Now Console: PC What I run it on: I run it on my Acer Aspire 7520G (4GB RAM, 2.1 GHz AMD Turion Dual Core processor, ATI Radeon HD 3650 Graphics card 512 MB) it works very nicely at Medium graphics and lower resolution, not compromising the quality at any huge level at all. The year is 1545, era of the Sengoku Jidai, the country at war. Japan has been divided, the factions that have arisen are vying for the seat of Shogunate were as some fight to preserve the old ways. The great clans have risen up and are now trying to claim their honourable place as Shogun. The Chosokabe, Shimazu, Hojo, Takeda, Tokugawa, Mori, Oda, Date, Uesegi and Hattori clans all possess unique traits which will help give them battlefield supremacy. In history it was the Tokugawa clan who seized the title of Shogun in 1603. This time it is up to you who will become Shogun. The game is intense right from the off when you start your first campaign. All the clans have different circumstances to begin with and they have a range of difficulties, from the easiest, Chosokabe, to the hardest Uesegi and Tokugawa. On my campaign playthrough I chose the Shimazu and the easy difficulty setting, however do not be fooled by this! I chose easy because I was severely out of practice with total war games and felt it would give me room to rebuild my skill. I was wrong, straight from the off it retained a high level of difficulty, requiring a lot of micro-management and coming up with new battle tactics. Right from your first battle it is made difficult, there are NO Ashigaru (Peasant) Katana troops, meaning ther versatility of your initial troops and those of your enemies is usually limited to Yari Ashigaru (Spearmen) and Bow Ashigaru. This allows very little room for clever attack strategies as these are both rather defensive units when combined. Including some light cavalry can help to overcome this problem but overall this lack of versatility is a real let down to start off, especially since the game contains a Katana Ashigaru unit that is strangely not utilised in Single player but is utilised in multiplayer. There is a mod which re-adds these units as well as other units that the developers left out eg. Ronin and Wako pirate mercenary units. However if you persevere you will find that with the addition of more versatile and interesting units the battles become a lot more fun. Expect to have Matchlock (Gun) units in the later game if you don't put a serious goal towards getting the required tech to train your own or build a Nanban port and wait the require 4 turns for an imported unit. People really seeking powder weapons might well consider converting to Christianity, a true game changer, especially in terms of the units available after the switch. Sea battles are a new inclusion for this Shogun game, being left out of the first game entirely. The battles can be slow paced sometimes, mainly due to the speed at which vessels approach each other, however when the battle truly starts the use of true strategy is phenominal. The choice of ships adds a nice variety to the battles such as ships specialised in boarding or ships more specialised in simply sinking the others, sea battles are always fun but may lack some of the intensity and speed of a Land or Siege battle. This can however become really fun when you encounter the Black Ship event in the campaign. This event brings in a European Galleon that circles Japan and something all clans will be dying to get their hands on with it's crew capacity of 330 boarding troops and 24 cannons, it is a beast to behold and has the large upkeep cost to prove it, it provides the biggest capture challenge of the entire game, a hint I can give on this is to never let the Mori get their hands on it, the sea will be theirs then. Siege battles provide a nice setting for the very strategically minded and the larger the castle and the defending force, the more you will need to think about it. Now I will start by saying any Siege battle can be difficult but the ones in smaller castles just aren't as interesting or difficult, they get truly interesting with later game castles and citadels and you are likely to find your first challenging citadel attack to be Kyoto. Using a good mix of units can really add to the fun and the different weather conditions can really effect how you play. Rain, No fire arrows, no thank you! Land battles are as you expect and require just as much strategy as the other two types. Using the right unit types can be the key to winning a lot of the time, don't expect over-whelming numbers to be a game winner, the computer may work out a way to beat you with a good defence. However all three of these battle types possess a similar problem that can effect how you play. Upon slection of a group of units and a command of where to move to they often break formation and just for a line, meaning if you want to keep the formation of the units you need to drag the mouse when indicating where to move to, to specify the formation your units need to stay in. In large intense battles this can be a bit of a pain and almost makes the battle pause function a godsend for when you are issuing orders. A small snag but it is still worth a deduction of 0.2 from the overall score. The multiplayer is strange to play at times but getting to customise your own general is a bonus. When you move to a province on the multiplayer campaign map, you must choose to fight an online battle. However here is where it gets interesting, even if the area you are capturing is on land, it doesn't have to be a land battle, it can be a siege or sea battle if you so please and even if you are to lose this online battle, you still gain the province. Although there is a problem with this, you gain new units by capturing new provinces but the online battle selection often puts you up against more experienced players with better unit varieties, not good if you are just getting back into the swing of things like me. This slightly annoying function is also worth a 0.2 deduction of the overall score. Despite these minor problems, this is a fantastic game with hundreds of hours of playability and replayability. You can always challenge yourself to do better and it even has some achievements for your steam account thrown into the bargain. A truly magnificent title to add to the amazing total war franchise and a game I'd recommend to any strategy lover or even newcomer, though it may be a bit intimidating at first. Score: 9.6/10 Additional comments: Get the AUM 1.7 mod off of the Total war wiki for this game. It adds in the units the creators left out and makes the game a lot more tactical and clever seeing as you aren't stuck with a very limited set of units after the upgrade and it adds units that they left out by accident or idiocy. Also I would recommend buying the Limited edition version (not Collectors) as this is the only way to gain access to the Hattori clan. One word summary: Mind-numbing. Worth buying: 100% Yes. |
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