Twice the Shogun
Creative Assembly revisits the Sengoku period of Japan with Shogun 2: Total War. The game feels like an extension of their previous title Napoleon: Total War with the faster paced movement, morale effects, and some AI elements, but in the end delivers a fresh new Total War game you’d be more than happy to sink your teeth into.
Gameplay
The heavy focus on melee troops will kind of throw you off if you have been playing a lot of Empire/Napoleon, but the same rock/paper/scissors tactics will apply here. Typically there are three types of units you’ll see in a battle. Spear/Sword units who do all of your fighting, Ranged/Archer units for supporting your battle lines, and Cavalry units that can flank and take care of the supporting units behind the front lines. These types of units are then broken down into quality (Ashigaru or Samurai), and unique versions (Matchlock, Cannons, Bow Cav, etc). Combined with a standard set of battle maps to play on and plenty of castle sieging, things will start to look and feel the same after your initial play through of a short campaign.Sieging in this game is also handled differently. Do you know how Japanese people got past a Castle’s walls in the 16th century? Ladders? No. Grappling Hooks? Nope. Siege Towers? Uh-uh. They scaled the walls with their bare hands and climbed that shit like a man. All units are able to scale the walls. Troop disposition and location of attack is more important here since your men will suffer casualties getting to the wall (archers), climbing up the wall (falling off), and then fighting garrisoned forces inside. Burning down a door presents a more direct way of getting inside, but also a nasty choke point for the defenders to trap you in. Also, Castles can be upgraded to provide more tiers of walls to go through, elevation changes, little moats with a handful of places to ford across and Towers to help fend off attackers.
Castle Sieging brings out a fault of this game early on, since there’s only one battle map per Castle tier. So if you fight a Tier 1 castle in one province and then go next door and siege another Tier 1 castle, they will look exactly the same. Standard battle maps are also limited in selection and you will start to recognize them early on. This is kind of disappointing since this has been an issue in the past games. You think they would introduce some sort of map generator/randomizer by now.
Elevation plays more of a factor now since units charging uphill not only move slower, but suffer a penalty to attack doing so. This means battles are mostly focused around or on top of a defensible hill. Shock units (units with a high charge value) are also more effective in this game, able to decimate and route units within seconds in some situations. Battles play out faster so you’ll have to adjust your lines quickly and use your General frequently to provide morale boosts. Babysitting troops will make it hard to watch the awesome new highly detailed units and brutal fighting animations.
Graphics
Speaking of which, the graphics engine is reminiscent of Napoleon: Total War. There are prettier fire and smoke effects, but the big push was made in the detailed units and fighting animations. You can see units intricate armor and weapons they’re equipped with. The fighting animations are exciting to watch (alot of dudes get stabbed through the face). The lighting and shadows are done very well and weather effects do not look cheesy. There are alot of fog effects and clouds sailing through the skies which adds a nice atmosphere to the setting.The 3D Campaign map with a moveable camera is a welcome addition, but not necessarily needed or useful. Using it just makes me lose orientation of the map, so I hardly bothered rotating the map at all. It was only useful selecting some troops hidden behind some one else’s flag.