Pleasantly Surprised So Far

Based on the decline of the Total War series in general I was going to hold off on buying SG2 until the hive mind had reached a favorable consesus. However, I was bored so I took the plunge...

I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised. The eye and ear candy is top notch, of course, but I am finding that the developers finally paid attention to the details and stepped up the quality. Sure, there a couple of small annoyances (e.g. slow mouse scrolling) but overall the game is very "tight" and well thought out. It feels like a strategy game again.

The AI seems to have gotten better. So much so that I abandoned 2 campaigns on normal mode - mostly because I assumed I could steamroll the AI and did not take adequate precautions against counter attacks.

In any event, I was expecting a turd but found something that has the promise of being something special. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes in the next week or so as I get to the end game and see how well the game holds up to all of the features and nuances.

I haven't seen you around these parts in a loooong time invalidopcode. Welcome back. :bow:

A lot of us are getting pleasantly surprised by the difficulty of the game. Our steamrollers are running into reinforced concrete walls that tend to fall over onto us. We have to adjust our game play if we want to be successful. I think I've already boogered my first campaign beyond recovery, but I'm going to press on to see how long I can last and see what the AI throws at me.

It has been a long time. I have been lurking but did not play the last few TW games too much because they were buggy, boring, and not very much fun after the first few successful campaigns. Momma always said if you don't have anything good to say...

This is why I am finding Shogun2 such a refreshing game.

So I just used a monk to cause a rebellion to soften up the enemy before my main stack come down for the kill. Good stuff!