I know it's an old one... but at the time my PC wasn't good enough for it. I played a lot of the original Total War: Shogun, so I'm not going to miss this one. Sengoku Jidai, here we go!
Alright, so the basics are pretty clear to anybody who ever played any Total War games. The graphics are still good, although the cinematics are showing their age. There's a bunch of characters, each with their own skill tree. Same for the generals. It took a while to understand everything. Characters still die on their first mission, so after a while I just stopped using them for anything other than scouting/their basic task such as inspire an army or town.
The usual family tree stuff going on. Beware of taking in new generals or adopting them, as the others might not be happy with your expanding retinue.
Speeches are included and the audio is actually Japanese.
The text got samey quick, but there were a couple of gems hidden in there.
Love the context.
As in previous games, once you become too powerful, everybody unites against you.
Besides controlling a given number of provinces, you must also take Kyoto, the capital.
After all conditions satisfied, here's the ending.
Alright, so how did the campaign feel? The beginning was fine and fun, but I quickly grew tired of the samey battles. There are no unique units. Just spam katana samurai and not too many ashigaru, as they are easily defeated. Then I just gathered large armies and autoresolved battles, except if that resulted in catastrophic loss, in which case I played it manually, usually with great success.
I played Clan Date as they begin in the far right corner, so at least in the beginning I wasn't threatened on all sides.
I didn't bother at all with ships. However, when all clans declared war, the far off ones frequently sent invasion forces by ships. Keep some armies in the backfield to clear out the invaders.
Finally, with all the warring and finances going towards troops, I barely got to advance in technology. Never enough money for buildings.
Honorable mention: Rise of the Samurai
Head back to the 1290s when the Shogunate was actually founded. Here I discovered the best way to play pretty quickly: spam samurai.
No, really, they are the best. Small units mean you can concentrate forces. And they can all shoot, fight, and are armored. Levy forces don't stand a chance, you can beat 2x your numbers, even 3x if played right. Don't even bother with mounted samurai.
Invasion forces by boat and stuff might still happen, but my all-samurai forces quickly achieved victory.
Honorable mention: Fall of the Samurai
So you helped build the Shogunate? Now, let's demolish it. You can play on the Shogun's side too, but that's no fun. I mean it probably is, as those clans are closer to the required victory provinces, but whatever. Not what really happened.
Last Samurai vibes all over. Command cannons, rifles, line infantry, or just stick to yari and bow cavalry.
Ships are a lot more important, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out naval battles. Just auto-resolve and hope you have better forces. But keep ships around to always provide bombardment for your land battles. Loved it!
I decided to go with the times and played modern units. It quickly became Empire: Total War where the best strategy is to field lots of line infantry, a couple of cannons (Parrot guns are OP) and any number of generals as heavy cavalry. I loved blasting the enemies apart from a distance on the battle map. Later I just built up my forces and autoresolved combat.
Finally: victory!
This 3rd campaign was the hardest to complete, it took several tries, including some where I almost made it to the end, but failed either the time limit or suffered a crushing defeat of my main army late in the game.
Generally I was wrong to assume that all the Imperial aligned clans would stick together. They war with each other frequently, and you should too, in the beginning. At least the provinces don't have to be converted from Shogunate loyalty. Then, as soon as you have several provinces, keep the imperials happy and peaceful and go attack shogun-allied clans. Keep this up and don't mess with diplomacy too much. I just didn't engage shogunate clans at all, because I'd have to attack them at some point, greatly reducing my daimyo's honor. That affected all foreign relations as well as town happiness. By being honorable and dependable, imperials will start offering first trade, then military alliance. Conquer more provinces and be recognized by the Emperor himself. By the time you get to the final stage and are declared Imperial Vanguard, you should already be allied with all the imperials, because then all the shogunate will declare war on you.
In my final successful playthrough, I played as Choshu. Progressing eastwards, I ran into a wall of imperial clans. Instead of declaring war, I allied myself with them, and transported my army across by ship. This made my backfield secure and I could happily spread the good word. I was lucky that all my allies kept the two shogunate clans remaining on the west side of japan busy - including the Tosa who switched allegiance at the last moment. I also maintained two strong fleets on both the north and south side, stopping any enemy harassing fleets or invasion forces at sea.
With the Boshin War won, all content of Shogun 2 is complete.
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