I've enjoyed Shogun a great deal, but I am nevertheless filled with a kind of longing for Empire's silly, all-encompassing vision. While flawed, Empire was at least braving new ground, and its scope was titanic. Sadly that means it is also far less interesting than Empire as an experience. Because of the tighter focus on the single island of Japan, and the more comprehensible mechanics of spears, swords, horses, archers and not too much in the way of gunpowder-based conflict, the game is better encapsulated, and a purer Total War experience. Shogun 2 is a step back, and everything has benefited. Empire was arguably a step too far, and consequently everything suffered. The issue with this wide-open, sandbox approach to strategy was that when it gets too big, then things start to become messy. They are a big “What If” that allows you to play with war in unlikely situations, and see what might happen if Denmark had been a ruthlessly aggressive power throughout the Middle Ages.
While the Total War games take history as their inspiration, they are a counter-factual, and an abstract take on the processes of history.
They are interesting because they represent a kind of exploratory simulation: what might it be like to govern in era x, and what can you do with a limited set of military, economic and diplomatic tools. Nor are they interesting because they represent any kind of state of the art in technology. They can't be said to be interesting because they are perfectly balanced, or cleverly structured in terms of progress over time. The Total War games are not interesting because they are tightly-honed, rule-governed systems, as many RTS games aim to be. This has set the template for the series and, despite colossal movement in all kinds of directions, this structure remains largely the same in 2011. The turn-based campaign map saw you moving armies about between provinces, in a mild Risk type game of unit-production and army-positioning, while the battles between armies could be fought in real-time on a 3D map. 2000's Shogun was what started it: a two tier strategy game set in ancient Japan. Actually, the beginning of Total War will probably suffice. So then: how do I get busy with that shogunate? That should, all being well, arrive with the game's launch on the 15th. While Sega did provide a multi-player test for press and other interested parties, I don't really see the point of talking about it until there's a live service. What I haven't done is play any of the multi-player. For the past week I've been playing the single-player campaign, and I've written up my thoughts on this below.
Shogun 2 is set to be released on the 15th of March.
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