So good Shogun? (Shogun - Total War (PC))

Member Name: Scumbag1

Product:	Shogun - Total War (PC)
Date:	29/08/01 (153 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great graphics, epic battles, strategy interface is easy to understand

Disadvantages: May be a bit simplistic for strategy nuts

Shogun: Total War (hereafter referred to as STW) is set during the period of Japanese history known as 'The age of the country at war' - roughly the 16th century. It's split into two sections - the turn based strategy map (although all moves are resolved simultaneously) and the real-time battles.

It's in the latter of these that most people will have heard of STW. You can command an army of up to 16 units on screen at any one time, and each unit can have up to 120 in them... so 16x120= 1920 per side, almost 4000 men meeting on the field of battle at once! Of course, most battles, particularly your early ones, will involve much less per side (typically 200 - 600). This makes the battles easier to micro-manage, and can be a positive advantage when you play online, as your opponent may struggle to organise his forces in time to receive your samuri charge.

The 3D engine used is great, with rivers, farms, hills, cliffs and forests all adding to the atmosphere. They're not just for show either, as a wise commander will make use of hills to dominate the enemy, forests to lay ambushes for cavalry and bridges to block advances. Your men react 'realistically' with poorly trained and equipped peasant spearmen wavering under arrow-fire, while your fanatical Buddhist warrior monks ignore fearsome casualties to beat seven bells out of the enemy. Even the mighty heavy cavalry can be brought to ground by well ordered spearmen, working like the Scots in 'Braveheart'.

Although difficult to get to grips with at first, the control interface allows you to perform manoeuvres of astonishing complexity after a little practice. There's nothing quite like seeing your vulnerable archers withdraw from a dangerous cavalry charge, then watching as your samuri spearmen emerge from a forest on the flank and crash into the helpless horses.

The other part of the game, the strategy map, looks and plays very much like 'Ris
k'. Armies can be massed in seperate provinces before being moved to attack or deter invaders. This means you can change the composition of your forces in a region relatively easily and counter any likely threats.

It isn't just for moving armies around either - you also manage your economy, propose alliances with other Daimyo ('Warlords'), arrange spying and assassinations, set the tax rate and build and upgrade your forces. You can be a Japanese Napoleon on the battlefield, but if your forces are poorly trained and equipped then you'll lose. I've heard that STW has a rather weak 'tech tree' (what you have to develop to build better forces), but as someone who normally runs a mile from games like Civ and C & C I'm quite pleased with this.

STW also has a large online following too, so if you're after custom battles, patches and general advice you'll be well catered for. There's also an expansion pack, 'The Mongol Invasion', and the 'Warlord edition' which has both STW and TMI in one pack. So there's plenty to keep you going when you finish the original.

STW was hailed as one of the games of the year in 2000, and rightly so. It redefines the strategy genre, making it more accessible to FPS players like myself, while still retaining the essential elements that'll keep the regular strategy crowd happy. Besides, samuri are just cool, aren't they?

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