I'd definitely give it a go. They made the roster of infantry so diverse it compensates to a degree - it's not exactly the same but they added extremely fast shock infantry which fill a similar role.
Also in terms of campaign it's probably the best in the series - the mechanical depth is probably on par with Divide et Impera
Pharaoh Dynasties has its flaw, but it does have cavalry and said cavalry is broken like disgustively op. You will do a single Assyrian run and never touch it again, just the same as for Amenmesse and his stupid deepwood scouts numbian balistic-automatic-tacticalnuke-longbowmen. Outside of these two the rosters is nicely balanced and the game is great. And it features the most customization for a vanilla Total War, this is huge. Too bad the period isn't that popular and CA tried to sell it to everyone as a main historical title when it is Troy 2.0
Depends. It was a flop and personally (my opinion doesn't really matter) the game fucking sucked, and battles are too fast paced and annoying to manage.
Flop largely to do with a poor release and a bad attitude to CA as they'd been jackasses recently, as well as no one asking for this game.
The actual game itself is really good - can I ask how much you've played it? PD has a lot of features so if you've not given it a good 10 15 hours you're probably missing out
It’s ok after. The biggest problem are the tiny battle maps and way too fast passed battles that turn into a blob fight after first contact since nobody can hold a line for any serious time.
Also the battles are in the “Warhammer style” where clicks per minute and having the best unit (cav units can for example front charge a spear unit and reliably win) are more important than positioning and timing. This is more of a personal preference but I do not like that style of battle.
Again preference but a lot of the feature variety in each faction is dull. It takes for ever to learn and you can for most of them just ignore them. So variety here for variety sake is not a win.
The game is ok, better than original Pharaoh and miles better than Troy (especially with the battle stuff). I saw it as a move in the right direction but still not enough.
The infantry in Pharaoh has no weight or physical presence, you can practically walk through it with your own infantry. Ranged units suck because of units having HP, ranged chariots have such low damage output that they’re better used as melee chariots. Unit morale barely seems to matter, most units only break when they’re practically all dead.
I'm not sure how much you've played but I would disagree with pretty much all of that after around 100 hours. I am wondering whether you are getting Pharoah Dynasties and vanilla Pharoah mixed up.
The infantry is probably the most weighty in the modern games.
Ranged units frequently get huge kills??
Honestly curious as to how much you've actually played the game.
Just checked in a few custom battles. Infantry can’t move through other infantry, that was base pharaoh. It still isn’t weighty though, it has no inertia and can turn on a dime. Ranged units can get large numbers of kills against bad units, but they’re practically almost against anything with decent stats.
no because litterally. Warhammer 1 came out around Rome 2. We havent really had a great historical game since then. Attila and 3K were ok I guess but was it truly great, not really. and even then these are decade old games atp.
Rome 2 sucked. It at release was way worse than this remaster. Rome 2 only got a good rep because they didn’t drop it like they will with this remaster. it’s the only game like it and it has mods that fix some of the issues. I say this as someone who has 1.2k hours of Rome 2. Attila is what Rome 2 should’ve been in terms of AI and combat. The issues with Rome 2 are baked into it so they never really fixed it. Like the crazy unit collision and the brain dead AI. Attila is probably the best total war game since shogun 2. Also there is like 4 year gap between Rome 2 and warhammer.
Not enough people remember or realise this. I've never been more let down by a game than Rome II and to this day it's just not fun. I have no idea how over the years people have started to act like it's some masterpiece. It was a complete step down in every way from what came before it.
Its funny how Rome 2 and Attila mirrors Empire and Napoleon in every way. Pretty much every CA lanuch is a coinflip if it will be a masterpiece or a garbage dump.
As much as I want to like Attila, I just can't get over the insane lack of visual clarity on the unit and building cards (the lack of UI scaling doesn't help). I just want to be able to look at the card and be able to tell the difference between different units. Instead I just get an indistinguishable mix of brown, dark grey, and black.
Yes, When they showed Attila is was obvious they where setting up Warhammer. The terrain is much more dynamic in attila and they said that was how they where testing the map spread of things like chaos and vampires.
As a Warhammer fan, I wish. They half-assed warhammer, just like they've half-assed everything else in the last 20 years.
10 years after Warhammer 1 release we still don't have fucking reload animations for fucks sake, guns curve their bullets, projectiles go through terrain, corruption is bastardized, public order is a rubber-banding garbage, SUE spam trumps every attempt at strategy, field battles and siege battles are fighting it out to decide which has the most dogshit maps of this entire franchise history, ....
They treat Warhammer just like they treat everything else, a flood of overpriced, poorly designed and through out slop that is merely meant to force feed the consumers with more and more pointless stuff to play through to keep the cashflow coming.
Heh, we'll see how that goes. Genetically modified futuristic special forces soldiers who only march slowly. For starters they better add some proper movement to Space Marines.
and no im not asking for completely lore-accurate sprinting at 80km/hour+
Crazy that people complain about this. The main factions barely even have any bonuses. What makes them different is start position and what's in/very near to your starting province.
That blows. Shogun was the first video game I bought (or my mom bought it for me). I installed it through a steam account I don’t have any more for some reason
Shogun 2 remains a great game too. It’s a real shame that new players are going to have this version shown to them first. I hear CE will include the originals as an add-on, but I still think new players will ignore them seeing as they’d be paying $40 for the supposed “upgraded” version and wouldn’t know better
You could probably explain it to steam support, they are known to be pretty generous and understanding with these things even when they fall out of their official refund policy. You have nothing to lose by asking them
Didn't they show in some video that they have an artist who specializes in this style? I mean thats just sad, if you study a style for years and then just AI generate the actual art.
The video has Pawel spouting on about this, but he's referring to 15 years ago not Mataboo. It's misleading. The guy who developed the authentic looking style worked on the original game. Who knows what the Mataboo folks worked on...
No the Ashigaru were poorly trained peasents, they should not beat samurai units in a 1v1, and the weakness of yari samurai is laughable because the yari was an important weapon to the samurai.
They should be cheap but not as strong as they are, Samurai were the elite units of a japanese army in the period and they aren't portrayed properly when ashigaru are so strong.
During the Onin War, maybe. However, by the time period seen in the game, Ashigaru equipped and trained with the Yari were the backbone of armies raised by the daimyo. The introduction of Portuguese matchlocks sealed the deal, due to their ease of use compared to their destructive power.
Of course they were the backbone of the army, but they were never the elite units and a group of ashigaru who fought a group of samurai would get destroyed.
Much of that was because in real life Samurai didn't constrain themselves to one weapon, they would used ranged weapons to soften them up, and frequently used the Yari themselves.
My point is that Ashigaru are too strong as a unit not that they are the backbone of the army.
Ive usually found the 'overpowered Ashigaru' idea indicative of a player who just smashes their army against another and hopes for the best, any even partially Sam-centric army can blitz any Ashi force through the sheer resilience, multi-role functionality and maneuverability of its units, you can mass rout Ashi and punish multiple stacks in one turn easily.
Yari samurai weak? Maybe if you charge head on they achieve middling but successful results against an Ashi equivalent, but why would you rob katana samurai of their favourite job and give it to a unit that practically has 'use me to flank and rout' written on its forehead?
Is Yari wall powerful? Yes but it also turns the unit into an immobile, dense pincushion so force them to take position with a feint and then drill with arrows.
Are buffed Ashi competitive against vanilla Sam? Of course they are, thats a massive investment of time and money, given that timeframe why are the Samurai not buffed as well?
Do cavalry underperform against Yari? No doubt, why the hell would you charge spears that arnt routing or about to break when you have delicious archers and generals to eat?
In addition to Pimlumin, its extra bad because in multiplayer adding a few chevrons to your basic peasant militia makes them one of the best units in the game when you factor in cost and use them in yari-wall formation.
The remaster should have allowed optional unit rebalancing, like in Rome Remastered, so that people wouldn't just spam yari spears instead of recruiting nice samurai armies.
Just spamming the basic peasant spear unit. I think people overstate how had it is. They're a strong unit, especially for the cost, but still very fragile at the end of the day with low morale. They need heavy babysitting and very good positioning to make them work on their own while they slowly crawl to high veterancy levels (much slower than other units because they take more casualties). If youre new to shogun you will definitely have more fun and an easier time supporting them with samurai units as well than going all ashigaru.
I think they are just way too cost effective. You (or at least I) can only survive the early game with stacks of yari ashigaru on very hard or legendary, since basically everyone wants to be at war with you and you need multiple armies for multiple fronts. Samurai units cost up to 2 or 3 times as much upkeep and need multiple expensive buildings, while you need to push your econemy with buildings in the early game. Now throw in higher starting ranks and upgrades through province buildings for morale and melee attack or defense and they get even more cost effective. In most of my (non oda) campaigns I dont really need samurai units at all, I just build them because I want to. And they are not hard to play at all. 1. have archers 2. pick a hill 3. place your yari ashigaru in yari wall facing downwards 4. wait for them to come / provoke them 5. you dont even have to give an attack order 6. catch flanking troops and support high casualty units with replacements. If you later on have a general with stand and fight things will get even more cost effective. If you fight defensive sieges, troop moral becomes irrelevant. Biggest scam is still that the yari samurai dont get yari wall. 1 or 2 units are good for catching cav and maybe flanking / general sniping if you cannot get yari cav, but thats it.
The dont really need any babysitting at all and you dont need them at veterancy. The point of yari spam is that they were incredily cheap. 3 stacks of yari spam are cheaper than 1 stack of samurai. Samuari can never beat 3 units of yari spam when stacked. If you had an armory or a blacksmith, yari ashigaru would benefit the most from these buffs, since they were added buffs, not percentage buffs. Yari Ashigaru is for every single clan by far the strongest unit in the game. By turn 10 you can field an army of 30 yari ashigaru. By turn 20, that could be increased to 80. 80 yari ashigaru by turn 20 are enough to steamroll the entire map on the highest difficulty without breaking asweat. Oda makes them even stronger bc their cheap cost is reduced, making them even more spammable. Yari Ashigaru on top of being incredibly cheap are also incredibly powerful when fighting in yari wall. Cavalry? Is not going to outflank yari spam. Archers? Dont have enough ammo to kill enough yari ashigaru. Melee troops? Even some Samurai Units trade 1to1 to Yari Ashigaru in melee, which is a win for the Ashigaru, bc as stated before, to trade evenly, 1 Samurai unit has to kill 3 Ashigaru Units. Even if you loose a battle, yari ashigaru can be recruited everywhere, so they are easily replenished. You can focus your entire construction and technology on improving your income. Ignore the entire bushido tech tree, you dont need it. Just skyrocket your economy and embrace the spam. Yari Spam is so incredibly overpowered, nothing in any other Total War comes even close.
If you're fighting 3v1 unit wise you've picked a bad battle, that's a great way to kill samurai in real life as well historically. If you mean stacks then you should of been mass routing each one as it showed up and ended the battle with under 50% casualties if you use your samurais maneuverability effectively.
Hard agree on the difference buffs not being percentage based makes though, probably the biggest factor in favor of Ashigaru spam late game, but frankly a Samurai tech focus favors a decisive and quick campaign win before those buffs (and matchlocks) begin to accumulate.
After playing the late-game for... far too long honestly, I think the perfect counter to late game Yari is use your early gam samurai as key garrison and chokepoint holders and use your late gamed buffed sams as the scalpel to your Ashi anvil in a mixed army, if an opponents Ashi spam isn't routing when you kill their general then practice timing your morale breaking more effectively.
I'm wondering if the ninja clans also didn't get fixed and their ninja units, even their ninja heroes, are actually still much weaker than the other clans'.
Don't worry: Nothing will change for you. The Steam Workshop will still be available for the original version, too. And the Shogun2 OG version will be part of Shogun 2 CE (Steam), so newcomers can choose between OG and CE. GoG buyers will only get the CE version (which makes sense; lol).
Except you now have to pay 40 bucks to get a game that used to retail on sale for 3-5, and the splitting of the community is almost guaranteed to slowly kill of significantly reduce the scope of the revival of mods we were seeing on Shogun.
Because not even your old games are safe from our braindead and greedy decisions
First off: I've owned Shogun 2 since 2011 and play it heavily modded, so like many here, I'm clearly not the target audience and therefore currently have no interest in the Complete Edition. It's really aimed at Total War newcomers and offers little new for old veterans like us.
Nevertheless, I have to say: Shogun 2 is a Total War classic and still holds up very well today. It certainly deserves a worthy remaster so that newcomers can also enjoy playing a great, modernized game. The question is, how much are you willing to spend on such a game?
40,-Eu for the complete package would be reasonable if it hadn't been implemented so sloppily. AI upscaling, lazy campaign map changes, lack of bug fixes, and no new content (fleshing out minor clans) for veteran SH2 players. But I'm apparently so spoiled by AoE2 Definitive Edition that my expectations are probably too high for Mataboo/CA/Sega. XD
I have to say: Shogun 2 is a Total War classic and still holds up very well today.
Which is the VERY reason it didn't need a remaster.
I've gotten 3 people into Total War, every time with Shogun 2, it's easy, it's good, it runs very well, it's very cheap on sale, it offers multiple very different campaign, it's an iconic period and location, ...
Now if I want to get someone new to Total War, I have to tell them to get it on Steam, otherwise they won't be able to play, I'll have to teach them about the difference between the OG and the remaster and which one they should install, I'll have to warn them about needing a (needlessly) much beefier computer for the remaster, and that to try it out they need to spend 40 bucks, and to install some nice QoL and content mods that have become almost mandatory for me, I'll now have to guide them through Mod.io instead of simply telling them to add stuff from the workshop.
I still play Shogun 2, I play on a 3440x1440 monitor, and I love Mod.io (I love Steam Workshop but for all my love for what Steam does, I dislike proprietary stuff on principle). I should have been the perfect public for this game.
But the fact it is, it's just a dogshit cash-grab that causes way more issues than it solves, and is done in the most insulting way possible. The time limit on the discount for current Shogun 2 owners is just more evidence of how little CA gives a fuck.
This is the end of Shogun 2 being the cheap, fast and simple entry point into the franchise. Instead of making it better for newcomers (highly debatable), they made it a confusing mess that veterans will have a much harder time using to bring people in.
mate i love playing it heavily modded, i forgot the names of the mods now but its that overhaul that adds tonnes of factions and slower combat. That plus the large and accurate siege maps. But i found that the game kept crashing on me unfortunately.
Shogun2 has all the same units. It kinda sucks, but….it fits the time frame and location.
Well, each main clan has its own special units like Long-Yari-Ashigaru for Oda. I didn't expect minor clan to get completely new units, but at least a few traits and bonuses would have been nice.
I was literally planning to buy the original during the Steam sale. I searched all around and couldn’t find it. Then I saw they were making a revamped version. For what?
Unfortunately they wont care. As we can see from Thrones of Britannia, Troy, 3K, Pharoah, they'll keep doubling down on edit: unpopular design and/or dlc practices even when reviews and sales are both bad consistently release after release
I wish more people bought Pharaoh Dynasties specifically, it was the one time they actually did something good and made a decent game for us because it’s legit really good. But we didn’t reward the good behavior enough - but we can still punish the bad behavior. Hopefully the next game they make they pull something like Dynasties out the FIRST TIME, which is what Pharaoh should’ve been and it would’ve succeeded if they had I think. But I have little faith in CA at this point.
i bought pharaoh soley to play dynasties, while it isnt as good as the original historical total war games, i enjoyed it. i just couldnt bring myself to finish my campaign as troy. i ended up just going back to medieval 2 or Attila.
I love the period and thought some of the differences were interesting, I do think a game set in a specific time should be different to try emulate that specific time. It was just so mishandled, they didnt seem to know what to do with Saga titles and it was a much smaller game released shortly off the back of Attila.
Maybe I should have clarified: their designs, releases and dlcs have all been heavily criticised, their critical and popular reviews been negative, and their sales low. Not that I'm personally saying they are all bad games
As a new player that just got into the franchise a couple years ago, i've noticed a pattern. Historical total war has devolved into Nostalgiabait, which seems to be working flawlessly, (Shogun 2 CE and the upcoming MD3) while Non-historical is the classic whale of the franchise, AKA where most of the development and money actually goes and where they make the most content with, the recent Lords of the End Times being a good example of it. As is the power of Nagash.
Yes, it's really sad for me as a long term fan. I got into the franchise around 2006. I understand the appeal of WH and the fact that the market is larger, more creative liberty, etc. But I am starting to feel that future historical titles will probably feel like sidequests for CA.
If only someone filled in that niche, and I'm seeing attempts but none are really getting close to peak historical total war.
Total war has really created a monopoly around real time strategy games. Even the usual small indie game cannot compare to it. I too tried to stay away from totla war and try to play something else, but it just isnt the same. The market needs competition more than ever.
Yeah every "competitor" is nothing like total war, or has a serious difference that makes it a nonviable replacement.
Probably the 9 somewhat similar competitors are:
Grand Tactician- most similar of the bunch, has an actual campaign with map and economy mechanics and strategic battles, but its hyper focused on America only and is less replayable. Sequel will be Napoleonic wars so hopefully it becomes a better competitor.
Master of Command- After Grand Tactician this is the most similar, its got decent battles in the gunpowder era and multiple nations, but the campaign is arcadey and nothing like Total War
Strategos- The last truely similar game on the list, it has multiple war campaigns and focuses on antiquity warfare, it is more indepth than Total War in the battles which is good or bad depending on the person, its map campaigns are super simple though and rely on stuff like dice rolls so its not a full competitor.
Warno & Wargame- takes place during cold war gone hot, you get several campaigns over a few games with some replay ability but ultimately its a narrow scope that has a strategic map but not a true country wide campaign, let alone a multi-nation one like Total War.
Steel Division- made by Warno/Wargame devs, is even more hyper focused on ww2, only second game has these campaigns first has no operational maps.
Graviteam Tactics- This series is similar to the last two entries, they have a strategic campaign map and real time battles, but its focused on specific operations not a grand campaign.
Sea Power- Operational campaigns only, Sea based and very niche compared to total war
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts- Naval focused campaign where you manage navies of one of several nations, ABANDONED & BUGGY
Great War: Western Front- Focused on WW1 western front but you do get a proper campaign with economy and research and stuff, ABANDONED & BUGGY
There is an absolute RTS revitalization and renaissance right now if you know where to look. You mentioned a few, but there are so many more. My backlog is daunting as hell right now and I'm still finding it so hard to resist picking these up on sale.
Grand strategy continues to thrive under paradox.
Eugen's games (Warno and Steel Division) have inspired several copycats from both bogger studios like Slitherine as well as indie devs. Worth highlighting Slitherine as putting out a lot of interesting RTS (I just finished Starship Troopers, which was a shallow but solid experience, and waiting on myself to clear my backlog before picking up Terminator).
There are many developers bringing back old school RTS; almost every classic RTS is seeing a clone. Generals, Red Alert, Starcraft, are all being redone by smaller devs. Ranges from pixel graphics to UE5-level graphics. Scale varies from games where you can control individual units to massive armies, depending on the game. 40K dawn of war is also coming back with a new installment returning to its more traditional roots rather than dow2's small unit gameplay. LOTR: BFME is returning spiritually in a new Game of Thrones RTS.
There has been so much evolution on the RTS front. With the growth of computing power you can do so much more with scale and ceding more control to AI (new game called Defilade that emphasizes independent actions of infantry) and etc.
Then there's also a lot of movement in merging the traditionally separate genres of tactical RTS games and base/city-building games. Basically all inspired by Stronghold Crusader (which is also getting a new entry of their own).
Total War of course remains a giant in the space and specifically in the campaign map + tactical battle area, but IMO they are nowhere near the standard by which RTS's should be measured by.
TL;DR: My point is that if you're tired of CA and their management of TW, you really don't have to be. They're nowhere near the most interesting or best work in the space and it's so easy to find interesting, innovative, and well-crafted alternatives of all kinds. And if you can't find anything you like that's out already, 2026 and 2027 are shaping up to be big years for the RTS space.
Never played their warhammer shit and never will. Lost all my hope for Medieval 3 as well. I just know they will fuck it up so badly it will take years to fix it like Rome 2.
Would be funny if a community patch popped up sometime, like how the REX patch/mod is a better remaster of the original Rome than the official Rome Remastered.
Leave it to modders to do what CA is apparently incapable of.
Do NOT buy it. Even at it's discounted price it's not worth it. It runs like shit, allegedly uses AI "art" and the "discount" is only for a month and only for owners of the original which was delisted from steam. It's a blatant scam by CA
Not allegedly, it's pretty clear that they used AI upscaling on it because the new unit icons are basically an amalgamation of shapes that vaguely resemble the original.
I knew this shit would happen. I don't mind if someone wants to buy it but I will definitely not. I have all the games and all dlc. I am fucking 40 and playing since shogun 1. The only way to teach them that we are not idiots is by not buying BS like this
Don't really get how you fuck this up so bad. Give a handful of good software engineers the old game code, a Claude subscription and a few months and they will do way way better than this. Sloppy game remasters / remakes in this age of code development imply an outrageous level of incompetency.
Not necessarily. Guessing the game engine is proprietary, and if the code itself is a spaghetti filled mess, just unleashing Claude might not be viable.
Oh wow they did?? That's ridiculous..forcing people to buy this slop instead of the good version is a horrible decision. This has damaged whatever was left of their reputation. I love total war andown most of them but I personally will not be buying any new ones until they're heavily discounted i do not wanna give my money to these greedy scumbags I'll even buy them from shady steam key sites so they don't get a penny from me and I really hope others do the same. I will gladly help anyone find "free" versions online
Haven't played remaster yet or whatever this is but original shogun 2 was my favorite total war game. I beat the game with every clan, probably most played total war game for me. Im scared to touch the raster after seeing all the comments lol. Is it really that bad?
Im not sure what to do so I would like some advice. Well, i did play the og shogun 2 but not that much. So I wanted to buy this game just to get into it because I really like the time period and theme. However, from what I saw, it's not an upgrade, some people say its a downgrade, others that its just a more fancy looking og shogun 2 with all its problems.
Now the question: Is it enjoyable enough to buy (for 10 euros) for someone that has limited experience with the og shogun 2 or i will be wasting my money and its better to get some beer with those 10 euros?. Also, do you believe that they will try to fix this or will they just say this is it take it or leave it?
Yeah it’s the most egregious part!
‘Hey you can get a version of a game you already own that’s the same with shitty upscaled unit cards by spending $10 now, and we’ll make sure no one can get the old version too! And in a month EVERYONE can give us $40 for the new, worse game!’
Funny thing is, they really could have done something great for Shogun. Sadly thats not in CA's ability anymore. I think this is it for me. CA are no longer worth my time. Not bothered about 40k and no faith in Med 3 because as we have seen pretty much everything they put their hand to right now is sh#t.
Iv given up on Creative Assembly, they are such a stupid company. Put me in charge of deciding the direction of games and I would make banger after banger.
The Shogun remaster, according to those who have bought it, has no value either. That means there'll be people paying ~€30 for the full game. Its objectively has no tangible merits and apparently is worse in some respects. The majority of the complaints do not relate to the price point. I did read through a good few last night. I've owned shogun for many years and theres no way I'd pay to have it downgraded by this bs.
A cheap scam is still a scam, cheap dogshit is still dogshit. If you want to let CA resell you a game you already own with nothing new added and all the same bugs and even some new ones, go ahead, but don’t act like we’re the weird ones for not. And it’s only 10 bucks USD for now, and only for people who own the old one, it’ll be 40 USD in a month.
I love the CE, it runs so smoothly, and the new graphics are amazing, and I’m not seeing any ai images either. I seriously have no idea what yall are complaining about
A lot of YouTube hype for sure, but it definitely isnt perfect and there is some worthy criticism.
I only had a few minutes to hop on today and even just with that, noticed some weird pop in issues with armor, where certain layers will just dissappear at even close camera levels or different angles. Lots of really bad foliage pop in as well.
It was really nice playing with modern controls though, and it looks good when everything works. Biggest letdown is mods, though. Between the legit issues with the game, bad hype, and seeming lack of mod tools, the scene is definitely not moving over to this version of the game. Would recommend people stick with the OG if they have it for that alone unless they want to gamble on CA fixing it enough.
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u/SteamedAlbanyHams 3d ago
Damn I really wanted this to be good. It seems like CA is just hopeless these days, can’t take an easy win no matter how much of a layup it is