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For the lucky ones who are preloading (just started on mine, at a friends house), it's time to post your first impressions once you get your hands on the game. No need for reviews, just short impressions on how you found the game.
Preloading...preloading...
EDIT: For those who are still waiting, if you want to read a S2TW-inspired short story to spend your time while Steam downloads, click on my sig. :book:
*shameless advertising over*
Yup, got my preload conflicting with my kids watching streaming Netflix. Children! Sit in the dark and stare at the walls! Daddy's game needs to download!
-edit-
Preload completed. Children may resume watching Yo Gabba Gabba or whatever mindrot they like.
-edit of the edit-
Things to do while waiting for unlock: Drivers! Make sure all of your drivers are minty fresh before you try to run the game!
first impressions....."no"...you cant have it till 15th :O(
And so the fight begins! Preload almost finished, the waiting time is now over, time to become Shogun!
Not in the USA, apparently, or at least not just yet.
nice shiney box instaling right now :)
ps: steam is one f... up thingy soo u might have to delete all local shogun content and then try install game from cd otherwise it will try and download even while your cd rom sitting in the comp lol
Lots of people are experiencing problems, being stuck at 74% on the Steam encryption unlock.
What? No updates yet - are all you lucky European residents too busy gaming to post up a simple "It Rocks!" summary! ;)
I jest of course, but here in the US Steam is insisting we have another 10 hours to go before the unlock lands. Arrrggghhh.
Steam doesn't unlock games until like 10 am EST. There's still 9 hours before Shogun 2 unlocks on steam, looking at the Store page.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
For all those who love to stay up and play the new releases it must be torture! For me? I have a final tomorrow! :laugh4: No shogun for me until much later.
Amazon for whatever reason is overnighting it to me... They could have sent it out earlier. :\
UPS says my game arrived in Baltimore about half an hour ago. That's only an hour from where I live... Hopefully class tomorrow will keep me occupied until it arrives. :stare:
11 hrs 10 mins to go....someone is gona die between now and then......
i'll be going out tomorrow after a nice night of sleep and buy the game ^_^ no rush
Installing the game with outplay on is FAIL! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by UglyJun
if you have the demo on your account, you go on the DVD and start it manually. This way it wont download from steam and install from the DVD instead.
Mine is being delivered today, but first I must give my employer 8 hours of my precious time. Hopefully you boys will have it all figured out by then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Last night 40 people was online, today in the morning 10.
The game seems to be stable while playing 1v1 at least. A number i got is, 24 games played and 1 crash. Thats not perfect, but its good so far.
This evening we will see how big the impact really is, just 40 in the first night isnt much. I did expect more.
If the numbers dont go really high, than we will see some heavy pacing since you will play player with higher lvls and more unlocks for sure.
It might get very disappointing even in the start, if we dont get a big amount of player online.
We will most likely see a lot more as last night most players didn't have it installed yet and I have a feeling most will play a SP campaign to get acquainted with the game before trying MP.
Sure, we will see more, but its already an indicator. We could see it with many other games, where the people did camp the shop, went home, installed the game and went online the same night. So, 40 is a pretty low number, especially after the declaration of "MP-focus".Quote:
Originally Posted by AggonyDuck
What peaks we will see?
Managed to play a few turns this morning. Runs smooth on my Core2Duo machine, so apparently two cores are enough to make it happy. Only real gripe so far: hard to see the range of your armies. It's all shaded and strange, and I have a hard time telling when my units will run out of movement in a turn. Maybe I just need to get used to the new graphics or something like that ...
gah! my disk hasn't arrived in the work post today.
Disk? Post? How... quaint. :wink:
A few turns in.
So far: quite impressed.
* The game as a 'mood piece' is absolutely fantastic, great art and audio - it really feels like a coherent whole. Much more so than any other of the TW series since the original shogun.
* AI seems competent so far (on hard), both in campaign and battle. Quickly exploits opportunities such as unprotected archers or empty castles. Hasnt done anything noticably stupid yet.
* Pretty responsive. Seems less of a machine killer than ETW was (although this may be partly due to it not letting me use AA).
* Really liking the province upgrade paths, and the general/daimyo skill trees etc.
A few annoyances:
* Enormous load times! Just been playing medieval 2, and in comparison i keep thinking S2 has crashed. In reality it's probably similar to ETW, but even so, it's a pretty long wait.
* Mouse scrolling on the campaign map feels very... clunky and unresponsive. There's a significant delay between your mouse hitting the edge of the screen and it starting to scroll, that wasnt there in any previous TW games. Can't initiate mouse scrolling where there's a UI element at the edge of the screen, i.e. most of the way along the bottom - *very* annoying.
* Cant zoom out nearly far enough (IMO) on the campaign map. Can barely see more than 1 province at a time, not ideal for grand strategic planning.
* Dont like the mist effect that occurs when you zoom out.
* Anti-aliasing disabled? Uh?
After about an hour of gameplay, I quite like it. Easily the most beautiful game I've ever played. My laptop can run it pretty well, as long as things aren't on the highest settings, and so far the campaign seems fine. My only gripe is that the battles go far too fast, and this is even coming from a guy whose introduction to the series was Rome. My archers are lucky if they can get three volleys off before I have to send them scurrying behind the lines.
All in all though, looking forward to my GPA steadily dropping over the rest of the semester as I keep diving into the game. :yes:
well off to a good start when i went to pickup my game today. the fire alarm was going off at the shopping center so i cudnt get in and pickup my game!!!! the gaming gods were hating me this morning :P got it eventaully tho and really enjoying it :D
Played a little bit in my Date campaign, really liking it so far. on hard difficulty i smashed the rebels and took a province from my nearbye enemies. the battle AI does seem improved. i tried to lure the rebel general into charging my yari spears in spearwall but at teh last minute they veered off and smashed my other unit of yari in the back :S my suprieror swordsmen won the day tho.
i do feel the battle was over quickly but it was quite a mismatch with rebel yari vs katana samurai. the second battle i fought was a seige and again pitted yari vs katana, but the unit of retainer samurai put up quite a fight despite being severly outnumbered.
im enjoying the campaign i like the fact that u have a limited number of buildings per town. this makes u choose wether to have towns be troop builders, or econimic/agent builders. similar to empire but better design.
really pleased so far!
My first impression? That it's rather frustrating to go through a quite long installation only to be told that Steam is updating the game I just installed -- and taking it's sweet time doing it.
It took me forever to get my copy as well. But here's my initial impressions.
I was very unimpressed with the AI in smaller battles (my first 3 or so were fought with a few units of Yari Ashigaru, an archer, and a cavalry unit on each side. During all three battles I managed to lure their general from behind his lines with my flanking cavalry and as soon as he started charging I beat a hasty retreat behind my lines where I was able to swamp him with spearmen before he could get away. Suicidal generals appear to be back.
A few hours later I was quite impressed with a large battle in a mostly forested area where the AI managed to pull some stealthy attacks to weak points in my line. I managed to drive them off but just barely and my archers were a little worse for the wear.
Multiplayer was fun though. I managed to get a few games in before real life took me away from my bliss. So far everyone seems quite friendly and it looks like this will be quite an enjoyable experience for at least several months to come!
As for the campaign itself, once I installed it on my desktop (my laptop's graphics card is awful) I was quite impressed with the atmosphere, simplicity and beauty of the game. Hands down, the best preorder I've ever made.
updates! load times are epicly long lol might just be my crappy pc
- for some reason the auto detect for graphics settings (if there is one) put everything on ultra which suprisingly my core duo can handle BUT it was choppy as hell so i put everything back to high and battles run much smoother.
- sieges are fun and can be quite hard to defend. the ai splits its troops and attacks from multiple sides
- im really liking the customisation of generals, towns and agents. quite cool!
question - to put a general in charge of a fleet do u just put him on the ships as if for transport? and he automatically takes charge?
Yup it's hard. I'm playing on lengendary difficulty and have just lost my first campaign in eons in 12 turns. A bit of advise if I may BUILD UP BEFORE ATTACKING ANYONE!
First TW in a long time to actually earn its score. (That wasn't an expo)
Oh no. I have a fine PC and good internet connection. My hardware is well beyond the recommended requirements. I started updating, went to the grocery store, picked up some milk and peanut butter, then went to the pet store to get some pet food. Steam is telling me I'll be able to play in 3 hours and 58 minutes.Quote:
Originally Posted by knoddy
EDITED P.S. Oops. Pardon me. New development. Now it's saying 7 hours and 23 minutes. I guess I should be planning a good night's sleep, then getting a few minutes of play time before going to work in the morning. I should also mention that I bought the game on DISC. I'm not downloading from Steam. I'm just trying to activate it. And yes, I got the Limited Edition too.
Enjoyed it. Pre-ordered Limited Edition so no encryption/pre-loading thingy for me. Quite enjoyed it so far. AI seems better, but need some more battles under my belt before a final verdict can be given.
Tried as Shimazu clan and got my ass handed to me, when the clan I beat up sought allies and got them. Still, played a few battles and it seems to me CA have reintroduced things from older TW titles, like pre-battle speeches. I also enjoyed the hell out of seeing the terrain resemble the campaign map area and the campaign map itself is beautiful and love the artistic style. Much more atmospheric game than previous titles and IMO only RTW and older TW games can compare with atmosphere.
Naval battles were boring though. Think those will get autoresolved.
Scored 3 achievements, 2 in one go even.
Although encountered a CTD doing beginner's naval tutorial, which never is fun.
Me too. CTD during the advanced naval tutorial :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Krusader
Other than that I haven't had too many problems and it seems to run very well on my Core2 Duo (3ghz) with an ancient 9600GT.
Have to agree with the general sentiment above, the mood and style of the game is simply awesome. Very immersive and engaging. The campaign map looks great and the battles seem to flow well.
AI hasn't been very surprising in it's creativity, and it does like to throw everything at the nearest yari spear wall, but besides that it hasn't done anything overly dumb either, which I guess is a step up from Empire on release.
One thing I'm not sure about though (and this could be how I set up my first campaign), is the time limit for victory conditions.
I'm playing as Shimazu and I'm in Winter 1547. If I understand correctly I ony have until the end of the year 1600 to capture Kyoto, plus 40 other provinces?
I currently have 3 provinces after killing off the Ito, one large(ish) army and a reasonable profit of 3k or so each turn.
Can't see myself capturing another 35 or so provinces in the next 13 years!
osu!
That's 53 years. 1600-1547Quote:
Originally Posted by Satsuma
Just wondering how many start date are there? And is the auto-run problem from the demo fixed yet?
This thread makes me very hopeful. ~:)
After some initial playing last evening.I am also enjoying the game. I adore the atmosphere, artwork, music and after trying the naval battles. I was positively surprised. Also battle map pathfinding seems to be improved as when i ordered my Bow Ashigaru to skirmish. They actually did that, without me having to micromanage them. Playing from the original STW. I think this is the first time ive witnessed that. The unit closed in to a an enemy unit and started shooting when it got inside an arrow range and when the enemy unit started rushing towards my unit. They actually started withdrawing early enough and towards right direction, which is lovely. The main downside to me is that units seem to be moving quite fast, but overall i am enjoying myself very much after some initial playing.
I feel the battles go way too fast, but I attribute most of that to my brilliant strategy. Actually for the autoresolvers among us I'd suggest foregoing that option since battles are so quick, and your results will be better.
So far so good, I haven't lost anything important yet, but due to my own actions my first Mori campaign is about to turn really bad.
I only have 3 complaints:
- no separate difficulty for battles and campaign
- scrolling around map is way too slow, but I can use WASD to fix that.
- ship firing ranges are very hard to see in battles, though this could probably be fixed by adjusting settings.
Well, the AI always charges, regardless of whether it uses sound tactics or not. I find that the multiplayer battles last much longer, as both players spend most of the battle manoevering into position before they commit. Once the actual fighting starts, it can be over very fast, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Black Ship
Combat is rather fast, compared to say, MTW 2. Ashigari fold about as fast as peasants against lancers in Empire, I'd say.
It's good. It's harder than previous TW games on equivalent setting - it's making me think.
I've been having a hard time adjusting my eyes to the graphics as well... lack of AA stains my eyesQuote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Other than that, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Finally a return to something resembling Total War!
Impressive...
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
You can change the battle difficulty once in a campaign through the game settings menu.Quote:
- no separate difficulty for battles and campaign
Thanks for that. So if I wanted a normal campaign and hard battles I would start a campaign on normal and then adjust battle difficulty in game settings?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Lusted
Hmm, wow, that's interesting! So it is possible to get a VH campaign and normal battle difficulty after all? Although perhaps from my initial failings with Oda at H I should be rethinking where I start.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Lusted
You sir are awesome.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Lusted
Also, make it more obvious. I've seen tons of people complaining about wanting easier campaign and even that one reviewer didn't know it.
No surprises there ;)Quote:
...and even that one reviewer didn't know it.
It sounds as if I should give it a look for the single player experience, but I think for multiplayer I will Stick to RTW.
Why so? S2TW is much more improved over RTW, give it a try.Quote:
Originally Posted by Risasi
oh yeah.....Quote:
Originally Posted by xploring
That'll teach me to post at 3am....
FML.
Foot archers actually seem to skirmish well now. This means they should work much more effectively with spears and other melee infantry, making a much better combo. In the past, at least against the AI, I was always able to either charge foot archers before melee units could rescue them, or simply keep the foot archers moving. They can't fire on the move, so the practical effect was to remove them as an effective unit.
Notably, there are no missile cavalry that are armed with javelins. Also, there are no true "double duty" missile cavalry that can melee well. Missile cavalry will have to work with melee units now in close coordination. I don't mean to give the impression that bow cavalry have been "nerfed." That's not true at all. An unsupported melee infantry unit will still melt in front of good bow cavalry. It's just that missile cavalry is no longer as untouchable as it was in M2TW.
Very importantly, light cavalry are faster than bow cavalry now. This should give light cavalry a much more useful role than they ever had in M2TW. Earlier, much of the best missile cavalry was at least as fast as light cav. Also, many of the slower missile cavalry units could melee more effectively than light cav.
In Medieval, either a light cavalry unit would never catch a missile cavalry unit and get shot to pieces while trying, or they'd catch the unit only to lose the fight. You might as well build heavy cav because they were almost as good at chasing away horse archers or pursuit and better at everything else. That's apparently not true in Shogun 2.
I don't think that there was javelin cavalry in the period.
It all sounds good for playbalance, especially that mounted missiles aren;t untouchable. They were impossible to counter in M2 and RTW unless you had your own. M2 was particularly bad because of how string charges were on top of it.
In STW and MTW mounted missiles would be caught by light cavs and playbalance was much better because they had a counter.
Personally, I think you're all mental for buying this game considering how atrocious Total War and Creative Assembly have been in the past few years. Nonetheless I'm reading this forum with interest just to see if your faith has been rewarded. I won't buy this game no matter what, but a friend of mine did and on the first siege he had the AI moved one single unit to attack his city and it obviously got annihilated. After that the AI just stood there and took the missile hits. Sounds like the "good old days" of Total War to me. But that's his experience, anyone here had any sieges yet? They were just disasterous in Empire.
I've been the defender on quite many sieges, there was 1 siege where AI for some reason refused to send its archers to firing range (3 units) when I had 1, so I had to go and get them. Though at another siege AI sent its general to firing range of my archers (6 units this time) and just stood there, but this was late in the siege when enemy only had 1 other unit not routing. Now that you need generals around to keep morale up, AI seems a bit reckless and throws them to combat (not directly charging spear units at least).Quote:
Originally Posted by Quickening
defeneded plenty of seiges, the ai is definitely improved. in every siege the ai split its forces and attacked from diff sides. and im yet to see suicidal generals, in every seige the general waits outside missile range then when all other units are routing they dismount and attack on foot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quickening
I phrased that badly. I didn't mean to imply criticism of CA for not including jav-cav. I'm just saying that the lack of jinette-type units is a significant difference from M2.Quote:
Originally Posted by gollum
Agreed.Quote:
It all sounds good for playbalance, especially that mounted missiles aren;t untouchable. They were impossible to counter in M2 and RTW unless you had your own. M2 was particularly bad because of how string charges were on top of it.
Too early to tell, but your comment is interesting. I never played Empire Total War much and didn't even buy Napoleon Total War. Shogun 2 brought me back. As you can see from checking my profile, I've only just started posting on these forums again after an absence of two and a half years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quickening
I loved Rome and Medieval II despite the plethora of bugs that remain to this day, but Empire was just a disaster in every conceivable way, and it still is. It should just be forgotten and never mentioned ever again. Napoleon was improved but by then it was too late and I'd already sworn not to buy another Total War game. If they released a Medieval 3 or a Rome 2 I admit I'd be tempted, but it would have to be unmissable. Deep down I was hoping that Shogun 2 would show that CA have at least learned not to release unfinished games.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug-Thompson
Hello Quickening,
i haven' bought the game yet as i am interested to play mp, and i am waiting to see how that will turn out, but i think that the setting is just too good for a TW game from an SP perspective. If i was interested only in that i would have bought the game, it certainly seems good in terms of immersion and atmosphere and the fact that walls can be scaled by infantry shouldhelp the AI a lot. Also the game is not a missile weapon's game which the AI uses badly. I agree with you that Empire was mediocre at best, but i would give it a try if i wanted to play SP only.
This awful Japanese game won't sell as much as Empire.Quote:
Originally Posted by gollum
Plus in Empire, you had loads of factions, with Shogan you can only play Japanese............BOORRRRRIIIIIINNG
Empire is an amazing game, what the hell you talking about...Quote:
Originally Posted by Quickening
I'd agree with people when they say that battles go very fast. I've only got as far as the tutorials and I'm already playing things on slow motion. I looked away for a moment and found my bow ashigaru underneath a lot of enemy cavalry, looking very sad.
To compound this, my troops have an incredible desire to run everywhere, unless I keep an iron grip on them. I assume this is some sort of idiocy on my part rather than a bug.
played a set piece battle, love it. first for a total war game since medieval.
odd bug:
when the battle finsihed and the notification pops up on screen my mouse pointer disappeared.
i could ctl+alt+del back to desktop, and go back into the game, but never get my mouse back to select the dialogue that would take me back to the main menu.
Shogun 2 is currently the most played game on Steam with 21,292 concurrent players. Which is the first time anything other than an FPS has held the top spot (even if temporarily) in a long time. Congratulations CA, looks like you hit a home-run in both numbers and fan reaction. :bow:
I played more campaign play last evening as Mori and actually lost.It seems gone are the days where one can destroy full stacks with just few units. 1500 strong Ouchi army did short work from my pesky army and captured my home castle while i could do little to stop that from happening. Lovely!:bow:
I'm playing a short Mori campaign on normal. I'm trying to take it slow as far as aggression goes other than taking the missions given. I have the mamoth (3 provinces to my 1) Amako clan on the ropes (I think) but now the "friendly" Kikkawa clan has declared war on me...and I'm stretched a little thin.
So far, the AI has done a respectable job. In a siege attack, it came at me from three directions, which kept me busy. After the Amako besiegers were defeated, their decimated army then did the only thing they could do - attacked and damaged the gold mine I was building. Quite annoying.
For this first campaign, I have the advisor on high and he/she have been very helpful. I am enjoying myself so far - seeing it is after 3am and I didn't really want to quit playing. I'm hoping tomorrow evening stays open to see if I can hold off the Kikkawa clan threat. :2thumbsup:
I know what u mean Quick but i caved in and downloaded the game last night. ETW was a real let down i probably played only one campain on that game, didnt even bother with NTW but the demo for shogun felt soo good.........Quote:
Originally Posted by Quickening
There should be an option in the files to slow down unit speed by home modding foop. I haven't got the game, but it was there in previous TWs.
You could always just play the battles at half speed via the slider.
And quite encouraging too. If the AI does the right thing on normal, i mean :)Quote:
Originally posted by Gregoshi
After the Amako besiegers were defeated, their decimated army then did the only thing they could do - attacked and damaged the gold mine I was building. Quite annoying.
anyone know the full timeline yet?
i had heard 60 years, which means 240 turns and thus excellent, but some say only over fifty years which is 200+ turns and thus less awesome.
Awful Japanese game? Boring?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasper The Builder
Saying that games like Shogun are boring because there's one single faction is at best, tactless.
And selling as much as Empire, look at the Steam stats right now which will surely disprove your theory. And no, Empire was a disaster from the AI side. Gameplay and depth, very very good, but everything else was more or less a disaster.
I have to disgree with one thing for me Empire didnt have any depth either otherwise i agree and maybe even feel insulted a little that someone would call the setting that got me interested in Total War in the first place boring!Quote:
Originally Posted by edyzmedieval
We ALL have our TW prejudices and biases, so let's not get too bent out of shape if someone doesn't share our opinion of the each TW title - no matter how wrong they are. :laugh4:
heh, yeah, for every new setting, the people who liked the previous one are totally dissapointed, disgusted even at times. When Medieval came out, the ancient warfare buffs were gloomy while the medieval buffs in high spirits. Once Emipre came out, all the sword and buckle fans were slashing wrists and all the gunpowder enthusiasts came out of teh woodwork (many totally new). All the while the Sengoku fans were in grumpy whinning mode. Once S2 was announced everyone was dissapointed (as tehy all expected Rome 2 :), except for the few that were into Sengoku - but eventually this changedover time. To be continued... ;)
What is teh attraction for teh fans of each period is exactly what drives away its critics. For Sengoku is the uniform and smaller rosters, the uniform culture/civilwar scenario, the "small" map and timeframe. Those are exactly its strengths too; uniform and small rosters make for better balance and so better AI performance in battle, uniform culture allows in depth exploration and portrayal of it, and small map/timeframe makes the game more personalised without oversimplifications of provinces or turns that last yaers each. The civil war/unite the country setting, is also perfect for TW; diplomacy is at best used to buy time and its everyone against all in effect, which is what the TW AI understands best.
Its also a matter of which periods you know - some people dislike crtain periods because they know little about them. In that case though the game can be a tool to learn and explore the period too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasper The Builder
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasper The Builder
Exactly what happened to me with STW. I knew little about Japanese history and culture and honestly did have ANY interest in it at all. But the TW concept was so revolutionary back then, I just had to try the game - Japan or no. The game really turned me on to things Japanese though, so for that I am grateful and I can fully enjoy Shogun 2 as well. :bow:Quote:
Originally Posted by gollum
It bears repeating...Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregoshi
just to clear any confusion my comments were totally tongue in cheek (expect the bit about empire being crap and being insulted and .. did i mention you smell? anyway..)
but for those who do get into it you MUST read Shogun and the game will take on a whole new meaning.
I can say the same thing about Rome. Had zero interest in the ancient world at the time. I can honestly say that Rome: Total War turned me onto one hell of a lot of stuff that I'm really fascinated by nowadays.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregoshi
Inappropriate comment removed. -Kagemusha
I like Shogun 2.
I think that is a bit extreme. Lack of interest or knowledge is the likely answer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Napoleon The Emperor Of Europe