Shogun 2: Total War

[Ghambit]

Sooo, which one of you crackheads broke down and bought the game?  Report!
I want a buy/no-buy for the weekend.
 

[Speedy Cerviche]

I havent really browsed it yet, but this would be a good place to start:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1556

Player review sub-forum.

[Paelos]

The reviews of the AI seem generally favorable but not perfect. My reservations still exist until we're a month into the gameplay.

[WayAbvPar]

This is already out? I thought it was months away still! Good news, I guess. I am not interested in buying it right now, so I can get the skinny on how bad it is, as well as giving them time to unfuck it before I think about buying.

[dusematic]

For all those on the fence who haven't played a Total War game in awhile, keep in mind that after Rome and Medieval 1, the series stopped improving and regressed in almost every facet except visually.  Thus, if you have fond memories of an older game and are eager to wade in again and bask in myriad improvements, it is quite possible you may end up bitterly disappointed.

[Speedy Cerviche]

That's why I'd read the reviews I linked on twcenter.net. A good % of the people there are just as aware of CA's decline and approach there new offerings with a very skeptical eye (before STW2 was released, you would find about 3x as many people browsing the RTW/MTW2 forums than the newer ETW/NTW ones).

[Khaldun]

Nobody tried this?

[Paelos]

Nobody tried this?

You remember Empire right? We're all sitting across the river with our binoculars.

[jakonovski]

Speaking of rivers, has anyone tested what happens if you defend on a river crossing map?

I really want this game to be good.

[Ghambit]

The reviews are pretty mind-bogglingly good.  And with the overlying RPG elements (especially the clan play) I'm really starting to kick myself for not buying this on day 1.

That being said, there are apparently some pretty glaring bugs especially in MP play.  And the MP play is touted as the highlight.
Once the next patch hits I'll probably pony up and buy the game.

Next patch (multiplayer hotfix) will feature:

-All stats should report correctly
-All avatars being flagged as ‘dishonourable cowards’ fixed. This will be removed from all existing avatars. [Incidentally, this trait has no actual effect in- game]
-Avatar cost contributing to naval battle funds fixed.
-Occasional inability to add avatar skills has been fixed.[/qoute]

[ghost]

I bought it but haven't played it yet.  Because I love buying games for early purchase prices and then playing them a year later (if that).   

[Megrim]

The reviews are pretty mind-bogglingly good. 

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

[Vedi]

I've bought it, but so far have only played half a game on normal difficulty.

So far it has felt much better than Empire, which I gave up on immediatly due to the AI. This time they have bothered to include an AI, and at least so far it seems reasonably competent. The tech tree and trading mechanism also seems to work, and the leveling up of generals is quite cool.

In short, the first impression is positive, but it is a first impression based on probably six hours of play time so grain of salt and all that.

[Stormwaltz]

The reviews are pretty mind-bogglingly good.  

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Tom Chick, who has a good head on his shoulders, begins his review with:

There must be some mistake. Whatever game I've been playing lately -- the splash screen says it's called Shogun 2 and was created by Creative Assembly -- can't be from the same folks who made a spectacular mess of Empire: Total War. It's certainly not from the folks who flirted briefly with a God of War clone called Total Warrior (get it?). And it can't be the same people who callously orphaned that poor Stormrise sci-fi RTS. Because Shogun 2 is polished, smart, generous, elegant, and bold. It is utterly sublime.

Imagine you woke up one morning and the village idiot had built a cathedral. At which point someone vaguely recalls the village idiot was once a famous architect and it all kind of makes sense.

http://www.1up.com/reviews/shogun-2-total-war-review

[Paelos]

A deft analogy. I remain unconvinced.

But playing medieval 2 has me jonesing.

Must...be...strong! 

[Ghambit]

If this doesnt convince you, I dunno what will!   

[Megrim]

The reviews are pretty mind-bogglingly good.  

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Tom Chick, who has a good head on his shoulders, begins his review with:

There must be some mistake. Whatever game I've been playing lately -- the splash screen says it's called Shogun 2 and was created by Creative Assembly -- can't be from the same folks who made a spectacular mess of Empire: Total War. It's certainly not from the folks who flirted briefly with a God of War clone called Total Warrior (get it?). And it can't be the same people who callously orphaned that poor Stormrise sci-fi RTS. Because Shogun 2 is polished, smart, generous, elegant, and bold. It is utterly sublime.

Imagine you woke up one morning and the village idiot had built a cathedral. At which point someone vaguely recalls the village idiot was once a famous architect and it all kind of makes sense.

http://www.1up.com/reviews/shogun-2-total-war-review

I'm fairly certain I can find xyz number of reviews about their previous games which say exactly the same things. I'm in fact almost certain I've read that fucking horseshit about "oh the ai uses it's troops intelligently in THIS version", in those exact words, before.

So sure, you go ahead and buy it. Tell us how that goes.

[Paelos]

Total War:Empire Review at IGN "Creative Assembly offers the best yet in its superlative strategy series!"

The battlefield AI shows a keen grasp of all these new features and will definitely keep you on your toes, even when you have the advantage.

Empire review at Eurogamer "It's a Tolstoy-esque War and Peace of a game"

The standard Total War bugbear has also been addressed, with the AI hugely improved on both battlefield and strategic levels. Suicidal generals are a thing of the past, and they even have the capacity to surprise me a bit, especially with the mass strike. Considerably outnumbering me, the Cherokee piled directly for my general in a decapitation strike in the middle of a generally overwhelming assault - but the AI is just as capable of playing cagey.

[dusematic]

Total War:Empire Review at IGN "Creative Assembly offers the best yet in its superlative strategy series!"

The battlefield AI shows a keen grasp of all these new features and will definitely keep you on your toes, even when you have the advantage.

Empire review at Eurogamer "It's a Tolstoy-esque War and Peace of a game"

The standard Total War bugbear has also been addressed, with the AI hugely improved on both battlefield and strategic levels. Suicidal generals are a thing of the past, and they even have the capacity to surprise me a bit, especially with the mass strike. Considerably outnumbering me, the Cherokee piled directly for my general in a decapitation strike in the middle of a generally overwhelming assault - but the AI is just as capable of playing cagey.

Lol, owned.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Here is a review from a well known modder:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=434483

Summary
Overall, Total War: Shogun 2 is a solid and very addictive game. Even a player, who is not so keen on strategy games, can love it. There are many features to explore, thus the game has a large re-playability factor. But, the demanding strategy gamer may soon find boring the un-realistic and quick battles, even though they can be challenging and difficult. With mod enhancements can soon be rated 10, an absolute excellency. However, I recommend to players with good graphic cards to wait a little for the patch that corrects Anti-Aliasing, DX 10 and 11 support, graphic card detection and multiplayer CTDs. The game currently plays somewhat poorly visually (at least for me, Empire:Total War plays much smoother, with better visuals and with 3X more troops... strange). The first patching procedure of CA has revealed a rather hasty and inconsistent support for the game. Although they do try to fix all bugs, sometimes to try is not enough, especially in the world of commerce and money.

There is a long list of likes & dislikes in the link. I think I'm gonna pass on this one for about a year and see if modders and xpacs can smooth out the dislikes he listed. It seems more than anything, CA has done a good job of releasing a game that doesn't have any crippling flaws (like they usually do), and has done a good job of covering up AI flaws and other bugs with a lot of gimmicks and simplicity (super aggressive campaign AI, very fast paced battle speeds). I guess that's fine for someone newish to total war games, but I've played 100s of hours of them since shogun 1 and I'm not very impressed.

[Zaljerem]

I've not played it enough to give any sort of detailed review, but I have learned that I'm way overdue to upgrade my video card ... 

After I get my friend's BootCamp issues squared away tonight, we'll see how a brand-new 27" iMac runs it ...

[Sparky]

I hope the backlash kicks in before I break down and head to Amazon.

[WayAbvPar]

I am in real danger as well, since I just canceled my WoW and Rift subs about an hour ago. Of course, I have spent 30 hours playing Wizard's Crown the past week, so I can probably find other ways to occupy my time until the other shoe falls.

[Paelos]

I'm still playing Medieval 2 to stave off the urges.

Speaking of which, why is Portugal attacking me when I'm playing England? WTF PORTUGAL??? Are the Moors and Spain not keeping you occupied? Why did you have to sail up the coast to attack me? France is closer and bigger dickheads anyway. They appointed a shitty Pope!

[Khaldun]

Ok, I bought it.

Will report back if I get time to work it over on the weekend.

[slog]

Ok, I bought it.

Will report back if I get time to work it over on the weekend.

Any updates?

[tgr]

I'm still playing Medieval 2 to stave off the urges.

I trolled a friend of mine into buying it. Now he's upgrading his computer because it wasn't powerful enough. Heh.

[Paelos]

I'm still concerned, although I'm weakening. A change in price point to the $39.99 range will push my willpower to the breaking point.

Right now in my Medieval 2 play, I've managed to take my English armies fully into Western Europe, but the French Pope refuses to let me finish off France. Also, HRE thought I was getting too close and attacked me feebly. I own Paris now. To keep the Pope from completely disowning me, I've run a supremely successful campaign through Egypt, based on quick moving crusader armies, but I'm always beaten to the punch by another nation. Inevitably I just sack a close by town and then take over two others in the surrounding area. As a consquence I own Gaza, Cairo, Alexandria, and for some reason Smryna. I had to decimate Smyrna to the ground to get it to STFU though before I could rechurch their asses. It will be a long time before I can get out of that quagmire.

[proudft]

Is the map any smaller than Medieval 2?  That's what kills me in that game - I'll start a campaign and at some point it becomes apparent you can crush anyone you fight but there are, like, 50 more areas to conquer in an unending slogfest.   

The Short Campaigns never helped much, either, since I still had to send people all over the place to talk to the pope and trade and take Jerusalem to make the church happy and whatnot.

[Khaldun]

Report soon. Got distracted by DA2 over the weekend, only had a chance to install and dick around a bit. I want to make sure to see how the AI etc. works.

[Ginaz]

I broke down and bought this last Friday.  Played a few hours on Saturday and I already like it better than Empire.  Everything seems to work as advertised and the map is large enough to be a challenge but small enough that you don't feel like its going to take forevedr to conquer the island.  And the AI seems to have figured out how to use its navy.  I had one clan I was at war with drop troops back into my home territory with their ships and I had to rush my armies back to defend it.  A promising start so far but I don't know how much time I'll be able to put into it now since I'm playing Crisis 2, DA2 and Rift right now, as well.

[Engels]

Got it Friday too. Played it through the tutorial and started a single player campaign. First impressions is that its just not that different. Its like all the other games, only 'fixed'. To an extent. Still finding some odd AI behavior.

For example, when your castle/fort/whatever is getting attacked, if you 'man the ramparts' your men die from arrow fire a lot more quickly than if you stand them around in the center courtyard. Once the individual units of the enemy, be they samurai, spear or dismounted cavalry start to get into the courtyard, I swarm them in a mass in a sort of whack-a-mole gameplay mode and I win, easily, despite 2:1 odds. This is broken behavior.

[Ingmar]

That sounds more like combat-mechanics-broken than AI-broken issues.

[Engels]

True, but I'm not sure if its purely mechanics. It may have been a fluke, but I thought I saw the archery animations go full tilt the moment I put men on the raparts. If I moved them away towards the center, the enemy archers seemed to not shoot as often. Hence me saying its AI behavior. I will do a bit more testing later this week and see if I can reproduce the effect.

[Mavor]

I played through one campaign.

It was fun for about two hours, and then immense bordom.

Only one way to win... military force. Forget winning through diplomacy, assassination of the enemy ruling faction (they will pop out an infinite amount of heirs to the daiymo), or anything else besides marching your troop stack on the enemy troop stacks.

Economy boils down to... forget the fucking economy and just rape as much as you can as fast as you can. The units you can build at the start of the game almost match the most elite units when you look at effectiveness per upkeep/gold cost.

All clans use the same units... battles quickly devolve into basically using the same strategies over and over again. No, this is not chess.

Maybe some will praise the game for finally fixing the AI and creating much faster paced battles, but I simply found myself quickly bored. Also, there is not much hope for good mods to come out, as, similar to E:TW, most deep mod support has been blocked off so that they can sell more shogun 2 DLC. Screw them and their money grubbing hands.