I'm in the midst of a an All Day Demo Download of DA 2 so I likely won't get to this for a while, but a demo has been released on steam.  Anyone take it out for a spin yet?

Can download every thing

Downloading now, thanks for the heads up. Let's see if the AI can move around walls now. 

Not yet for similar reasons, plus the Shogun demo is 6gb.  It also doesn't contain any unscripted (ie. campaign) battles apparently, which seems a little convenient given the Battle AI is usually the thing that kinda sucks.

I buy every Total-War game, because I'm a god-damned TW fanboy, so I don't even feel the need to download the demo. I know I'll buy it and love it in spite of its myriad flaws. 
 
With that said: to anyone who's played it...how is it?

It's pretty damn cool, if you play through the tutorial there's a good chunk of stuff to do - it's really kicking my computers ass though :S  

EDIT: to be a little more descriptive, you get to fight a couple of land battles and a siege battle in the campaign tutorial (the naval battle is autoresolve only though) you get to see a good variety of units including some of the more exciting new ones like the battlefield ninjas, hero/ic units etc. as well as classics like no daichi and warrior monks (who now get guns :|)

Just so everyone knows... the demo is 6 gigs.. 6!! Gigabytes!! FOR A FUCK'N DEMO!! 
 
*thinks back about the times when it was normal when a demo was about 200mb (and frankly it isn't even that long ago)*

" I buy every Total-War game, because I'm a god-damned TW fanboy, so I don't even feel the need to download the demo. I know I'll buy it and love it in spite of its myriad flaws.  With that said: to anyone who's played it...how is it? "

I'm downloading it now. I was also downloading it about 6 hours ago as well I think. Sigh..to internet being crappy.

Still downloading it. Shogun II and Dragon Age II are going to make March a great month for games.

I informed my husband as soon as I saw the title to this thread a couple hours ago.  He immediately swore up a storm because he's stuck at work till later tonight.  Guess he'll have to download this overnight and hopefully play tomorrow.

Ugh... that 3DS is looking less and less appetizing compared to a new videocard.

 I played it.
It plays like... total war.
This isn't a surprise at all. The only question is if it plays as good as Rome did. So far it seems pretty fun, although the uniqueness of unites is something I can see being a problem. The "specialist" units and heros... could be cool. I enjoyed using them when I was playing.
Looks great.

ive been trying to have RTS games grow on me but its been hard, and Shogun 2 looks complex as fuck... 
 
so i'll pass :(

Enjoyed the demo a lot and surprised it can run on my shitbox of a computer. 
I'll wait a week until after the game proper comes out before I buy it in case it suffers from Empire like unplayability and terrible AI. 
Still though, looks promising...

I played through the campaign tutorial. Have not touched the one historical battle the demo came with. I like the art style a lot, and it looks like another Total War game. Nothing too ground breaking. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Yo. it's Total War. No surprises there. I was a bit let down how the game looks and also how bad the framerate was. I kinda expected to be able to run it on "Ultra" settings, but "High" already exposed some hickups. Yeah so these guys never really made the most out of the hardware. Do they still only use 2 cores? 
 
I played the historical battle. Quite hard. I only won it on Easy yet. With kind of cheating my way through it (since I would know the turn of events already). Though I only just discovered how massively effective the "spearwall" (or something) formation of the yari is. 
 
I put it back on pre-order, especially considering it is only 33 EUR or so on Amazon.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I touched the tutorial campaign briefly. While the cutscenes look awful. The map and the interface are simply beautiful. The hand drawn art style really fits the game. 
 
@buckbit I really hope the final version will work more smoothly. I mean I could play Napoleon on Ultra. What video card do you have. Shogun 1 page is here BTW.

I played the demo, and frankly I was a bit disappointed. I've played every total war game since Rome, so I've got some total war experience. The battles are fine, but the strategy map is not to my liking. To me it feels like they have simplified it a lot since Empire, which I loved for it's expansiveness.

Surprisingly I never actually played a Total War game before, even being an RTS/TBS fan.
Gonna give this demo a go and maybe get into the series.

I have been a Fan of TotalWar series and it is cool to see it come full circle. The failed ninja cut scenes are the best.  I have been hearing ( well more like reading and watching ) information about 2 players playing one Clan cooperatively which rubs me the right way for once in there attempts to bringing coop campaign to the series coop multiplayer is disappointing.