Shogun 2: Total War

Honest review by: FATED

This game is by far the best recreation of the Japanese late-medieval period I have ever experienced. If you have ever watched Richard Chamberlain swing around a Katana or a Kirosawa movie, or just enjoyed playing Shinobi as a kid, you have likely had your imagination enchanted by the beauty of old Nippon. This game lets you live out that imagination in the most beautiful, violent and in some ways tragic period of history for the nation.

It is a war game, but one with a deeper heart and soul. The music is all authentic, the art Japanese wood block and watercolor, the writing Japanese poetry, and the quotes come from places like the Book of Five Rings. There is an Encyclopedia, which alone can give you very interesting insights into the culture and history of the land. It is a war game but without the cold, mathematical and abstract tokens one typically sees in titles like Eastern Front. It is a war game where you can command 10,000 troops but can also zoom down to see two men duel among the chaos.

I’ve beaten the game once, I am halfway through a second replay, and I expect to be enjoying my time with this game for many months to come. Shogun 2 is designed so well there are many themes and approaches you can take with your campaign. You can play as several different clans. On their face, they are similar, enjoying only slight bonuses. However, in practice, each is a very different game. The geography of your regions, your resources, your neighbors and political situation, your contact or lack thereof with European traders and the encroachment of Christianity, your distance from Kyoto or isolation on a separate island make for tremendous strategic differences. In addition, how you approach the game can be wonderfully varied.

That first play-through, I picked a clan with bonuses for peasant soldiers, and played very aggressively as a daimyo intent on unifying Japan under his rule at any cost. Huge mobs of easily panicked spearmen and archers were my mainstay, and professional samurai and gun equipped enemies my dread. Taking a castle with troops whose morale wavers merely at the sight of the walls was a fun challenge.

My second play-through, I decided to play a very traditional warlord who would be conservative and peaceful. I chose a clan whose strengths lie in their Samurai troops. I only fought wars declared on me and accepted peace treaties when offered. I developed my lands, crushed rebellions, established trade with China and other clans, and developed my Clans lands and castles.

The battles are completely different. Having a unit you can count on, in heavy armor, who instills fear in their opponents is much different from leading an army of countless peons. I purposefully ignored the time limit so far, and am not playing to win. I am playing the way I would rule, benevolently, with an eye towards preserving my culture, traditions, clan honor and values. I have only 7 provinces under my banner in the time it took me to conquer all of Japan before, but I’m having a blast playing this way.

The next campaign, I am going to turn on Drop-In battles, which allows a real person to control the enemies in every battle you play in your single player campaign. That should be a nice challenge, as the battle AI is excellent, but I have found several exploitable behaviors already. Besides, a human player is unpredictable and far more dangerous. I wonder how I will fare.