TOTAL WAR SHOGUN 2 BEST CLAN SERIES

Conquering provinces feels like I'm clawing them out of my opponent's strong hands. Which is to say, I'm receiving a bruise for each and every one of my mistakes. Quinns: I dived straight into Hard mode and am finding it pretty perfect. Jim: How have you found overall difficulty? Here, I can be a clan of underdog hicks in the middle of nowhere scraping together pathetic armies for any number of last stands, and the game still gives me flexibility. My interest in the game wanes the moment I have more than, say, 10 provinces.

TOTAL WAR SHOGUN 2 BEST CLAN SERIES

I think depth on a smaller scale, that of individual provinces, agents and characters, is why Shogun 2 might be kickstarting my love for the series again. Jim: Previous games had specialised units from particular regions, but this has more depth. I know previous games had unique resources, but this is something else. Were the unique building chains in each province in previous Total War games? I don't think they were. At the minute I'm just enjoying making use of my high-powered force of monks. Quinns: Maybe I'll grow to hate the naval battles. Jim: Yeah, but it's just like stuff you have to move around, it's not exactly the same as taking a hill, or fighting for a castle Quinns: I guess that's why they added some sea terrain- the shallow waters and islets. It's just less interesting than land battles as a tactical conceit. You pile on damage with bow-ships and then get in close to finish. Perhaps it's the lack of real terrain, but really it becomes force of numbers. Jim: They are pretty slow, but I don't think they represent that interesting a challenge. Quinns: I haven't got properly stuck in to the naval battles yet, but the tutorial seemed entertaining. Jim: I didn't care much for the naval battles, I have to say. 40 stern little men marching into the mouth of death. The other night I was sieging a fort and the single unit of samurai retainers hiding inside came out to face my army of thousands. And God, I'm thrilling at Total War tropes I haven't been impressed by for the better part of a decade. I'm surprising myself at how much I'm enjoying it. The naval battles, the skill trees, all the multiplayer stuff. The difference this time around is the new stuff isn't a new era of history, with new units and new content, it's in all the new game mechanics. Jim: Well, it's a new game, I'm not saying they didn't make it afresh, what is over-familiar is the Total War template that is stamped across everything. But you mentioned them not doing anything new, and while the setting is obviously familiar I'm actually finding myself consistently impressed at the quantity of new stuff in the game. It's little things, like the fact that bridges are superfluous and people just cross the shallow rivers, or that sieges are straightforward because anyone can assail the walls.

This feels like the game they should be making, after all this time. Jim: I dunno, I feel like they've re-evaluated things. Quinns: If I'm honest, I didn't think Creative Assembly had this game in them. Jim: Yeah, the loading screen quotes are of a particularly fine vintage this time. As zen as the cherry blossoms and death poetry that fill the game. If I were the kind of man to take an illegal drug, I would at this point make a comparison to the game being like a bag of such a drug cut with almost no household cleaning supplies whatsoever.

Instead, it's a kind of gently refinement. Jim: It's more Total Warish than Empire was, because it hasn't tried to do anything particularly new or different. And that's sort of indicative to me, because it symbolises the Total Warness of the game being at the forefront. Jim: OK, so, we've been playing Shogun 2, the latest of the Total War games, and the first one they remembered to be put Total War at the front of its name. Quinns has also been dropping hour after hour into this fathomless construction, like guppies into the mouth of a coy carp, and met up with Jim in the Talking Room of Castle Shotgun for a chat. Jim's already presented his robust review of Shogun 2, but why stop there? Why, indeed.

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