What do you like most and worst about STW?

[atpk]

Hey guys. I was wondering what you all like the most and what you hate the most about STW and why? (trying to get opinions to see if I should buy it) Thx.

What I like most? The fact that with this game you have fun http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

What I don't like most? That there are still some people that haven't bought this game! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

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Honour to Clan No Fear.

Visit my resource centre at: http://terazawa.totalwar.org

[Tenchimuyo]

I like everything except the horde!

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A great warrior rarely reveal his true skills....

[Vanya]

What I dont like the most? That I cant play this at work!

[Laertes]

For the negative side of things, you might want to check the thread "Can you suggest an improvement for STW?". The positives include a nice tactical battle engine, with decent terrain and weather and modelling of fatigue, formations, morale, et al. Incidentally, you might want to wait until the expansion pack comes out, or until reviews come out regarding that. Buying a combo pack could perhaps be more economical, and may have better chances of working well with your hardware/software depending on what bugs they fixed.

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He is justly served; It is a poison temper'd by himself.

[CaptMac]

What do I like MOST about STW?.......hmm that is a hard one http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/confused.gif
What I don't like about the game?...Guess I'm with Vanya. Too many things interfering with playing it http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

[Anjin-san]

Likes.
1. Great tactical battle engine.

2. 7 (8 with Ronin I guess) different clans to play, making diverse game play possible. It's hard for parts of the game to get old, with the different clans to play. I admit, some weeks I"ll play two or three campaigns, give it a rest for a few weeks, then pick it up again. I love this game.

Dislikes.

1.Horde problems. This isn't as pronounced if you use the port-bug to attack your enemies behind the lines. I used to use the "Grand Tour", massing an entirely offensive army to break through and drive to the heart of the enemy's interior. Thank god this isn't necessary when you can use ports.

2. Battle engine still needs improvements. Although the rout bug is better, it is still a pain to see your units decimated by a retreating enemy.

3. Diplomacy. This is, well, disgraceful. You get used to it, but it's a shame that we have to wait this long for the 1.13 patch, or whatever it will take to fix this.

4. Online campaign. I admit, there are a lot of things that could make this a pain..time to play, people dropping, etc. But what is more disappointing is that it hasn't been made available, in what, two years. I have doubts, even with the expansion and promise of a fix for this a few months after it's release, that we will ever have the multiplayer campaign implemented.

5. I've always had problems with support from the makers of the game. I still remember waiting for Klingon Academy to come out and going to the Interplay message boards. You could ALWAYS find responses from the makers, with their many posts. I'm sorry, Richie just doesn't cut it.

[Kocmoc]

i dont like , that i have to sleep some hours per day http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif


i like that i still can play the rest of day


koc

[High Voltage]

Despite the compatability problems and bugs (I own an Nvidia TNT2 and had to get unofficial drivers which shouln't be necessary), the game is one of the best, if not the best, games I've ever played! Here's some reasons...

1. Tactical gameplay is almost unmatched compared to any other game. You can have almost 2000 units on the screen at once fighting major bloody battles, leaving the battlefield littered with bodies. Unlike other RTS games, STW has so much tactical diversity. With fatigue, morale, weather, armor, unit size, etc. all affecting gameplay, there is almost an unlimited number of tactics to be used. I especially love using formations which really gives you an idea of what it was back then, and the number of units makes you feel like you're there http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif I really love the idea that units get tired, which really forces you to manage your troops effectively and use your brain, unlike starcraft or AOE which involves moving hords of units at someone. In STW, if you are outnumbered by far, you can still win using good tactics.

2. Strategic and tactical play in one game. It's almost like having two games in one. Aside from the weak economic interface (not even close to civ's complexity), it's really nice to have the turn based and real-time factors in the game. While managing your army, you have to be careful and not take Japan too fast or you will have revolts (which can be fixed if you have a large army).

3. Generals affect your units a lot. If you lose many battles with a certain general, your troops' morale will go down. If you win many then morale will go up. They play a big role in the game, and just like real life, your army may rout if the general dies in battle. It's also cool that you can use ninjas to assasinate generals, lowering the enemy's morale for a season if successful, losing a ninja if failed.

4. Wide variety of units to chose from. Even though other turn-based or rts games may offer more units, STW's are historically accurate and each one can be used effectively. Some people talk about monk rushes and yari ashiguru's sucking, but that's not really true. A monk rush can be countered using good strategy, and they do have a weakness on defense, so missle units can hammer on them.

I don't have too many complaints about the game, except for GAISHAS!!! These are too powerful! I know they can prevent stalemates, but sometimes it's fun to have a nice long game and Gaishas are like a nuke dropping on your morale. I will be very happy if the expansion has a feature to turn these off.

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- A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
- The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

[Brown Wolf]

What I like best:
The use of castles, samurai, and the Japanese option

What I like the least:
It is too graphic in some parts.

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"Failure is not an option"

[KumaRatta Yamamoto]

Hey, High Voltage said EXACTLY what i was going to say , including the bit about the "gaishas"..... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

KumaRatta Yamamoto (Emissary of the Ratta clan) www.rattaclan.homestead.com (http://www.rattaclan.homestead.com)

+ ah, the view...
- ah, EA...
- ah, brownwolf, if this game is too graphic than you probably shouldn't use such a scary name, but we've been there before...

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http://jaydeesan.homestead.com/files/images/monn_t.gif jd

[This message has been edited by JayDee Daidoji (edited 06-08-2001).]

[Ratta Yamamoto]

I love this game. These are the reasons why:
1) You can watch up to 4,000 samurai fighting for their belives in a battlefield.
2) Wide range of units to choose from. It will be even more in the expansion pack.
3) In order to win you have to consider about eveything e.g. using hill, weather, tactic and strategy etc. Even when you have less men you still can win if you think about these factors carefully.
4) Playing online means that you can meet more people and form or join a clan. There are alsom many tournaments to enter.

I have no complain about this game. IT IS THE BEST GAME EVER. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

Ratta Yamamoto
(Daimyo of Ratta Clan) www.rattaclan.homestead.com (http://www.rattaclan.homestead.com)

[This message has been edited by Ratta Yamamoto (edited 06-08-2001).]

[Anssi Hakkinen]

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/icons/icon14.gif : Pretty much everything. The tactical battles, the AI, the strategy map... It is a staggeringly good game.

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/icons/icon14.gif : The setting. I suspect this is actually a large part of STW's popularity; we haven't had serious games on Japan since the early 90's but the potential is immense.

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/icons/icon7.gif : Are you kidding? It's STW! (Really. Neither the rout bug nor the horde have ever bothered me to a significant degree. Sure, the game could always be better, but STW is already about as good as I can realistically expect. Very few games fulfill that criteria.)

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"6. Melyo: honor and glory."

[Nelson]

Real time combat with turn based strategy is perfect. With morale, fatigue, experience, leadership, terrain and weather effects Shogun is one great battle simulator, too. IMO it approaches being the ultimate wargame.

So what's not to like?

Well, as a card carrying "accurite", S:TW really could be more historically accurate. The monks are all wrong and the formations generally are far too rigid for samurai warfare. But like Anssi says about the horde and route bug, none of these issues mar the game beyond being a minor nuisance to me. This game is tops.

[Nobunaga-san]

I think this game is excellent.

It has very large battles, you can use real tatics, it has lots of samurais and it is the best PC-game i know.

Something i would like to improve is the unit graphics, maybe it is looking better for pepole with the last generation of graphic-cards.
And the diplomacy should be improved.

[Hiroshi-O'Duff]

I think I'm preaching to the choir here, but the reason I like this game is that regardless of how long you play it, there are always new challenges to it.

I've gotten more single-player play time out of it than ANY game I've ever played since Ultima IV and Wasteland in my youth. I played those games so much I thought I'd die.

A great game with some oddities, but worth every penny.

The thing I like the LEAST about the game is that they keep pushing back the fargin' release of the sequel!!!!! Baaaahstids.

Duff

[darealruler]

Likes: getting to no1 position that easily. Having a great clan with great honourable members.
Dislikes: Having people just accusing others of cheating way too easy, and its only increasing.

DARE

[Kraellin]

i think perhaps the best aspect of this game is that in multi everyone starts out exactly equal...5000 koku (or whatever the host has set). a lot of games are simple 'rush' games, who can build the most the quickest and then whump the other guy before he can do the same. so a lot of those games just become 'click' fests, who can click the fastest. and even though some folks complain about 'monk rushes', we ALL start out with the same amount of koku, so, deal with it; you've got the same koku, so there is nothing unfair or even dishonorable in a monk rush.

the biggest downside to this game is prolly the goofy morale things you sometimes see in games, including, but not exclusively, the rout bug. i've seen some units do some pretty strange things at times regarding morale. this needs to be re-worked. dont get me wrong, i really like the morale aspect of this game, it's just that sometimes things dont quite work the way i think they shld work...which of course could just mean that i need to re-think some things. still and all, though, i think the morale aspects of the game need to be looked at again more closely and tested more thoroughly.

K.