Elvis-Virtus

* Sorry for the delay again for Eijan’s Recommendation article, there was no internet the whole weekend because of ongoing construction with the telephone lines along the highway

*I decided to do a review and Recommendation at the same time

• 2 GHz Intel Dual Core processor / 2.6 GHz Intel Single Core processor , or AMD equivalent (with SSE2)
• 1GB RAM (XP), 2GB RAM (Vista / Windows7)
• 256 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card (shader model 3)
• 1024×768 minimum screen resolution
• 20GB free hard disk space

I have been playing Shogun 2 for almost a week and I was able to finish the 200-hour long campaign last night (no internet, so little things to do), and I might say that was hell of an experience.



Shogun 2 is a real time strategy game from Creative Assembly and part of the Total War Series, and if you have read my blogs in the past, I’m a die hard fan of the Total War Series.  I was truly amazed about the visual of this game as the details were amazing from the falling cherry blossoms to the detailed armors of the cheapest unit in the game. The Total War series is not for casual gamers as you will need a lot of financial thinking and also micro management skills on the RTS side, as controlling 10 groups of 120 men each with different emotions (like wavering,winning,routing) is no laughing matter, it is really like being a general in battle.



I was running the game at 1920x1080p on ultra high settings and it was truly amazing especially the sea battles, it was so detailed that you can see every member of your boats shooting arrows towards the enemy and rowing the boat, it was a ‘WOW’ moment.



Shogun 2’s campaign was a step down in terms of the map size compared to Medieval as it only covered Japan which is basically what the game about, but there were tons of new factors that makes managing city is hard work. You have to calculate every income as each season has different factors like in real life, farming is not as profitable in the winter compared in the summer and also there is the risk of crop failure during the winter. You also need to check your food supply as building castles cost food supply and you have to check if your farms can cope with the load. A newly conquered city will not be welcome to its invaders is another factor as well as the tax burden, so you really have to decide some heavy choices like if you have to grant tax exemption or send back one of your army from the front line and let them suppress the city on their own and protect it from a revolution.



One of the great feature about Shogun is the Religion factor, as city tends to revolt if they are against your religion. One of my toughest decision in the campaign was going to Christianity from Shinto Buddhism so that I can get discounts from European trades and products and at the same time makes my relationship with them a lot better. But with this decision, it alienated me with all the clans as they were following the Shinto religion, which makes it hard to conquer new city as religious revolts can easily escalate and the same time the other clans wouldn’t do business with me, hurting my income in the process. These little factors makes Shogun 2 challenging and I haven’t talked about the RTS Battle yet.


The RTS Battles are amazing, unlike Medieval,there were no siege tower or any siege things that can help you conquer a castle, and you just have to do the old fashion way which is sabotaging the gate using ninjas or just rushing the castle walls with your troop. One of the biggest change in this game is the strength of the archers, archers are weak in the battle field but using them with proper placements on castle defense, they are dangerous as hell.


Like 5 groups of 90 archers can easily make an 1000 men army route as they can easily decimate them with their range and damage. One of the memorable battle I faced was conquering Kyoto, and their 1200+ troops and 800 of those were archers, I decided to to bring 4 armies consisting of 1200 heavy infantry each and led by my 5 finest generals, the battle lasted for 40 minutes controlling more than 5000 men was tough and even tougher when I had to split them to 7 small armies so that they can attack all the sides of the castle at the same time and splitting the archer defense to each sides of the castle. In the end, I was able to overrun the archer defense of the Shogunate but lost more than 2500 men in the process. It was a hard fought battle with so many causalities on my side but Kyoto was worth it as it gave me one the best income towns in the game.



If there is a draw back with this game,it will be the AI in the RTS battles, it is still not that good compared to an actual person, but don’t get me wrong, they are still really good especially if they have the leverage. Another problem is that,it is somewhat irritating to rearrange some formation of your groups after the battle because you have to select each troops manually.





PROS:Visuals were Amazing, Campaign mechanics were greatly planned and was exciting. RTS Battles is just “WOW”





CONS: AI is still under par compared to a human, Making a formation among 5 or more troops after a battle is tricky






Rating: (out of 5 stars)






Eijan Says: If you dream of running an empire, play this game





That’s all for now





Peace Out!!