Total War: Shogun 2, Your Thoughts please

[SckizoBoy]

What.

The story of a Total War game wasn't particularly engaging? What? What the hell did you expect it to be?

Perhaps it would be better worded that unlike the other titles, S2:TW didn't have enough to hold my attention or grant sufficient anticipation to the latter stages of the game sufficiently.

Yes, I realise that the TW titles are a pseudo-open-world series with no ostensible story, thus the gamer creates a great deal more of it than in other games, but as it has a basis in historical fact, and having prior knowledge of much of the surrounding background material, the ability to play with a great deal of historical fidelity (or flagrantly ignore it) in R:TW (modded of course, the vanilla is actually quite infuriating in this sense) and N:TW was much of the reason I enjoyed them so much and continue to play them. It's the intellectual investment.

As for M2:TW, there was a greater connection with the characters, missions I sent them on, their approach to captured cities, prisoners etc. left me mindful of what they should get up to i.e. the emotional investment (however wussy that may come across as) or perhaps the RPG elements. There was neither of these things in S2:TW for me and the fact that the historicity didn't interest me at all made it all the worse, but at least it was better than E:TW (I knew a lot of the historical background but it was all out the window before the game even started which debatably pissed me off more than the shitty gameplay).

 

[Jandau]

When it comes to mechanics, interface and all that, it's the most polished Total War game ever. However, the complete lack of unit variety means that the game gets boring quickly. It's a good game, there's just not much variety to it.

The one good thing about it is that it shows how CA learned from their previous mistakes (especially Empire and Napoleon) and is able to make a solid, polished product. It makes me giddy to think of the upcoming Rome 2 game, with all the polish of Shogun 2 and the variety of the original Rome...

 

[Blunderboy]

I liked it, but not as much as Rome or Med 2. Though that might be due to being more interested in those periods of history than I am in feudal Japan.
I did like the way that diplomacy and research worked, and I really like the little pop ups where you decide whether to invest in towns or farms etc.

 

[Bostur]

The only Total War game that really grabbed me was Napoleon, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I thought Shogun 2 was very pretty, and with the best UI in the series. It also has issues making it almost unplayable. The Diplomacy is rubbish in the same way as in Empire. All the AI factions team up on the player. It also has a lot of naval action, which doesn't work in the TW series. Loads of siege warfare with too many units and too little room. Generally a boring campaign map mostly made up of narrow pathways.

Decent tactical battles, but I think it is too fast paced. It's hard to do much maneuvering besides throwing everything you have into the fray. The battles lose a lot of the feel when playing in slow-motion because there's no sound.

 

[Edible Avatar]

Honestly, the entire game holds about 30-40 hours of entertainment, including multiplayer. I enjoyed the fall of the samurai expansion, which added many units and gave the clans individuality.

 

[GrimGrimoire]

Im going to have to disagree with the other posters. I think S:TW 2 was really good. Now yes the factions have the "same units" but that means your tactics must be better if you want to win you just cant over power your enemies with your nation "super unit". Also the general's skill tree is great. No more random traits for you generals. I think your going to get as much fun as you are open to the time period.

I agree, I had a blast with S:TW 2. The singleplayer is tons of fun, and the online kind of works if you are lucky or have a friend who also plays the game.
The problem with the online gameplay is not the multiplayer features themselves, as much as it is the community. Good battles are few and hard too come by, and finding naval battles can impossible at times.

 

[Dango]

I'm going to disagree with most of the thread and say that aside from Rome, it's my absolute favorite Total War, especially with the Fall of the Samurai expansion. Even though there wasn't as much unit variety as past games, which made it easier to learn each individual faction, as well as balance multiplayer, it still made up for it by making it a much more skill based game.

And speaking of the multiplayer, it's absolutely fantastic, I've put dozens of hours into ranking up both my Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai generals.

 

[Agent Larkin]

I thought it was ok until I got Fall of the Samurai.

Then it got awesome in my books (Boshin war is one of my favourite time periods)

Captcha: Nest Egg

AKA the money i spent on it.

 

[Dogstile]

I will let you know if i ever make it past turn 10........

every game starts in two possible ways. Either 3 AI immediately declar war against me and march an army 5 times bigger than mine within the first few turns, or i actually manage to take one or two AI out after rush building an army (and then concentrate on economy) only to have one of the conquered AI neighbors declare war against me fielding an army vastly greater than i could ever possibly support despite the fact that the AI has ONE territory and i have a greater economy.

Which Clan are you playing as?

The Lower Left Clan

My friend recently got the game and wanted to play coop multiplayer. So im like...sure! Well apparently you have to create an avatar and fight in battles in order to unlock stuff or something for your army. Dunno, the whole system is confusing. ANYWAYS, my friend does some mock battles and says "oh, you just fight the AI, and once you win you can unlock units/upgrades/abilities/something."

cool, i thought. So i start one. AI opponent? LOL NOPE. Like a freakin grandmaster human opponent with a blackbelt in shogun 2 with an army of units in awesome armor while i have the equivalent of PEASANTS.

After 2 tries against opponents that have played for hundreds of hours (whereas my friend got 5 AI opponents in a row) im like, NOPE!

that game is a bigger jerk than demon souls.

Dude, take the city right next to you, build up a couple units. They should be able to hold the walls easily, especially if you have even a single unit of archers. The enemy will lose 20% of the troops just climbing it.

 

[Ryotknife]

I will let you know if i ever make it past turn 10........

every game starts in two possible ways. Either 3 AI immediately declar war against me and march an army 5 times bigger than mine within the first few turns, or i actually manage to take one or two AI out after rush building an army (and then concentrate on economy) only to have one of the conquered AI neighbors declare war against me fielding an army vastly greater than i could ever possibly support despite the fact that the AI has ONE territory and i have a greater economy.

Which Clan are you playing as?

The Lower Left Clan

My friend recently got the game and wanted to play coop multiplayer. So im like...sure! Well apparently you have to create an avatar and fight in battles in order to unlock stuff or something for your army. Dunno, the whole system is confusing. ANYWAYS, my friend does some mock battles and says "oh, you just fight the AI, and once you win you can unlock units/upgrades/abilities/something."

cool, i thought. So i start one. AI opponent? LOL NOPE. Like a freakin grandmaster human opponent with a blackbelt in shogun 2 with an army of units in awesome armor while i have the equivalent of PEASANTS.

After 2 tries against opponents that have played for hundreds of hours (whereas my friend got 5 AI opponents in a row) im like, NOPE!

that game is a bigger jerk than demon souls.

Dude, take the city right next to you, build up a couple units. They should be able to hold the walls easily, especially if you have even a single unit of archers. The enemy will lose 20% of the troops just climbing it.

Even if they lose 20% of their troops scaling the walls, they will still vastly outnumber me. Even if 60% of their troops die scaling the walls, they will STILL outnumber me. They would need to take about 75% losses. And even THEN i am at a disadvantage because that would require a heavy concentration of archers AND my archer units will need to do SIGNFICANTLY more damage than i have ever seen them do. So even if i concentrated on archer units and somehow picked up a quad damage powerup, when the enemy does scale the walls, those archer units will be useless so that even though numerically we are equal once they take 75% losses. in terms of fighting strength the enemy is still twice as powerful once they scale the walls.

That and i never had any luck with archers. Ive had 6 units of archers focus firing on one enemy group of archers, my infantry managed to engage and mop up all other enemy units before that archer unit reached 50% losses.

I am going up against an army 3-4x bigger (usually 30-40 units strong, yes split into multiple armies) than anything i can possibly put out in the first 15 minutes with the most basic of defenses since i do not have enough time to build it up. As archers are bloody useless in that game, turtling is not an option.

I love medieval 2 total war, but shogun 2 is one of the worst game experiences i ever had. I know my experience is NOT everyone else's experience, but I have the most horrendous luck in that game.

 

[Cabisco]

It is the worst game I have ever bought, terrible in every way.

By this I mean I have got it and I am shockingly bad at it, I can't manage to do anything and always end up loosing what small empire I have. I tried playing online but I got raped repeatedly and I learnt my lesson that I'm not allowed to play this game as it only ends in me curling into the fetal position, cursing my enemies and plotting like golum that I shall punish everyone.

Like I said on another thread about total war, I always think i'm going to win and decimate all before me right up until the game starts.

Still, I hope you enjoy it as i'm clearly not allowed to.

 

[The Scotsman72]

I will let you know if i ever make it past turn 10........

every game starts in two possible ways. Either 3 AI immediately declar war against me and march an army 5 times bigger than mine within the first few turns, or i actually manage to take one or two AI out after rush building an army (and then concentrate on economy) only to have one of the conquered AI neighbors declare war against me fielding an army vastly greater than i could ever possibly support despite the fact that the AI has ONE territory and i have a greater economy.

Which Clan are you playing as?

The Lower Left Clan

My friend recently got the game and wanted to play coop multiplayer. So im like...sure! Well apparently you have to create an avatar and fight in battles in order to unlock stuff or something for your army. Dunno, the whole system is confusing. ANYWAYS, my friend does some mock battles and says "oh, you just fight the AI, and once you win you can unlock units/upgrades/abilities/something."



cool, i thought. So i start one. AI opponent? LOL NOPE. Like a freakin grandmaster human opponent with a blackbelt in shogun 2 with an army of units in awesome armor while i have the equivalent of PEASANTS.

After 2 tries against opponents that have played for hundreds of hours (whereas my friend got 5 AI opponents in a row) im like, NOPE!

that game is a bigger jerk than demon souls.

Dude, take the city right next to you, build up a couple units. They should be able to hold the walls easily, especially if you have even a single unit of archers. The enemy will lose 20% of the troops just climbing it.

Even if they lose 20% of their troops scaling the walls, they will still vastly outnumber me. Even if 60% of their troops die scaling the walls, they will STILL outnumber me.

That and i never had any luck with archers. Ive had 6 units of archers focus firing on one enemy group of archers, my infantry managed to engage and mop up all other enemy units before that archer unit reached 50% losses.

I am going up against an army 3-4x bigger (usually 30-40 units strong, yes split into multiple armies) than anything i can possibly put out in the first 15 minutes with the most basic of defenses since i do not have enough time to build it up. As archers are bloody useless in that game, turtling is not an option.

I love medieval 2 total war, but shogun 2 is one of the worst game experiences i ever had.

Are you playing on the hardest difficulty or something? The game really isn't as hard as you're making it out to be, so you may want to turn the campain difficulty down a notch.

 

[Ryotknife]

I will let you know if i ever make it past turn 10........

every game starts in two possible ways. Either 3 AI immediately declar war against me and march an army 5 times bigger than mine within the first few turns, or i actually manage to take one or two AI out after rush building an army (and then concentrate on economy) only to have one of the conquered AI neighbors declare war against me fielding an army vastly greater than i could ever possibly support despite the fact that the AI has ONE territory and i have a greater economy.

Which Clan are you playing as?

The Lower Left Clan

My friend recently got the game and wanted to play coop multiplayer. So im like...sure! Well apparently you have to create an avatar and fight in battles in order to unlock stuff or something for your army. Dunno, the whole system is confusing. ANYWAYS, my friend does some mock battles and says "oh, you just fight the AI, and once you win you can unlock units/upgrades/abilities/something."



cool, i thought. So i start one. AI opponent? LOL NOPE. Like a freakin grandmaster human opponent with a blackbelt in shogun 2 with an army of units in awesome armor while i have the equivalent of PEASANTS.

After 2 tries against opponents that have played for hundreds of hours (whereas my friend got 5 AI opponents in a row) im like, NOPE!

that game is a bigger jerk than demon souls.

Dude, take the city right next to you, build up a couple units. They should be able to hold the walls easily, especially if you have even a single unit of archers. The enemy will lose 20% of the troops just climbing it.

Even if they lose 20% of their troops scaling the walls, they will still vastly outnumber me. Even if 60% of their troops die scaling the walls, they will STILL outnumber me.

That and i never had any luck with archers. Ive had 6 units of archers focus firing on one enemy group of archers, my infantry managed to engage and mop up all other enemy units before that archer unit reached 50% losses.

I am going up against an army 3-4x bigger (usually 30-40 units strong, yes split into multiple armies) than anything i can possibly put out in the first 15 minutes with the most basic of defenses since i do not have enough time to build it up. As archers are bloody useless in that game, turtling is not an option.

I love medieval 2 total war, but shogun 2 is one of the worst game experiences i ever had.

Are you playing on the hardest difficulty or something? The game really isn't as hard as you're making it out to be, so you may want to turn the campain difficulty down a notch.

normal, and i refuse to put it at easy. in my 24 years of playing video games i have never played a game on easy......okay wait there was one game that had a glitch which involved starting the game on easy and then changing it to hard (guardian heroes for the sega saturn)

hell, I just started to play as the Byzantium empire in Europa 3 (more empire in name than in actualy territories), which is a tiny tiny tiny nation literally surrounded by the vast Ottoman empire with an army of around 60,000 to my 6,000, and even that was significantly easier.

 

[AlotFirst]

I like Shogun 2 and while I also like the Fall of the Samurai, the latter is EXTREMELY unbalanced. Cannons really crush most of the balance in that game, and what little remains gets devoured by Line Infantry or Naval Bombardments.

 

[Kragg]

I like Shogun 2 and while I also like the Fall of the Samurai, the latter is EXTREMELY unbalanced. Cannons really crush most of the balance in that game, and what little remains gets devoured by Line Infantry or Naval Bombardments.

thats why i dont like any total war with guns, i never played medieval after gunpowder gets invented

empire and napoleon were just lining up your dudes in rows of 3 then inching them forward

i liked shogun 2 though, cept that it forced steam on me