Petty Gripes and Complaints: A QQ Review

[Etimos]

Ok, maybe not as bad as all that, but I tend to review chiefly by criticism, and grant praise by omission, so if I DONT mention something, it's probably good. That said, I will make particular mention of things I found particularly good.

Well, I bought Shogun 2 pretty much the first day I could get it, about two days after it came out, installed, played for an hour, visited with my friend for a few days, then spent the next two or three days beating the crap out of it, and for the most part, it was good.

The worst and most disappointing item on the board, I'm afraid, is also an instrumental and fundamental feature without which the game would lack all realism; namely, lack of unit variety. I fully realize that this cannot be helped, because this is feudal japan, and pretty much everyone in feudal japan was using the same types of infantry and cavalry, but it's still a negative feature from a gameplay perspective, because it restricts replayability. Once you get past individual faction bonuses, which are usually fairly miniscule anyway, you realize that every faction is functionally the same, so once you win the game as, say, Chokosabe, you've won the game as everyone, and playing it again would only allow you to play exactly the same game from a different starting location. Your army will still consist of a few bowmen, a few yari or naginata infantry, a few cavalry, and a whole bunch of melee infantry of some sort, probably katana. Me? My late game army was mostly Naginata Samurai.

So the Chokosabe have superior bows. Wonderful. Does this mean my army will contain more bowmen, or I will rely on my bowmen more? Not particularly, no. The faction advantage isnt so enormous that it actually makes that big of a difference, it's just a slight buff.

I, for example, played as the Date, because they appealed to me the most with their No-Dachi swordsmen and Charge Bonus, and I will admit, it was fun, but I found the No-Dachi bonus to be less than helpful because No-Dachi samurai have almost no armor, and die very quickly to archers, which the AI spams reliably regardless of faction. In the end, in late game fights, my armies consisted chiefly of Naginata Samurai, which offered the best balance of melee, anti-cavalry, and armor, for exactly the same price as katana or no-dachi samurai. Having captured a territory with a weaponsmith, I simply upgraded my castle and manufactured my samurai there, and my Naginata Samurai had the same attack values as katana samurai, but with the added benefit of reliable armor and an anti-cavalry bonus. With this army, I was basically unstoppable, and the fact that the Date have a No-Dachi bonus became quite irrelevant, since it just wasn't worth it for me to build them. They die too easily to justify the slight attack bonus and lack of anti-cav versatility.

Next, then, was the AI. Simply put, the siege AI in this game is still broken. The open-field battle AI has recovered from its Functionally Retarded status in Napoleon, and now will intelligently take the high ground and use cover, but you cant tell me that CA just never thought to test the AI in a castle. The AI will garrison bowmen at a castle wall, but that's it. They are completely unable to intelligently attack or defend, and more often than not, castle defenders and attackers can both be wiped out handily by archers with almost no assistance. It's bad enough that it's difficult to even think of constructive criticism on the matter. The siege AI is simply broken, and it would be quicker to mention the things the programmers did correctly than to address the problems, frankly.

The campaign is quite interesting and has many unique and fun features. I loved the Shogun Favor bar and Daimyo Honor system, auto-replenishment, and so many other features, but most of all, I love the AI's negotiation upgrades! The AI actually negotiates intelligently, and makes relatively balanced proposals! They will accept reasonable deals, make alliances, accept peace terms, etc, with some rhyme and reason, whereas in previous games, the AI was prone to making ridiculously one-sided proposals that only an idiot would accept. Being able to offer a trade agreement with the Kitakabe, and only need to sweeten the deal with 400 gold instead of 6000 or something equally ridiculous, as would have been the case in Medieval 2 or Empire, is a gorgeous change!

That said, the campaign AI has absolutely no sense of tactics. The AI must resolve everything with auto-resolve, because there's no way they actually win or lose most of their fights on the battlefield. I once held a Castle territory not far from Kyoto, where the Imagawa and Hojo repeatedly attacked me with stacks consisting of three cavalry, two yari ashigaru, one bow ashigaru, and a general, versus my two bow ashigaru plus the castle's spawned defenders. If i had auto-resolved I would have lost, but that's my next gripe, so moving along. Fighting on the battlefield, I won easily, even bearing in mind the AI's previously mentioned siege handicap (from being severely broken as all hell). Turn after turn after turn the AI sent armies that couldnt possibly take that castle, and this is seen all over the map. Territories change hands with alarming frequency, and the notion of all out war doesnt seem to extend to defense. More often than not, the AI leave their territories completely ungarrisoned, and often completely un-upgraded, consisting of little more than a sea of forts and perhaps one fortress or castle.

Now for Auto-Resolve. This is both one of the best and WORST changes to the total war franchise. For small-scale battles, I love the number-crunching system they use that basically just uses the favor bar instead of trying to simulate the entire battle. On the other hand, the factors that tip the favor bar are rather unrefined. Take the above siege scenario, for example. In what world do three cavalry, two yari ashigaru, a bow ashigaru, and a general heavily outmatch three bow ashigaru, two yari ashigaru, two retainer samurai, one yari samurai, and one onna bushi? Because according to auto-resolve, my army would lose that fight every single time. Auto-resolve has absolutely no method for dealing with a siege bonus, or intelligently comparing unit composition. It simply read that I had several bow units, and the enemy had several cavalry units, and cavalry are the scissors to bow's paper, therefor the enemy won the battle.

Finally, there's the victory condition. This irked me the most, because it came out of nowhere. Take Kyoto, hold it for four years, become shogun, the game told me. That's what the advisor said I had to do. SO I conquered a third of the island, the entire eastern half of Japan, from the date starting position all the way to Kyoto. I sent my Naginata samurai to attack, and I took kyoto after a hard three-way battle. I garrisoned Kyoto and held the city for four turns, and was crowned Shogun! YAY!

Only not yay. Untold to me, the act of becoming the new shogun is only half of the victory. The very instant I became shogun, EVERY SINGLE REMAINING FACTION declared war on me (except my ally in the west, who thankfully had 12 territories and was nearly as strong as me, I having had 14). This was not mentioned to me in any significant way prior to becoming Shogun. The lady with the makeup didnt say "Take Kyoto, Become Shogun, then prepare to have all your trade connections severed and wage total war against every remaining faction in the game." She said Take Kyoto. Becoming Shogun was supposed to be the end of it! I did my part, damn it. I fought my way to Kyoto, I took it, I held it for four turns, I became Shogun, so wtf is this? BOW DOWN AT MY SANDALED SHINTOIST FEET YOU IGNORANT PEONS! I AM YOUR DAMNED SHOGUN!

So now, out of nowhere, not only am I at war with EVERYBODY, but because my trade relations are all severed, I can no longer afford my current army, let alone the army I'd need to defend myself against twelve other factions.

Not that that stopped me, of course, but now that I've won the game, I'm faced with a new problem; I dont really feel like playing it again.

Yes, I could play again as someone other than the Date. I've tried starting new campaigns as the Oda, the Uesagi, the Hattori, etc. but what's the damn point? Once you get past the fact that the Oda have superior Ashigaru I'll barely use once I have access to superior samurai, the Uesagi have superior warrior monks who are ALMOST as good as normal samurai but have almost no armor and die like an army of hemophiliacs with osteoporosis, and the Hattori pay an extra 50 gold per turn for every single superior unit they recruit, for the dubious honor of having access to marginally superior Kisho ninja whose tactical usefulness on the battlefield is DEBATABLE at best, what you have left is the exact same campaign from a different starting location.

That's my another gripe right there, too; the balance of special units. Kisho Ninja. Seem pretty awesome on paper, dont they? Excellent attack values, charge, morale, they throw grenades, sneaky sneaky, but there's only 45 of them, and they have almost no armor! In paper that might work, but in practice that means I'm paying 250 per turn for a glorified grenade-troop who functionally cant hide from bugger all, cant sneak from beans, and can only defeat Yari Ashigaru in a 1v1 fight if they throw their grenades at them first! I've tried all kinds of applications for Kisho ninja, and they've been useless for every single one. I've tried using them to stealth-cap castle gates and towers. I've tried sneaking up and flank-ambushing in the field. I've tried hiding them in the trees to ambush flankers. They are seen long before they get into battle range, they are always outnumbered by everybody, and they 'fire' too slowly, and can only fire two volleys before their ammunition is exhausted. For the money, I find Fire Throwers to be far more effective, far cheaper, and far more reliable. I could say the very same thing about Warrior Monks. Their attack and morale values may be higher, but they have almost no armor. What's the use of a high-attack, high-morale warrior who dies if you glare at him angrily?

Now I wont even bother griping at you about the multiplayer, because to be honest, I havent played any multiplayer yet. Not because I dont want to, or havent tried, mind you, but because the interface is COMPLETELY IMPENETRABLE! I swear, I try it once a day. I log on, I set up my armies, I pick an arena, I set up my options, I click search for partner, or I try to find one, and nothing works. Today, for the first time, the game-finder actually FOUND me an opponent, and then froze! It said Opponent Found, Arranging Battle...... for ten minutes, freezing the entire menu, so that I couldnt even cancel the search, and finally I was forced to Ctrl Alt Del and end the program!

Blizzard did it with Diablo fifteen years ago, what the hell is CA's problem?


In summary, glimpses of awesomeness but severely limited by entirely avoidable designer errors. Bad AI, broken features, poor special unit balance, and all the other telltale signs of another CA production rushed to release before it could even pull its pants up.

Maybe if they'd play-tested and debugged the game a bit more, and fixed the AI so that it could actually beat a chicken at tic-tac-toe, this would have been a really, really good game, but as it is, Shogun 2 is average at best, and makes me feel like I paid fifty bucks to be a beta-tester.

Still, at least it's not Napoleon, the Expansion Pack that thought it was a Sequel.

[Ecka65]

I enjoyed your review. However, I must warn you: Every critique of the game I've read here has ended up getting blasted by the fanboy brigade (read zero objectivity). Your best hope is that you didn't actually call it all out boring. That one seems to bring them in quicker than burly attracts sharks!

Personally, I enjoy the game. I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Empire or Napoleon (that'll cause consternation and knashing of teeth amongst the above mentioned cadre), but I enjoy it nonetheless. Not perfect, but I'm yet to play an enjoyable game that was.

[derf]

Fantastic review.