New Total War title

[Chariovalda]

Well, reviews are pretty positive.

My favourite videogame reviewer, Angry Joe, was very, very pleased with it (as with me, Empire Total War did nothing for him 8-) ).

Angry Joe's Shogun II review

And I totally agree: GUNS ARE FOR PUSSIES!:mrgreen:

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

You call that a review ?

I see a moron starting out in fake carnavaleske samurai armourthingiewhatever, shouting what sounds like Chines jibberish, and then he also manages to totally mess up the word Daimyo...

He should commit seppuku immediately, though he probably would start by cutting his behind on the Tanto...

M.VIB.M.

[Chariovalda]

Yepp.

A goofy review, but a pretty good one. It's a matter of taste, and I have none :mrgreen:

BTW, people who want to save some money might want to try out Eurogamer's 'Get Games' download site. They currently have Shogun II on offer for a mere 24 pounds.

[Chariovalda]

Okay, bought the damn thing online.
The game is BEAUTIFUL in terms of graphics, even with DirectX 9.
No opinion about the game-as-game yet, still struggling through the tutorials.
But it has great mood and atmosphere so far.:mrgreen:
Still on sale at Get Games.

[Chock]

I have most of the Total War games, and encouraged by a friend who has a big interest in Japanese ancient warfare even though Rome is more my thing, I pre-ordered this some time back and got it through the mail on the day of the release. There were some problems installing it, my desktop PC's DVD drive would not read the disks, so I had to use my laptop to copy the disk contents onto an external drive and then install it onto my desktop computer via that. Initially it tries to then download the thing from Steam during the installation process (see developer's forum for a workaround), but if you faff about it eventually forgoes that and installs from locally.

Having been a bit of a pain in the ass to install, it was a while before I got around to having a look at it, but my buddy and I started a co-operative campaign on it (this is one of the major changes to this iteration of Total War - co-operative multiplayer campaigning). I have to say this works supremely well, being very stable and with no disconnections or crashes.

As far as the game goes, it is sort of similar to previous Total War games, but everything is much more well-rounded and optimised, with better built-in help and a much more intuitive interface that is not so different from previous iterations as to be confusing. Enemy AI on the tactical conquest map is vastly improved and makes for a more challenging game, the battle maps are much prettier (both on land and sea) being more graphically detailed, but in spite of this, are well optimised and run okay even with the details turned up to full throttle.

So in short, so far so good in spite of the installations hassles. Worth a look if you like ancient warfare.

Al

[Chariovalda]

Hmmm, annoying those install problems. My own Steam install went flawlessly, I'm happy to say.8)

I also got Napoleon Total War for 5 quid from Get Games (alas, the sale has ended, and it and Empire are back to 15 pounds). Now that one I do like, it even made me return and give Empire another try.

The army of the United Provinces marched into Paris yesterday. Take that, Papist scum! :grin:

[Eduorius]

I am still doubtful about buying Shogun 2. One of the reasons for this is that I dont like what they did with Napoleon Total War. You could only get the Royal Scots Grey if you pre ordered the game on Steam. I dont have a problem if some people use the unit earlier but with such an important unit, the customers should be able to get it on a later date. I think they did something like that with the elite units of Empire.

BTW, If someone wants to play multiplayer ETW or NTW please contact me.

[Chariovalda]

I think I can safely recommend Shogun II. But if you want maximum bang for your buck, you might as well wait until this Christmas, and get the inevitable 'Gold' edition during the great Xmas sale on Steam.

I must say, Empire is a buggy mess, even version 1.5 (there's a 1.6 patch, but somehow it doesn't automatically download via Steam, really annoying. I understand that's the responsibility of Sega :-(). Napoleon's much better. In fact, I daresay those were the best value five pounds I ever spent. Much better graphics, beautiful visual effects, a much better enemy battle AI and somehow it succeeds in heating up my PC less than Empire.

[Eduorius]

The Gold Edition is a great pack but I dont remember they have released a retail version for Empire or Napoleon. What they do now is that they sold the additional campaign (Warpath or Peninsula) through steam.

BTW, you guys think that the additional campaign for Shogun 2 will be Mongol Invasion again or something totally different like what they did with M2TW: Kingdoms?

[Chariovalda]

I think it's going to be the Heike Monogatari material, about the struggle between Minamoto and Taira clans.

Also: Mongol invasion. Come on, that's inevitable, but not the first one I think.
And: Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea in the 16th century.

First one first, I think. That one might be in the form of a campaign, with pretty much the same map and slightly different units, sans gunpowder. Come to think of it, same for the Mongol invasion.

The Korean campaigns would require a real expansion, with a new map and very different units in the form of the Korean army and navy.

So perhaps: 2 campaigns with storyline and slightly different units.
1 real expansion with gameplay tweaks and different map AND units (Korean invasions).

Between them, you have the four epic military events of the 'samurai era' (broadly defined).