Shogun: Total War Review (no fat)

Game Description

During the 16th century, medieval Japan was a land of fierce battles and constant competition. Why? Well because the land was divided between six territories, controlled by commanders called daimyos. Each of these sought to eliminate the others through any possible means in order to become the Shogun, the ruler of all Japan.

Shogun: Total War Gameplay

Electronic Arts' Shogun: Total War aims to be a faithful rendition of those days, and one could say it does a pretty good job of this. The game is a hybrid between, Civilization and your favorite RTS (something along the lines of Warcraft or Starcraft).

The game has three game modes. The first is a full campaign where one can combine the Real Time combat component of the game with its turn-based part. You can also play historical battles, where you hold the role of a general in a single combat, waging fights of four daimyos: Takeda Shingen, Tokugawa Ieyashu, Oda Nobunaga, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 30 of Japan's most disputed years.

While the board-game like component lacks in the complexity one would find in Civilization or Alpha Centauri, there's still plenty to do on this scale. You can evolve certain technologies which will improve your warrior's skills, build certain artifacts, recruit more units and so on. You can also make or break alliances with the other daimyos, though more detail here could have made things really interesting. You can also send ninja assassins after your opponent's generals, which means there's plenty of action to go along. The game's controls are very simple and intuitive

Nevertheless, real-time battles are where Shogun: Total War really shines. The sheer size of the involved armies can be huge. As many as 5.000 units can be present at each time, and these are grouped together in convenient packs. You can customize the formations and almost everything regarding your troops. These units have stamina, and most importantly they have morale. The way you fight and the strength of your troops and generals dictates how well these units can engage combat, so this isn't your classical 'three units of this type will always beat three units of that type' kind of game.

Speaking of units there are various types of units and each of these comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. You have archers (great from a distance, excellent for inflicting damage upon slow units, but awful at close range combat), cavalry which does wonders against the archers, and spearmen who are the best way to resist a cavalry-mounted attack. There's no unit without a weak point, meaning when you play a networked game your choice of units can make the difference between a quick win or an agonizing loss.

The terrain affects the units: they can conceal themselves in woods, they can't can cross waters (even though some of those streams are quite shallow) except on a bridge, and they get tired from a long climb. Rain and wind can affect things such as your archer's aim or your musketeers' ability to fight …they're basically useless if it rains.

But most important, the AI is awesome. It will constantly have you on your toes. It has a great ability to find your weak spots and exploit them as much as possible. It will conceal its troops in woods and try to surprise you. It knows how to use the terrain and you'll often find yourself climbing very high hills to get to the computer's archers. One important factor is that your virtual opponents don't 'cheat', so the only difference between you and your adversary (given equivalent armies) consists of how well you can manage your troops.

The controls are very good during combat as well and they're very easy to master. A key part is that you can do most of the game's actions from the keyboard (which you'll gradually evolve into doing as it can give your reaction times quite a boost in the heat of battle).

Shogun: Total War Multiplayer

Multiplayer allows each player to select his units and upgrade their honor (which gives them a bonus in combat). Each player gets the same amount of koku, which would seem fair but really isn't when you're supposed to charge over a bridge and you both have an equal amount of men. But how you choose your units and how your opponent does really affects your chances of winning the game in a clear-cut manner.

Shogun: Total War Graphics

The game's graphics are pretty well done, you'll be able to see each unit as an individual (and that can get pretty captivating, you'll probably find yourself forgetting to other things as you just sit and watch some of your troops fight.) The terrains are pretty good, the skies are nice and the menu and board graphics (those you see when you aren't actually fighting a battle) are very well suited for the game's theme.

Shogun: Total War Sound

Sound effects are one of the game's pros as well. You can hear your soldiers chanting or screaming in agony, you can hear arrows flying through the air and even the rainfall and all of this is done in a way that doesn't distract you too much from the battle. The soundtrack doesn't have too many songs but they're very good and quite in sync with the flow of the game. In tutorial mode you hear a voice with a Japanese accent guide you through your first minutes of playing this game. What's really cool is that you can change this voice with an actual narration in Japanese, with subtitles (or even without subtitles if it makes sense to you).

Shogun: Total War Overall Impression

Shogun: Total War is nearly a masterpiece, with very few flaws, but a very solid gameplay accompanied by nice graphics and sounds. The game has a great replay value and it's quite educational as well, teaching you many of Sun Tzu's principles from a practical point of view. It shows a great deal of finesse which really adds up to a very nicely finished product, where you actually feel the attention that has been paid to nearly every small detail.

Shogun: Total War Pricing

The game is available for a retail price of $19.95. Go get it!