Total War: SHOGUN 2 Reviews

I had some good expectations going into this that I'd experience "the best Total War game ever made", and the amount of people talking up this game was quite something. So, i was a little dissapointed when I started to play and found that, really, it's actually quite limited, unstable and oftentimes buggy. The setting is one of those things that just... doesn't hit home for me. It's an incredibly small island with an extremely isolationist culture, where 99.9% of all the battles are you fighting the same units. The faction differences either boil down to basic, small buffs or renames of existing units that are just... superior but visually identical. It's hard to feel the differences some of the time, especially with factions like the Tokugawa or the Mori whose buffs are mainly in units that you'll either barely use, or not use enough to make use of their boosts. Every game devolves into feeling very, very similar, conquering the same provinces with the same units from very similar locations. The tech tree is kind of... bland? In that, almost all the units you'll want to unlock are right at the start, and everything else is just a long-winded minor buff. Hero units sound cool on paper, and they perform well and have unique feels, but they're also very limited in models and take a long, long time to actually recruit. Naval battles are still insanely slow, but now with ships that will refuse to even fire on others even when explicitly told to attack them, they'll just... sit very slightly out of range and refuse to move until you manually move them. But the thing i heard a lot about was how Shogun 2 was "the dark souls of Total War", which i can only assume was coined by someone who had never played a souls game. Speaking as someone who has, no, it's not like that - the AI will convert armies you haven't seen into better armies they physically could not have trained, and dump stacks of units at you from all sides in endless wars of their own making. If you get lucky enough to have the AI *not* curbstomp you within six turns, you may in fact have a chance. Can you beat it with enough effort, skill and luck? Yes. Is it, as a souls game is specifically designed to be, a fair fight where the mistakes you make are what lead to your death, and that you only ever lose because you, the player, did something wrong? It most certainly is not. The AI will get clear uberbuffs out of nowhere and literally ignore half of the game's rules to kick your ass. IT is not a fair fight, it is not an enjoyable fight, and it simply compounds this game's problems. Speaking of which, the game tends to crash very often on DX11, despite the game constantly trying to switch back to defaulting to it whenever it launches post crash. Having to remember to manually re-select DX9 after every single crash or else the game will probably brick itself after a few hours is tedious. The historical battles, which are likely oversaturated with enemies to make them artificially harder, essentially boil down to "Hey, what if we made fights where the player is outnumbered by technologically equal opponents by several hundred percent, and expect them to clear it?" which is asinine, in a game where units have a tendency to ignore the commands you're giving them and decide that, no, they are not going to move into cover, they want to punch one, singlular horse to death while being obliterated with musket fire. Empire was superior to this in every regard. Better setting, better scope, better difficulty, better theme and differences. Shogun 2, despite being a descended, is by no means it's superior. The game can be enjoyable at times, but the cavalicade of issues, shitty achievements and an absurd difficulty level makes this game ultimately not worth the time for me.

If we're talking about base game (no mods), easily in the top 3 Total War games to play in current year.

very awesome game just wish each faction had different types of units or at least different color schemes for units

Wow, I can't believe this game is 14 years old. I remember when I got the physical copy in highschool. Definitely one of the TWs that I come back to the most. It is a smaller and more balanced experience than most others and would rotate out as my favorite right along with Rome 2 and Empire. I do believe this is where CA started getting greedy with DLCs which sucks. There are some cool clans behind paywalls. That said, Rise of the Samurai and Fall of the Samurai are both great additions to the game (though it seems Fall is now considered a stand alone). Still plays well 14 years later and looks great, can't beat that.

Good game, cities easy to manage, lots of troop variety. Very well done. There is a time limit; you have to conquer everything on the list by a certain date or you lose.

The late game is grindy but this and three kingdoms are the two games I keep coming back to again and again.

I only own the Fall of The Samurai (FoTS) DLC campaign, so that is what I will speak to. FoTS is totally worth playing in 2025 and is still by far the best implementation of gunpowder units in a Total War title. That being said, this game is still a blast to play with only traditional units, using the map terrain to ambush and break line of sight with a modern enemy. The morale system, terrain, and unit mechanics make battles a blast no matter which strategy to choose to implement. The siege battles are also amongst the best in the series. Attacking settlements is difficult and requires an appropriate force with a thoughtful approach. Defending is amazing. You can win against insane odds defending a multi-tiered castle with only a handful of units. The naval battles are the best in the series, but there is far too many of them. The AI spams out dozens of 1-2 boat fleets and just tries endlessly to slip past your naval frontline to run from battles in your backline and bombard your provinces. Not only can repairs on high-level buildings get expensive, but unless you have a completely overwhelming force, the autoresolve will not be favorable to you even though you would take 0 damage fighting manually. The manual naval battles themselves take entirely too long, even when the outcome is a forgone conclusion. The ships start so far from each other and the AI will just wait with a broadside facing you if you are the attacker, which you literally always will. If the AI would simply consolidate their armadas, it would probably fix this issue. As it stands, this is by far the worst part of the game. If there is a mod for this that doesn't involve deleting enemy navies, someone please let me know. Diplomatically, the FoTS AI is probably the most crooked I have seen in a TW game. Your best friends and vassals will swap allegiances on a dime and backstab you. I don't hate this, as it plays into the push and pull of the Shogunate vs Imperial faction war that the game has going. If you don't want to participate and do your own thing, you can declare yourself a republic and everyone will want to kill you. Lastly, the campaign layer itself I think is mostly excellent. You get four agent types depending on what side of the conflict you are on and they all have amazing benefits in armies, in your settlements, or on the campaign map. For example, when embeded in a settlement, the Shinsengumi agent of the Shogunate converts provinces to your allegiance and cracks down on public order problems. However, when an enemy army was about to attack my settlement, I used the agent to buy off pretty much the entire army to fight for my side and beat the invader with his own forces. I felt really clever, even though it cost me an arm and a leg. Outside of the powerful agents, the campaign is the classic game of managing public order, boosting your finances, and synergizing your recruitment provinces. The tech tree is also amazing and is completely transformative to gameplay. Making the right tech choices can make or break your campaign, depending on your strategy.

Played as Oda, became Shogun, everyone betrayed me, I clapped back, unify all of Japan. Good game.

Shogun 2 is where the Total War formula reached discipline and balance. Focused, elegant, and tightly designed, it trades bloat for clarity. Every decision matters—from battlefield positioning to clan politics—and the AI is still some of the smartest in the series. The Sengoku era setting isn’t just a backdrop; it shapes everything. Honour, betrayal, restraint—this is strategy with weight behind it. If you want a Total War game that demands respect and rewards precision, Shogun 2 is still the gold standard.

This game is still the best of total war series is easy to learn the battle formation and economy and the mods make this game more funny but no one playing in multiplayer anymore(but you can find them if youlucky)