Review: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai

[News Portal]

Is the latest Shogun 2 stand-alone expansion. [app=7086]Fall of the Samurai[/app], just "Shogun 2 with guns"? Or is it much more than that? We decided that, in this case, bringing a knife to a gun fight might just be a good idea.

Read full article by Joe Glennie

[Artful-dodgeR]

4 1/2? Sold!

Actually, I was sold at the fact its a game surrounding the Meiji Restoration/modernization/industrialisation, I studied that **** for 2 years and still find modern Japanese history fascinating. Wonder if Perry plays much of a part...

Nerdgasm ahoyhoy

[spawneh]

I couldn't really find anything in this review about how the game actually played? Wasn't Shogun 2 plagued with a massive amount of bugs and bad game play mechanics (like something that made it inevitable that all factions would hate you)? Not to mention the multi player coop being nearly impossible to finish and never fixed?

Sure the game play ideas and the story sound great, but does the game actually accomplish all of these things?

Maybe I don't know as much as I thought about Shogun 2.

You say expansion, its standalone I assume?

[Artful-dodgeR]

Stand alone, correct!

[spawneh]

Stand alone, correct!

duh thanks, after looking at it again I see it mentions stand-alone in the first paragraph

[Yurtles]

There's mention of more co-op bug fixes in the patch that came out with FotS (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.p ... atch-notes). So I dunno, maybe this time they've fixed it? I'll certainly be trying it out once I get my copy in the mail anyway.

Edit: Actually no.... Searching the support forum it seems the co-op campaigns are breaking even sooner than they were in Shogun 2. Well done Creative Assembly, well done.

[InAUGral]

I love the expansion it adds plenty of new content like Rise of the samurai did but even more again. The combat is completely different now with naval battles becoming very very interesting with torpedos and ironclad ships capable of firing HE and AP at enemy ships. Also ships have abiltiies to make them drive faster or reload faster as well as there being Ramming ability on Ironclads. I got an achievement for ramming some enemy ships which made them break in half and sink.

[Bronze_D]

thing is though, the new units are very close to being broken now...

for example if you take armstrong gun artillery, add firing range, and blacksmith on top of it, the end result is an artillery unit that even without any experience can pin point snipe troops off castle battlements, or blast them as they run at full speed across the ground.

amass a few of them and the result is ridiculously powerful artillery battery capable of crippling disproportionate amount of enemy.

the artillery without experience already got accuracy somewhere like 60-65+

then add a decently levelled foreign veteran training them as you move to frontline, and the end result is an artillery that gets something like 70+ accuracy BEFORE it even see a single combat.

Needless to say i demolish pretty much anything on the ground with these sniper artillery. They are so accurate that my artillery battery wipe out or shatter entire 200 men squad with each salvo and continue doing this one by one to every squad within it's field of fire when the enemy advanced with every reload...

it was... overkill to the maximum as less than 500 men remain when they finally get into rifle range from the original 2000 men that tried to get into range. Wholesale artillery massacre.

[InAUGral]

thing is though, the new units are very close to being broken now...

for example if you take armstrong gun artillery, add firing range, and blacksmith on top of it, the end result is an artillery unit that even without any experience can pin point snipe troops off castle battlements, or blast them as they run at full speed across the ground.

amass a few of them and the result is ridiculously powerful artillery battery capable of crippling disproportionate amount of enemy.

the artillery without experience already got accuracy somewhere like 60-65+

then add a decently levelled foreign veteran training them as you move to frontline, and the end result is an artillery that gets something like 70+ accuracy BEFORE it even see a single combat.

Needless to say i demolish pretty much anything on the ground with these sniper artillery. They are so accurate that my artillery battery wipe out or shatter entire 200 men squad with each salvo and continue doing this one by one to every squad within it's field of fire when the enemy advanced with every reload...

it was... overkill to the maximum as less than 500 men remain when they finally get into rifle range from the original 2000 men that tried to get into range. Wholesale artillery massacre.

So they route too easy? There is a mod for that but im not sure if its working in FotS but I have it on and I cant say i notice such sniper artillery.

[Bronze_D]

rout???

no that's not the problem, the artillery just MASSACRE them... whole squad...

an artillery battery group with 4 guns of mine fired, ALL 4 shells landed within meters from the target squad... one salvo from that artillery group and more than half of the 200 men squad it targeted disintegrate.

i had 3 groups of them and they pulverize everything it target with each salvo...

it was RIDICULOUS.

They fire at a castle tower? 95% hit rate from maximum range.

They fire at castle battlement with men on it? 70% hit DIRECT on the battlement blasting men right off it. Castle siege was a joke while the artillery had ammo if the castle itself doesn't have gun battery, and even if it did my artillery group obliterates it in the first salvo.

[Yurtles]

So you mean in the period immediately before armies started digging trenches to hide from artillery and machineguns lots and lots of people are dying to artillery and machineguns?
Sounds broken to me too.
If it's easy to stack that artillery maybe they should make it take longer to build or make it more expensive for balance sake, but I'd be pretty unhappy if they started making the weaponry wildly inaccurate or weak because by this stage it wasn't.

[Kashchey]

I couldn't really find anything in this review about how the game actually played? Wasn't Shogun 2 plagued with a massive amount of bugs and bad game play mechanics (like something that made it inevitable that all factions would hate you)? Not to mention the multi player coop being nearly impossible to finish and never fixed?

Sure the game play ideas and the story sound great, but does the game actually accomplish all of these things?

Maybe I don't know as much as I thought about Shogun 2.

You say expansion, its standalone I assume?

There are problems with co-op, but otherwise no, Shogun 2 has very few bugs at all (compared to Empire, for example). "Bad gameplay mechanics" is obviously a lot more subjective, but your example (realm divide) I'd consider to be necessary, as it only kicks in at the point where you're likely to be the biggest clan and would otherwise steamroll over the rest of Japan. Besides, it's been changed in FotS: it cements allegiances, so that you'll end up at war with all the Imperial-aligned clans if you support the Shogunate, and vice versa. Or you can declare independence and presumably fight them all off, if you want a challenge.

[spawneh]

The thing I thought was horrible about realm divide was that even other clans you had been allied with since the beginning of the game, whom you had built very strong relations, would end up hating you.

Good to hear its not as buggy as empire. How does game balance compare though? Doesn't look good for the factions that choose not to go for the technology.

[Bronze_D]

It's not easy, but possible... katana samurai that can close the distance will maul most rifle units even those that are supposed to be decent in melee like royal marines, US marines, etc... the only problem of course is how to get into range as that's easier said than done when every single rifle units in the game have 125 range and sharpshooters with 150 range.

Worse still if they have kneeling fire and suppressive fire, both makes frontal charge on them with melee units even with heavy number extremely cost inefficient.

Rifle units are one thing, revolver cavalries another... revolver cavalries can release large volume of firepower in short burst over a few seconds that will cripple most squads.

The good news is that even the traditionalist have access to decent ranged units, the Bow kaci actually have as much range as the sharpshooters for example, and they fire very very fast, they just don't produce as much crippling salvo as the rifle units and they are also EXPENSIVE, but well placed they can kill as much unit as a good rifle units over time as long as they are not shot back in return.

And the shogunate naturally gain access to shinsengumi, probably the most versatile and powerful unit in the game, as they are armed with rifles with 125 range same with other rifle units with good rate of fire AND still capable of inflicting damage in melee comparable to that of the katana samurai unit. Expensive unit to maintain though.

The problem is not the rifle units really... you can one way or another work around it (with great difficulty, but it's possible)... the real problem is the artillery units.

As i said before, these artillery are much more accurate than the previous total war artillery units (which kinda makes sense considering the era), but they become totally broken when the artillery producing province stack firing range and blacksmith producing artillery with pin point precision, practically laser guided accuracy. Fortunately in single player the AI doesn't do it but essentially those going tech route have access to armstrong gun that with the stacking accuracy turns into monster artillery.

The other problem with traditionalist is the sea battle, it is difficult enough to fight against armored warships, but if you play pure traditionalist and does not access any of the foreign power then you also don't gain access to their foreign nation specific ironclads (the US ironclad with turret in particular) which are supremely more powerful than anything you can muster on the sea.

[Bronze_D]

So you mean in the period immediately before armies started digging trenches to hide from artillery and machineguns lots and lots of people are dying to artillery and machineguns?
Sounds broken to me too.
If it's easy to stack that artillery maybe they should make it take longer to build or make it more expensive for balance sake, but I'd be pretty unhappy if they started making the weaponry wildly inaccurate or weak because by this stage it wasn't.

Correction, artillery are not that accurate in first shot without prior knowledge of the location.

WW1 and WW2 field gun typically have to correct their fire similar to how long range artillery walk their shots using artillery observer. (still done today in modern artillery for non guided shells)

The difference being field gun can do this themselves without needing a forward observer to do it.

So they fire a shot, which usually doesn't have that much chance of actually hitting the target, then fire the second shot based on the 1st one with adjustment to walk the shot closer to the intended target and reiterate this process until either shells are expended or the target destruction confirmed or a cease fire is ordered.

In WW2 this is less important since field guns are fairly accurate by then for line of sight firing and shell velocity are faster, but distance measurement typically are still not accurate enough (we aint got laser range finder back then) to ensure a hit immediately.

The main exception of course is in a pre sighted artillery zone where the artillery are set to aim at specific location that have been pre marked and measured before hand. Naturally this is not really doable except on defense but highly effective when employed (the russian got pretty good at it in WW2).

Unfortunately we aint got that in Total War, instead these artillery units i mentioned in the post previously? They SNIPE your men from across the field... on the first shot. How accurate is accurate? Accurate enough that they can send numerous shells traveling THROUGH the battlement firing port on the castle and hitting the men stationed on it directly.

That's not artillery... that's oversized sniper gun honestly.