Recent reviews by DarkRite

Well this review is coming out very late indeed, that said I'm doing so because of the nomination awards. I personally think this is definitely one of the better Total War games out there. My personal favorite is still Shogun 2, but this isn't very far behind. This game has a lot in it, compared to the first one, this is a big improvement. It's still limited in some regards, and the siege maps are terrible. However, and this may be my bias due to my love for fantasy, especially the Warhammer setting, I do feel that this is probably the best Total War game in terms of sheer enjoyment. Unless you're playing as vanilla Chaos that is, in which case things are rough, to say the least. Also this review is for those who may have taken an interest in the game following the news of the new dlc for it.

Now I did briefly go over that the sieges were bad, and that there's some limitations in the game. Well those limitations are mainly to do with diplomacy (though diplomacy has never been Total War's strong suit, Three Kingdoms aside), also no tax slider, just either taxing or not taxing (if you even get that choice with the faction you're playing as). But really it's more obvious with the old world factions from the first game. Some of which have gotten some updates and love to make them better, but Chaos isn't one of those. Chaos is so weak and fundamentally restricted you're basically just backed into a corner from the start. This may get fixed, and it probably will once the third game comes out, but we're not there yet. Other than that depending on your PC, the end turn can take maybe 5 minutes or more to go by (this problem is apparently being addressed in the new dlc, which is great, and the primary reason I am nominating this for the labor of love award for steam).

Those downsides taken in to consideration, there's a lot going for this game. It's vary replayable with all the different factions and races. There's many mechanics unique to certain factions, and it's just very fun. Add in an active mod community and some of the previously listed downsides are fixed. Bad siege maps, well there's mods to fix that, Chaos too much of a pushover, mods for that too. This is a great game, and with a lot of content in it, and I look forward to the 3rd one.

Well given that CA has decided to turn the Fall of the Samurai standalone expansion into a saga title. That means more people are likely to start looking back at Shogun 2 again. So given I didn't yet post a review on this, I figured I'd do so now. As for the whole re-branding in general, I'm fairly neutral on it, as I more so find it hilarious that they really want to bury Thrones of Britannia as much as possible. If they didn't make it so that buying Fall of the Samurai now would give you all the dlcs (aside from the blood pack), and that if you had the blood pack for Shogun 2 it would still apply to FOTS, then I'd be actually angry about it. It's just a marketing tactic to bury the previous Saga game.

Now onto Shogun 2 itself, personally it's my favorite of the entire franchise, I am a bit bias about it as it features my favorite time period and it was the first Total War game I ever played. That said I generally don't let my bias get too much in the way of determining how good a game is. This is the Total War game that I've played the most, despite the relative low amount of hours on it according to Steam. Reason for that is that I have no problem playing this or Medieval 2 vanilla, so when I lose internet for whatever reason, I play this. And since Steam can't accurately track my total hours when offline, we have ourselves a very deceiving number of hours. In short the game is great, the AI can handle itself decently well, the factions are balanced well enough, and the game does a lot of things right.
That said the factions won't be as diverse as most other Total War games, reason for that is that all the factions are part of the same culture, Japanese, as such the things that make each faction different is their specializations. Kinda like Three Kingdoms but more noticeable for most of the factions, that said it's not too different. This also helps out the AI as they don't have to manage vastly different units. And Shogun 2 does have some of the better AI because of it, they generally aren't that easy to exploit unless you have a ton of patience. Siege battles are well done, because even though you don't need siege equipment, climbing up the walls is still dangerous and takes a bit more effort than Warhammer or Three Kingdoms. Sure they can climb, but some of your men will die just because they slipped and fell, and given how the walls are slopped, archers on them can still very easily shoot your men as they climb. This makes sieges harder on the attacker without the towers being so OP that they may as well be sniper towers.

Naval battles, a thing CA never truly got completely right, but it's better that they be here than not, and from what I've heard the naval battles for Shogun 2 (particularly for FOTS) are some of the best if not the best in the franchise (I cannot really confirm that myself as I've not played and have no interest in playing Napoleon or Empire, though I've played every other Total War game since Medieval 2, with Rome 2 being the one I most dislike due to it's state at launch, haven't downloaded or played it on this steam account because of that). The economy is simple but isn't completely dumb, the public order is probably the only thing that's easy to exploit and isn't very well done. As a province's happiness is either content or not content, if not and you end turn, you'll get mounting unrest, if this isn't fixed and you end turn again, a rebellion will occur. This is easy enough to manage at times. Other than that the difficulty of the game actually is done well enough, in that Realm Divide will very easily end you if you're not ready. As only the most faithful and loyal of allies and vassals will stay on your side once it happens. I can count on one hand how many times I've actually had allies or vassals stick around. As such the end is hard because you're up against a lot of people, and things can go really bad very quickly.

That is all, I highly recommend this game, it's great, thanks for reading.

So given how long I've played this, and how many of the other Total War Games I've played. I thought I'd give my opinions. Firstly I do think the game is good, it's plenty of fun, especially if you enjoy the time-period. Now the best things about it is basically the fact diplomacy is a lot better in this game than any of the older ones. It just makes the game so much better, and so I do believe that this is the right direction for Total War in terms of diplomacy. The generals are decently well done, and I like most of the abilities and ancillaries they have available. There's a few nit-picks I could make on it, but it's not a major issue. As for armies in general, well it's more or less the same units with some specific faction units per most factions. So in that regard it's very much like Shogun 2, and the reform tree is the same for nearly every faction too. The only factions that are massively different in how they play and in how the reform tree looks is the Yellow Turbans. Sure most factions have some unique mechanics, buildings or units, but it's not so different you can't adopt a similar strategy for most of them. The Yellow Turbans have vastly different building effects, most of the time providing base income instead of massive multipliers, and having quite a few ways to generate public order or satisfaction, instead of ways to reduce corruption.

That stated let's look at the economy, firstly I do like that I can adjust taxes again, I like my tax slider, don't take away the tax slider. The economy is fairly simple all things considered. I like trade influence, but having a monopoly doesn't provide a big trade benefit, you don't get more influence for controlling all of a specific resource than if you just had one instance of it. Which sure if you have a monopoly on a resource, you have more trade influence than everyone else as a base (this is also saying you own at least one resource building for all the other resources). Now I think if you own most of a specific resource, or monopolize it, than you should have a lot more trade influence. If you have two sources of spice, and someone else has only one source of it, than you should have more trade influence then them because you have more spice (again this is considering that everything else is the same). As for the rest of the economy, it's even simpler, trade influence is interesting to be introduced, and I like that, but the rest of the economy is even more boring.

We have commerce, Industry, and peasantry incomes for all factions, Kong Rong gets culture income from his unique building but not enough changes to everything else for that culture income to receive good multipliers. Now the economy being simple isn't really bad, but the way it's handled is rather boring. Also the AI tends to build some pretty stupid things, like having multipliers to commerce, without any income for commerce (and this was a regional city, with no other regions providing commerce, it was Chen if you want to know exactly, AI Cao Cao built no commerce in Chen, no excuse, it's just stupid). Easiest way to fix this, make the main settlement building provide income from commerce and a multiplier to peasantry instead (then the population provide the base income for peasantry). Sure the peasantry switch isn't overly important, but I just think that makes a bit more sense. The important thing is the commerce, cause generally I see the AI less often building things that only benefit Industry, they still do at times, but it's not as often nor as big an issue. And that's it for economy.

When it's all said and done, the game isn't the best Total War out there, but it does introduce some new mechanics (and re-introduce some old ones), and have the best diplomacy, so it's a step in the right direction for Total War games. If they update the game to better balance some things, and release good DLC than I can easily see this being a very popular Total War game for a long time to come (also I imagine if they give us the right modding tools, than that's just instantly gonna open up and lead to great things). Thanks for reading, and do keep in mind, this is my thoughts, if you think otherwise it's fine, I like the game, but do like talking about the flaws of a game in more detail than the stuff they did well, cause it's very easy to see when something is done well (or at least it should be).

Okay now just to get this started, I did and sometimes still do play this game quite often, why, well lets talk about that. I don't play it for the great game that CA made, no, I play this for the mods it has, really good mods save this game for me. When I bought this I was thinking I'd try it maybe it's good, the only other thing I was considering buying was Shogun 2, which I had before (not on steam), but don't currently have. I was wrong, this game's grand campaign is quite boring for me, and to let you realize how, on strategy games like Stronghold and Battle for Middle Earth, I am the turtle player (you however won't beat me without proper siege). So for strategy games I play defensively and react to situations as they happen, doing this in Shogun 2 was really fun and necessary, here though it's boring.

The ai will come at you quickly with half to full stacks, but beating them back is more a chore than anything else, only time you feel threatened is when they attack an unguarded settlement (which they will do a lot, if they can, but on base game, they basically just become annoying as they attack a settlement time and time again without taking it or destroying it). The combat ai is done fairly well, but that's well as in they know how best to charge you, they care little for skirmishing in sieges, they make a path into your settlement (wither that be with artillery, ladders, or rams), then charge in. When on the defensive unless they outnumber you on a minor settlement (in which case they may charge you), they sit around in defensive positions, so if you have missile superiority you can just pick them off without much worry.

Now some of the grand campaign mechanics aren't that great, and the few that are good, may be a bit off. Example the fertility system, it's a nice system, makes end game harder, but some issues with it. One most of the regions become infertile by the end, and so I think that needs tweaking. Also every faction has sanitation buildings, such as canals and the like, now you'd think that an irrigated region would be more fertile right, nope. Unless you are I think it's Slavic, you have no way to increase the fertility of your regions, without mods that is. Also there is massive public order and squalor penalties for some things I can't quite understand, meaning you wont get the most out of your regions as you will probably build most regions the same way to keep everything running smoothly.

So now lets talk about the stuff that makes this game actually worth playing for over 300+ hours, mods (you could say you are going for all badges and such, but that's game completion, doesn't mean you enjoy it). There is amazing mods for this game, you can find mods to overhaul most everything about this game. I play with mods that make the games more dynamic and diverse, also to make some things sensible. Like a mod that disables the loss of legacy tech as you progress the tech tree for romans, and making sanitation buildings provide fertility (sure the whole they lose sight of older tech as they change their ways is a nice thought, but don't take away the sanitation buildings, I prefer my aqueducts to having a bigger church, in fact I burned down all the churches in my playthroughs because the bonuses for Christianity suck compared to paganism, base game).

So long and short of it, if you get this game, playing it a few times without mods wont be too boring, until you get to mid game. Playing it with mods may make it more enjoyable for you, however if you are deciding between this and Shogun 2, go with Shogun 2, it's much better in my opinion (the happiness system for shogun 2 is a bit too easy but the rest of the game is good). So I hope you find this somewhat enlightening, maybe I helped you decide on buying this or not, or at least prepared you for it. Also just so you know, I only have one of the culture packs (that being vikings), and no other dlc, cause I didn't want to spend anymore money on this.